Have you ever bought a present so hopelessly mediocre the only way of improving it was to plump for snazzy gift wrap? Well, I have, and this year will be no different.
To distract my family from their sad three-piece body-scrub sets, I thought I’d make my own wrapping with the help of London-publishing-company-with-a-heart, Hato Press.
Hato use risograph printers that allow you to reproduce an image by burning it on to a ‘master’ stencil, which is sent around an ink drum inside the printer. The drum pushes the image through a screen on to the paper using soy inks. Before finalising my design, I scribble, scratch and blot out different marks, settling on a red ‘X’-mas tree made with tiny stamps. With the help of studio owner Ken Kirton, I press printer buttons and multiply those babies until I have 20 sheets of ‘handmade’ paper to encase my sub-par gifts with. The design may look more like a ‘windmill ahead’ warning sign than a tree, but it’s mine, dammit.