When it comes to decorating your walls you don’t have to spend a fortune. Take the Shabby Chic route and use gift wrap, old baskets and trays, all of which can be turned into some fantastic art pieces. Nursery wall art, kids wall art, contemporary wall art, even living room wall art can all be made from a lowly roll of gift wrap, even from scraps of gift wrap that have already been used to wrap a gift. So next time you unwrap a gift, save the wrapping paper and use it to go to town on your walls.
These projects can also make inexpensive and easy kids crafts projects which you can use to decorate your home or as wonderful gifts for grandparents. Talk about being green, these are great green crafts projects that reuse items you might normally have thrown away.
Contemporary Wall Art
If you save gift wrap instead of throwing it away you’ve got the makings of an easy and inexpensive way to vamp up your walls with some original art. Place the gift wrap, print side down, on an ironing board. Iron with a warm iron using short bursts of steam until all lines and wrinkles are smoothed out.
Use decoupage or glue made for paper to attach the gift wrap to a stretched canvas or foam core board. Seal with several coats of glue. Leave as is or finish the edges of the canvas with paint, ribbon trim or contrasting paper.
If you have several pieces of gift wrap whose colors or themes are similar you could create a montage of canvases to fill a large space.
Basket Case
Gather woven trays, flat baskets, paper plate holders (can be plastic or woven). Arrange on a flat surface roughly the size of the wall you will be decorating until you have a pleasing arrangement. I know it seems like this is an extra step but you want to figure out your arrangement prior to painting so that you don’t paint items you won’t be using. Take a picture of your arrangement so you can duplicate it later.Spray paint the baskets.
While the baskets are drying gather pieces of gift wrap that will work all together in your arrangement. Cut to fit the bottom of each basket and tray. When paint is dry, spray the bottom of each basket/tray with glue and carefully smooth on the gift wrap. Protect with several light coats of clear polyurethane.
Note: you can also use decorative paper napkins, pages from magazines, calendar pages …
Check out our article on Calendar Art also.