Sunday being a lazy day, I figured this would be a good time to revisit a couple gift wrapping posts I did last year.
Creative gift wrapping is something I do pretty much only when I’m trying really hard NOT to do something else. I am quite skilled at procrastination: so much so that I often end up producing surprisingly elaborate stuff so long as whatever I’m trying to avoid is sufficiently motivating.
The first gift I’d like to mention was a big garment box (I think it was the bathrobe I got Matt last year) with an abstract pattern. Initially I took silver polka dot paper which I bought from Target, and wrapped the whole thing. I guess I’m not a huge polka dot fan, I always feel like polka dot patterns look a bit uninspired, and the size of the package just made the whole thing look kind of sad. Saggy even. So I scrounged around at the bottom of my gift wrap box, came up with some purple scraps of Borders paper, and put an abstract design on top of the box. I thought the result was unique and rather different. Last year’s blogpost gives step by step instructions.
The second gift is somewhat less Christmas-y but could easily be adapted with different colored paper, and is a great gift decoration for a child’s present (not that the kid actually cares what the wrapping job looks like). I wrapped this gift up for my niece, using ugly purple paper. The paper was actually the only paper we had that was not too Christmas specific (this was for a spring birthday) but once I wrapped it I was unsatisfied by the pattern. Since the package was oddly shaped, I decided to turn it into a car. I took some of the same silver polka dot paper and folded it into “window” shapes. Surprisingly, the shiny dots actually made vaguely head shapes, that I thought could represent drivers and people (I was reading way too much into this). As a finishing touch, I picked up some Izze bottle caps from the floor (our cats like to play with them) and taped them to the package edges as wheels.
To use this wrapping technique for a Christmas gift, I’d suggest going with unpatterned red paper (which will be cheaper anyway), with some kind of silver paper for the windows. If you can find something round and green for the wheels you’re set. You could even be super cute and use green yo-yos, or tops, or any round reusable toy from the dollar store. How about yo-yos for the back tires and tops for the front? Then you can make it a race car. My final product looked sort of like a mini-van. I don’t think my niece even knew it was supposed to be a car, but hey, I had fun. Full instructions are included in the old blog post.
I’ve found that my creative gift wrapping projects usually end up happening by accident, and I have enough random crafty crap around to make things look funky without too much trouble. With any luck someone will find them useful or inspiring. If you have any fun gift wrapping ideas of your own, feel free to include the ideas (or links to a similar post) in the comments.
