Works for me -- and its GREEN, too!

So this is the post I meant to make for this week's Project Support Beauty in Nature challenge, but thought I'd post it even if its late with all the weddings, graduation parties, etc. that folks most likely have coming up.

This is the gift I gave my cousin and his new wife a few weeks back - a Wedding Anniversary album. (If you don't know what this is, go check it out - I have one and its really cool!) While I recycle as many gift bags as possible, I didn't have one appropriate for a wedding. (Lots of little boy themed ones, but I'm sure this would have looked goofy sitting on the gift table in an Elmo bag.) And the thought of wasting paper to cover it for a day until they ripped it all off and threw it away just seemed dumb to me. So this is what I did:



I found, at Target, cheap bath towels for $1.58 each. (Regular price, not on sale.) Now, they were small, and not of the greatest quality, but even if it only gets used again to wash the car, I'm happy. I bought a light purple one for the main part of my wrapping.

Alongside the towels, also for $1.58, were 4-packs of washcloths. I bought some ivory colored ones, and with my oh-so-great seamstress abilities, I crafted one into a flower and put about four stitches in it to keep it in place. (OK, if you look at the picture, you'll see I'm being sarcastic here. The point is, it doesn't have to be perfect and whatever you do is probably better than mine.) The other three got wrapped along with the book.

Then I laid the small pile in the towel and just sort of wrapped it. I kept the wrapping in place with a ribbon that I found at Tar-jay for $.99. I used some of my glue dots from Stampin' Up to stick the flower to the ribbon, then made some leaves, just so people would know its a flower.

I just hope they didn't laugh at me when they opened it! :O) What do you think? Not too bad considering it only cost $4, less than a gift bag + tissue paper and that the wrapping is actually part of the gift!