City street furniture given wrap

Some people even sat down on the wrapped benches in Rose Street

Residents in Edinburgh city centre have woken up to find gift-wrapped phone boxes, lampposts, litterbins, benches and even a whole shop.

Several pieces of street furniture in Rose Street were wrapped up with brown paper, big red bows and message tags from 0530 BST on Friday.

It was part of a Napier University project to interact with the public.

Maria Saba del Pozo Morillo, 24, part of a group of seven conducting the task, said it was "very successful".

Miss del Pozo Morillo, an interior architecture student at Napier University, said they had hundreds of commuters stopping to read the messages and look at the wrapped objects.

She told BBC Scotland news website: "There were people getting off their bikes to come over to have a look, others reading the messages and people taking photographs and asking what it was for.

"One man said it had lightened up his day, which was very sweet and another said there was 'no statue for a critic', which was great.

"The project was very successful and made me think these kind of fun things should be done more often as the public responds very well. We actually didn't expect the huge response we received.

"I have also learned though that you need to ask permission to do anything no matter how creative as a road sweeper was very annoyed this morning and ripped three of the wrappers off before calling his manager because he said people couldn't use the bins or phone boxes."

The street furniture was wrapped for over four hours before being removed

The team were given until 1000 BST to clean up the street after negotiating with Edinburgh City Council.

A huge bow was even tied across the door of Greggs the bakers and the staff gave them free donuts in support of the project.

A message on a bench read: "I love to sit and watch the world go by."

Another message on a lamppost read: I don't pee on your dog, so don't let your dog pee on me."

Another message on an electrical box in the street said: "I've got junk in my trunk."

It follows the same group's coverage of a postbox in McDonald Road on Tuesday 17 March.

The mystery of who had wrapped the postbox was finally revealed by the BBC Scotland news website on Thursday.

The group's findings will be part of an end of year final presentation next week.