wrap it with an origami bow

I have major magazine fetish. It's so naughty, when I gave up smoking years ago I took up magazines instead. And I'm not picky in my genre either, food, decorating, country homes and antiques... I'll read them all

I also do this thing where I'll read, re-read, attempt to recycle, retrieve from the recycling then read again - pretty much every magazine I buy is subject to my thorough re-reading process

I really loved the colours in Elle Decorating magazine; greys, white, palest pinks - so I decided once I'd read and re-read I'd do a spot of reconstructing with these 'orgami' bows. I call them origami because they are made of folded paper, but I'm sure they're not official origami

I cut my pages into half inch strips and fiddled around with them and a couple of those pins with the legs (I think they're called brads?)

I tried to make a traditional star shaped gift bow by making figure of eights with my strips of paper, but it looked a little lopsided

the rounder bow was made by folding the two ends of a strip to meet in the middle and pinning them together. The rosette style one was made with three loops of paper with inverted v shapes at the end

while I liked the minimalism of the magazine's colour scheme paired with the brown paper packages, these would look great made with brightly coloured origami papers, or use different coloured strips to make a rainbow bow!