If you joined me in Part One, we made some great cards (and some great impressions) with some glamorous golden papers. It’s not all just about the cards at Christmas though. When I give out my Christmas presents, people always say, “Oh how could I possibly open that? It’s far too beautiful!” I always wave it off and encourage them to “rip it – that’s how!” or reassure them it’s only a bit of paper. But just between you and me, I will admit that I do enjoy the special attention my gift wrapping receives. I put a lot of care into it (because I love paper and I love my friends!) and it is nice to see people feel that their gift is special.
I find wrapping presents to be a most therapeutic activity, provided it’s not left until the last minute before the event. (You can self-diagnose if you fall into this category.) Especially at Christmas time when there are lots of things to wrap, you get a great opportunity to make a theme of it! (And again with those late wrappers, the anxiety and stress of wrapping is far worse if you’ve got a mountain of gifts to wrap the night before Christmas.) Why not make the decision right now to simply be outstanding at wrapping this Christmas? Beautiful, coordinated, and on-time. Good. Agreed.
Step one is buying your gifts ahead of time. As an incentive, beating the last minute Christmas rush means avoiding chaotic crowds at the shops and wasting 37 minutes of your life doing laps looking for a carpark. Or, if you’d rather shop from the comfort of your recliner, online shopping is a winning idea. Plus, if you shop through any of the i=Change brands (of which we are one!) the company will make a $1 donation to your choice of three global development projects upon checkout.
Once you have your gifts, decide if you want to box them up to make your job easier. If they are awkward shapes, you may prefer the clean lines of a box. You may not need to do this for every gift – just some of the key ones. You can sometimes find good, affordable boxes at Ikea, Spotlight, The Reject Shop and also at some variety stores.
Your Cristina Re shopping list includes:
- Designer Paper
- Grosgrain Ribbon/s
- Any accessories you wish to add: Grosgrain Bows, Tassels, Diamante or Gold Buckles
- Adhesive Tape Roller
Your other shopping list includes:
- Boxes or gift bags if you wish
- Base wrapping paper (you need several meters of this, a block colour is fine because we are embellishing with decorative papers)
- Sharp scissors
- Gift tags (or you can DIY with coordinating papers)
- Hot glue gun (optional)
Here are my favourite wrapping tips for flawless gifts:
- Use the minimum amount of paper to cover the gift comfortably. Excess paper results in bulky ends and difficult folds. Trim away any excess before you stick down.
- Use Adhesive Tape Roller for invisible adhesion and clean edges.
- Fold over your edge of wrapping before you adhere to give you a straight edge again – it may be wonky after you cut it from the wrapping roll.
- Wrap on a hard, flat, clean surface. It is much harder to get crisp edges when wrapping on carpet, and harder to work on a cluttered table.
- Pull as tightly as the paper will allow for a nice tight parcel with crisp edges.
- Using a hot glue gun on your ribbon gives you stronger adhesion, as many tapes don’t fasten well to fabric.
This Christmas, since we have the new Heaven and Earth collection to play with, we have chosen a gold and white theme to play with! See how we’ve gone about our wrapping projects below.
We’ve also created a great little page of downloadable resources for you to print out on the papers to achieve the same effect, including our paper bows, the paper gift tags, the paper stars and more!
lease help yourself to the download, insert a page of your favourite Cristina Re paper (reverse side up) and press print – we recommend Quartz or Diamond for these styles. Then cut out the shapes, fold the bows, punch a hole in the tags and adhere the stars!
If you have any questions about your Christmas wrapping projects, please feel free to get in touch with us here or on social media @cristinaredesign. And please do share your wrapping photos with us – we always love to see what you have achieved with the papers and accessories!
Most importantly, have fun with your paper projects. May your wrapping wonders be the showstoppers this Christmas!
Love to you at Christmas,
Cristina. x