Following on from the paint tester pots the other week, I’ve got some wallpaper samples that have served their purpose too. I really can’t wait for our renovations to be over!

Like the paint, the samples were to check out ideas/colours/designs in-situ. Some of them were torn from rolls in shops (with permission! I’m not just a random vandal ;) ) and are about 60cm/2ft wide by about the same long, while others are A4 sheets that I’ve had posted out to check colours. They’re all thick, heavy paper as you would expect from wallpaper.

Obviously the best thing would have been to reduce in the first place – to be a bit more decisive and not collected so many samples but like with the paint, these are to offset a potentially larger waste by picking the wrong thing – so now I’m looking for reusing/upcycling ideas.

Most of them are “feature” wallpapers so patterns & colours that I like but not enough for them to be displayed as framed pieces of art in their own right. The ones with a small repeating pattern though could be used as paper behind something else in a frame though (for example, I have some pretty buttons that I might want to display – they would look great on some of the plain-ish pinstriped paper).

They’d be fine for lining drawers too – many people (including us) don’t line drawers with paper any more because the insides on modern furniture don’t tend to be as rough on delicates as they used to be but it’s certainly worth doing on vintage furniture – and looks pretty too.

Do kids still have to back school textbooks/exercise books? We used to use wallpaper (amongst other things) for that. The fact I have to ask that question probably shows that it’s not a reuse I could specifically do but others might be able to reuse wallpaper samples in that way — and I could keep some for next time I make a notebook for myself.

Any other ideas? How would you reuse wallpaper samples? Are they suitable for any papercrafts or would they be too thick?

We had an email to Compost This from Tracy, asking:

Just wondered if old wallpaper is compostable. Just stripped it all off my daughter’s bedroom walls and I am just starting on the rest of the house. I don’t know and wondered if you did. I would assume that it’s not due to the adhesive but thought I would ask you.

I’d agree with the “no, it’s not” verdict because of the synthetic contents of most pastes, dyes used for patterns and/or paints applied to the surface. But what else can be done with it?

When we stripped our living room a few years ago, we had some really big pieces – almost full strips – as well as those annoying scraps that JUST WON’T COME OFF THE WALL but we ended up just bundling it all up and throwing it anyway because we couldn’t think what else could be done with it.

Any suggestions?

(Photo by the wonderfully named Woopidoo2)