Hey, Friends! It's my turn to share a project for TGIF at The Greetery and I issued myself a fun challenge! If you follow me on Instagram and caught my Stories earlier this week, I shared about how I used to go out the day after Christmas years ago, and buy gift wrap and ribbons and such, when everything was like 90% off and then we'd be set the next year! Or, for the next like 20 years.....as the case may be! Hahaha!
I showed a roll of wrapping paper on my Instagram Stories, that we still have from about 20 years ago, that I'd been trying to use up. But as it turns out, we still have FOUR rolls of that same wrapping paper! LOL! I'm sure I only paid like $1 per roll, which is why I felt at the time, like I should stock up on so much of it! Hahaha! But as you can imagine, 20 years later I'm over it with that particular paper! LOL!
Now, of course, a person could always donate rolls of wrapping paper to organizations who need such things for wrapping gifts for kiddos or whomever. BUT, there's also something to be said for using what we have and not always having to go buy more! There's something to be said for taking something perhaps outdated or not in your current style or taste, and zhuzhing it up in such a way as to sort of bring it back to life. So that's what I did!
I decided to use up a bunch (though not even one roll -- these things are huge! LOL!) of the wrapping paper on all our neighbor gifts because I had 18 little boxes of chocolate treats to wrap (2 per household). I also had a gigantic sized roll of tan wired ribbon (again, why?!) and it was more than enough to wrap all of them, even doing it the classic way where you criss-cross and wrap it around both directions and then tie a bow!! :)
Once I got the little stacks of gifts wrapped and tied up together with bows on top, they were just kind of ho-hum looking. SO, I challenged myself to see if I could use my stamps and dies to really dress them up and make them look DARLING, in spite of that 20 year old clearance wrapping paper and tan ribbon. Turns out, I think I DID!!! But I'll let you decide....
Here's what I die cut to pile on my gifts! 7 die cuts per gift stack.
MY #1 PRO TIP: Pile on so much eye-catching cuteness on top, that they never even notice the boring wrapping paper!! Hahaha!!
PRO TIP: Just make sure you choose colors for all your cute additions that coordinate with the wrapping paper! No one will even think twice about your choice of wrapping paper if everything is darling and color coordinated on top! :)
PRO TIP: I added three die cut "sprigs" on top of each gift. Don't be afraid to pile them on! But if you do, be sure to make each a different color, so they stand out from one another and are distinguishable as different elements. Also, I debated about doing some ink blending on them to give them dimension, but in this case, it just wasn't needed. The top of the gifts are small so there's not a lot of surface for those die cuts to spread out, so a bunch of time spent on additional detail wouldn't have been time super well spent.
PRO TIP: Be sure to fluff your sprigs up a bit so they aren't just laying there totally flat. You can give them a bit of dimension this way.
PRO TIP: When it comes to tags, again....pile them on! Why not?! It's just paper and some simple die cutting! Each additional tag adds another layer of interest and ups the cuteness factor even more. In this case, I added two of the Tear Strips Tags -- one with a Christmas greeting and one with the TO/FROM info stamped/written on it. (I put that one underneath the greeting one, since that's a bit more polished looking, than the one with the handwriting.
PRO TIP: Besides the two smaller Tear Strip Tags, I also added one larger super decorative tag with the Round About Winter Foliage Die and the smaller of the two Crimped Circles Tags. I didn't write anything on this one, so that when the neighbors unwrap their gifts, they could easily reuse this one another gift....thus, giving them another little gift in itself!
PRO TIP: When tying all those tags onto the bow, I chose to tie the large Round About tag on by itself, and then tied the two Tear Strip Tags on together, but not on the same twine as the larger tag. This allowed me to easily scooch them apart just enough so that everything is visible and nothing is getting majorly covered up by something else!
One more PRO TIP: When using an older gift wrap that you don't love, update the color palette!! So, like I said earlier, you want your color palette of gift toppers to coordinate with the paper, firstly! BUT, your paper might have kind of a tired, out-dated color palette, so add in a color or two to freshen it up! As you can see on my wrapping paper, it doesn't have any of that pretty pinky tone in it. BUT, by adding that in along with using other colors that ARE in the paper, it brings a more modern, updated feel to the whole thing, and sort of elevates the wrapping paper, rather than leaving it stuck in the doldrums!
I mean, how pretty is THAT scene?!!! Happy sigh!
{Neighbor Gift Toppings supplies -- click on thumbnails}
I hope I've given you lots of ideas you can use as you're finishing up wrapping your own gifts this year! Raise your hand if you've got some less-than-desirable gift wrap hiding in the back of the closet that you could totally pull out and use, and dress it up to give it some new life!!! If you take on this challenge yourself, and if you post it on Instagram, tag me! I'd love to see!
Be sure to check out the post over on The Greetery Blog today!
Merry Christmas, friends! Thank you so much for spending time here with me, and on social media, too! And thanks to all of you who have visited our website and shopped my art! We appreciate each and every purchase and just want to make sure you know! We're grateful for every one of you!
Much love, dear ones! Hope your holidays are wonderful!
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