Oh, Fransson!: Ruby Star Wrap-Along

Today is my stop on the Blog Tour/Wrap-Along for Melody Miller and Alison Tannery's new book, Ruby Star Wrapping. Subtitled "Creating Gifts to Reuse, Regive & Relove" Ruby Star Wrapping is all about creating beautiful gift wrap from found materials.

To celebrate the book, Amy of Sukie - don't you know who I am? has coordinated a blog tour/wrap-along during which you can follow a group of bloggers as we make many of the projects from Ruby Star Wrapping. There are also fabulous prizes, so be sure to check out this post for more information, including where you can buy the book and how you can enter to win prizes.

Ruby Star Wrapping is divided into sections based on the type of gift being wrapped. Are you wrapping a gift card, something soft and squishy, or something edible? There are multiple ideas here for wrapping any of those things and more in a memorable way.

The book also includes beautiful photography by Gregory Miller that captures the kind of vintage-inspired style that you've seen in Melody's fabric collections. The anecdotes that Melody and Alison have included throughout the book lend a friendly conversational tone that really got me excited about gift wrap possibilities for the upcoming holidays.

My project for the Wrap-Along is the Newspaper Flower. This is a fun, quick project that I'll definitely be using in the future. The template in the book makes a flower that's about 7" across, but you could easily rescale the template and use the same directions to make flowers in a variety of sizes. It's also a great project for using your favorite vintage buttons.

I love this flower as an alternative to ribbon bows and I think it would be a great craft project for older kids to make for their holiday gifts. If you also live somewhere where they inexplicably still bring you a phone book, phone book pages would also be great for this project!

Here's another version that I made with pages from a CB2 catalog. (I will admit that I had to go out and find a newspaper for this project, but I had plenty of old catalogs laying around!)

Here's a complete schedule for the wrap-along. Be sure to check out the other posts too! If you like, you can also share photos of your Ruby Star Wrapping projects in the Flickr Group.

11.7.12 – Anna of noodlehead

11.9.12 Amanda of A Crafty Fox

11.12.12 – Elizabeth of Oh, Fransson!

11.14.12 – Brooke of Pitter Putter Stitch

11.16.12 – Erin of Two More Seconds

11.19.12 - Jennifer of BettyCrockerAss

11.21.12 – Rochelle of Lucky Lucille

11.23.12 – Sukie of Sukie – don’t you know who I am?

11.26.12 – Elizabeth of Don’t Call Me Betsy

11.28.12 – Gina and crew of Bolt Neighborhood

11.30.12 – Ellen of the Long Thread

12.3.12 – Katie of Swim, Bike Quilt