So in the midst of this gift wrapping season, I thought I would share with you some interesting and cute ideas that I found in an old book, The Art of Paper Crafts by Cheryl Owen.

This first idea is my favourite and all it involves is wrapping a gift up in a solid colour wrapping paper. You then take a contrasting coloured piece of paper and fold it in half. Draw a butterfly shape onto a separate sheet of thin cardboard: cut it out and trace around half of it as shown on the coloured paper. Draw as many as you like to cover the whole gift. Cut out the shapes and fold them on both sides of the half way fold to give them bodies. Then use glue or a thin strip of double sided tape to stick them all over your gift. Alternatively, if you don’t like butterflies, you can use ribbons.

This pencil idea may not be for everyone but I thought it was quite witty. Make a cylinder about 5cm shorter than the bottle from light cardboard and join the sides with tape. Draw a third section of a circle- about 7.5cm radius, onto a light coloured cardboard and cut it out. Roll it into a cone shape, running the flat side of a pair of scissors along it to help it curl. Tape it in place. Make a smaller cone for the lead of the pencil and glue it onto the larger cone. Run a length of sticky tape along the inside of the cone to hold it all in position. Fit the pencil over the bottle and secure with two strips of tape across the bottom.

So you have no wrapping paper and the shops are shut? Wrapping the gift in newspaper is pretty self explanatory but here’s how you make the lovely flower on top. Cut several strips of newspaper, some about 15cm wide, some a little narrower. Fold one strip in half length ways and make a series of cuts along its fold as shown in picture 1. When you’ve cut along the whole length, roll up the resulting looped fringe and secure with some tape. Fluff out the ‘petals’ of the flower. Use up all the strips of paper in the same way. Gather all the sections together with the smaller ones on the outside. Join them with tape and leave the ends unstick and use these to attach the flower to the gift. You could even match the type of paper you use to the recipient; use the finance section for a businessman, a comic for a child or magazine recipe pages for a good cook!