chevron wrapping paper from a potato

one of my favorite parts of christmas is buying & wrapping gifts. each year I try to do a little somethin' fun to beautify the gift (see last year's wrapping here). not only is it fun to receive a pretty package, but it also looks nice sitting under the tree all month.

this year I decided to stick with simple kraft paper & then stamp some sort of design onto it. I don't know if any of you have ever checked out michael's or joann's craft stores for stamps, but they really suck. they all look like microsoft office clip art from 1999. and I knew I didn't want to wait to order a stamp from etsy, so my next thought was to buy a carving block to make my own, but neither store carried those either.

so I regretfully returned home, feeling defeated, & decided to rid my sorrows over some comfort food in the form of thanksgiving leftovers. and then it hit me- potatoes! duh! why didn't I think of that earlier? I grabbed a small knife (an exacto would work well too) & cut a shape out of the potato (I went with the zig zag pattern). I dapped the "stamp" onto a paper towel to get out some of the moisture & then dipped it in gold ink & then onto the kraft paper, over & over again. it dried all shiny & pretty and looks just as cute as this expensive anthropologie wrapping paper, if I do say so myself.