Black and White and Re(a)d All Over: Making Newspaper Wrapping Paper Look Fancy

Reusing newspaper to wrap presents is cheap and eco-friendly. Only problem is, people usually think you are a cheap jerk when you use it to wrap stuff. This simple Instructable will teach you how to spruce up your newspaper so people can tell how much you care. This Instructable assumes you know how to print an image using a silk screen. If you don't know how, I would suggest you look at Screen Printing: Cheap, Dirty, and at Home.

Also this is my first Instructable, so lemme know if I can improve.

You will need:
Screen--already exposed with image and ready to go. I did mine by putting marigolds on the screen and squishing them down with a sheet of glass and exposing the screen in the sun.
Squeegee
Screen printing ink
Toothbrush--this just seems really handy for printing. You can use it to put ink onto the screen and when you are done you can use it to scrub it off!
Newspaper--lots of this. Put some down so you don't make a mess. Save the coolest sheets for printing on. I found color pages and pages with huge mostly black ads worked really well. Try printing with whatever pages you like best.

Lay out your sheet of paper on top of your work area. Place screen on top. Put some ink along one edge of the screen (see picture). Spread ink across with squeegee. Pull screen away carefully.

For best quality, you should make sure to wait between printings. After you print once, if you want to print again right next to where you just printed you have to wait for the first printing to dry. Otherwise you will get wet ink on the bottom of the screen and smudge it all over. I chose to go with an "artistic" approach which means I let it smudge some of the time. You can make stripes of repeating patterns, space them out around images in the paper, or overlap lots of repetitions. See the examples below.

When you are done printing, lay your pages out to dry. When they are dry it is time for wrapping! Here's a package I wrapped for my girlfriend using one of my favorite pages. It took her a few minutes to realize I'd made the paper myself! I hope your friends and family enjoy!