I love to decorate gifts. Back in the “olden days” when I didn’t have so much on my plate, I would be done my Christmas shopping by the end of October and be completely wrapped and ready to go by the end of November. Sadly, I have hardly started this year. On line shopping is looking better and better all the time! Well, when I used to wrap early, I used a strategy that allowed me to store all of those wrapped gifts easily. Basically, I wrapped all the gifts in one sitting (or at least most of them). This would take me several hours, but I did not add any ribbons, bows, tags or embellishments at this time. I simply chose paper, wrapped and then wrote the person’s name (very small) on the bottom of the gift. This allowed me to stack and store oodles of gifts without having to compensate for the bows. I would then set aside another an entire day or evening and set to work decorating each gift. I love to do this and I thought I’d share a few of my favourite tricks!
Wrapping on a Budget
First of all, I spend very little on wrapping paper and embellishments. I always purchase when the Christmas stuff is on clearance and for the last two years I’ve picked up beautiful wire rimmed ribbon at Michael’s for 90% off. I also purchase many of the items I use from the dollar store. The example I am sharing today includes mostly dollar store items.
For this particular project, I used dollar store wrapping paper and dollar store wire rimmed ribbon. I can’t remember if I bought the wire holly garland and metallic shreds at the dollar store or not, but probably. I had both on hand from last year.
I tend to use primarily wire rimmed ribbon. I will occasionally use the curly ribbon, but most often to dress-up the embellishment a bit. I wrapped the gift with one band of ribbon and tied a nice big bow. I then slipped a bit of metallic shreds beneath the bow. The shreds are not silver or gold, but rather that clear “opalescent” look. (Don’t you love that word?) I love how it just punches up the bow and seems to fill the dead space a bit. I then like to take a 6 to 8 inch piece of wire garland and slide it under the shreds and then twist it on top of the bow to hold everything in place. I like to leave the ends of the wire garland sticking out. This look is really easy to achieve and yet takes a simple ribbon and bow and kicks it up a notch. I often choose gift tags with a string. I just prefer the “hanging” look over stickers. Such is the case with this tag. I just looped it over the wire garland.
You already know how obsessed I am with re-using and re-purposing items, so I am sure you won’t be all that surprised to know that I collect the ribbons and bows on Christmas morning and re-use many of them the following year. I have even been known to leave the tags attached and use it for the same person. Thus, my stash of beautiful ribbons and bows does not need to be replenished that often.
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