gift wrap

Just in Time for Christmas

Everyday Adventures

So, back in September I’d posted a picture of a sweet little wrapping job I’d done on a small gift box. Remember?

A request was placed that I show you how it was done and it’s been on my to-do list ever since. I apologize for the delay, but I hope you’ll agree that this is just the perfect time of year for this sort of thing, what with all the gift giving going on.

(Direct link for the feed readers: Rose-Wrap Tissue-Wrapped Gift Wrapping Tutorial)

Now there is a little bit of math involved, but that’s only so you know how wide your tissue paper needs to be in order to have the petal-ish bits be not too short or not too long (though you can always fix the long with a few snips).

I promise it’s simple:

[Width of the box (along the top) + Height of the box (along the side)] x 3 = Width of your tissue paper

See, simple! Theoretically you could wrap any box like this as long as you could get tissue paper wide enough. (As far as length’s concerned, you just want it to be fairly long–enough to go around the entire package 3-4 times.)

So, for the video my gift box was about 3 1/2 inches wide and 1 inch tall (3.5+1=4.5) and so 3 times that was 13 1/2 inches (4.5 x 3=13.5). I rounded up to be on the safe side and trimmed my tissue paper to 14 inches (and since the paper was folded in half, you see me measuring only 7 inches in the video).

I promise, that’s all of the technical know-how, the rest is squishing and scrunching and playing with paper!

This “rose” came out looking less rose-ish than my first one, but it still gets the point across, so don’t worry about getting a perfect flower look, just do your best and I’m sure the giftee will love it!

Wrap It Up!

Everyday Adventures, Projects

2 Ways to Dress Up a Boring, Square Box

When I decided to give one of the paper brooches as a birthday gift, I needed to wrap it up quickly before I saw her again. Thankfully I had a suitable box handy, now I just needed to wrap it. Reaching for the tissue paper, this is what I came up with:

I really need to start taking pictures when I do this, but I never know how it’s going to turn out when I start!

I started by wrapping the box in a long piece of tissue paper several times. Just rolled it up like a piece of candy with plenty of extra paper on each end. Then I pulled both of the ends up and towards the center, pinching it together a bit. It was at this point that I realized the upturned ends of the paper kinda looked like petals, so I grabbed some clear tape and secured the center, then fluffed the “petals” a little, crunching those that were longer, and separating the layers to give the impression of lots and lots of petals.

While that was pretty good on it’s own, it needed a little something, so I took two lengths of green ribbon and tied them around the base of the flower. Then I hand-cut and decorated a tag in the shape of a leaf, attached it with the ribbons, and knotted the hanging ribbon ends to make it look pretty.

And to open the gift? It’s tissue paper so it’s very easy to tear through the back of the paper, slip out the box, and leave the pretty flower intact!

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The next week I decided on a spur-of-the-moment gift for another friend–our DM at the DDE sessions on Wednesday night and our season was coming to an end–but it, again, equated to a boring square.

I just stuck with a straightforward wrapping job on the gift in gold tissue paper, and turned the card into a scroll for kicks. To make the tag, I drew and cut out a d20 (20-sided die) of red cardstock, and cut two small slits at the top and bottom to slip the tails of the ribbon through, then added the “to” and “from” to the back of the tag.

Hint: With this sort of decorative closure, it helps to tie the ribbon in a loop, first, then roll the scroll a little smaller, slip it through, and let it unfurl to fill the space. Otherwise you’re just juggling a bunch paper and ribbon and you might as well be trying to dress an octopus in a onesie.