This time of year we all receive many glossy, colorful catalogs. Why not use them for gift wrapping? They are essentially free and headed for the recycle bin anyway. I originally tried taping them all together to make sheets but the results was far from aesthetic, used lots of tape and was difficult to handle.

Step 1: Prep

First thing to do is find your most colorful catalogs and remove the center staples. It's probably better to uses something like a butter knife to save your fingernails but... do as I say and not as I do.

Step 2: The First Sheet

What seems to work the best and to keep you from reading the catalogs is to place the sheets on the diagonal. It works best if you place the corner pretty much in the center of the sheet. Fold up the corners and tape. I tend to try and tape paper to paper rather than taping it to the box. You do tend to use more tape than traditional wrapping and this keeps unwrapping from being annoying to the recipient.

Step 3: Second Sheet

I try and change the angle when doing the second sheet. It looks better and again keeps you from reading the contents.

Step 4: Continue to Add Sheets...

Picking the pages with the most interesting and colorful images. Rotate, fold, tape. Rotate, fold tape.

Step 5: And You Are Done!

You've a colorful, inexpensive wrapped present and you don't feel so bad about the waste with all those catalogs this time of year.

Step 6: It Even Works Well With Irregular Objects.

Since you don't need to be so careful about just how the folds are made, you can wrap just about anything... and you can select pages to vary the overall color.