to buy my book visit amazon.com via this link

For this year’s honey wrap, I did a  Google image search using the words “honey comb”. I printed out some of the search results and used them as wrapping paper and gift tags.

For the gift above I converted the picture to black and white.

I needed a quick gift wrapping job for a kid’s birthday party.

So I grabbed my favorite Berol markers (I think they’re only available in the UK but, you can use any markers) and scribbled on some of my kid’s IKEA manilla paper (comes in a roll for use with the IKEA easel).

It’s fun to do several sheets in contrasting colors.

Use reds, pinks, yellows on one and blue, greens, purples on the other. Then wrap as an assemblage.

or

You can add contrast by scribbling the same colors but on different colored papers eg: bright white and manilla.

or

as you can see on the small gift to the left (above), you can contrast stripes with scribbles.

 

For this copper metallic wrapped gift I scribbled a zig zag pattern in one direction with a white crayon and then turned the page and zig zagged in the perpendicular direction. Then I washed over the whole sheet with diluted copper tempura paint.

 

Oh the joys of wrapping with tissue paper.

It’s super malleable and comes in great colors and prints.

Plus you can wrap it so it forms it’s own bow.

HOW TO

1. pleat the pink glitter paper with three pleats and tape on reverse side

2. wrap the gift leaving the ends long and gather them into the center and twist them into a spiral.

3. tie the spiral underneath with a piece of ribbon.

4. glue a circle of the same paper over the spiral

5. decorate the circle with liquid pearl glue drops

 

HOW TO

1. pleat the tissue paper with two angled pleats and tape on reverse side

2. wrap the gift

3. cut circles out of scrap paper

4. pleat the circles

5. tuck the circles into the pleats (you can use these as gift tags)

6. wrap with fuzzy wire ribbon

I taped together several sheets of security envelope paper together to wrap this gift.

I stamped the paper with small squares AND pleated the paper before wrapping.

I used Scotch® bee washi tape (which I was DELIGHTED to discover!!)

For ribbon I used black paper twine tied in a tenderloin tying pattern:

 

Below, some of the security envelope papers I’ve collected:

For the Honey Wrap above I spliced several pieces together.

 

The book, How to Wrap Five Eggs,  is a  BEAUTIFUL photographic book full of pictures of artisanal Japanese package wrapping.  It’s just packed with fabulous wrapping ideas and wonderful creative twine tying.

HOW TO

1. paint a small sheet of kraft paper with short strokes of purple MS Glitter acrylic craft paint.

2. fold three pleats at an angle, tape them down on the reverse side

3. wrap with band of scrap sheet of pearlescent purple painted paper and snowflake washi tape.

4. wrap fuzzy yarn multiple times around package and tie into a bow.

 

I just LOVE using this fuzzy yarn for gift wrapping.

It comes in a wide range of fantastic saturated colors and beautiful metallics.

AND there are tons in each package at a reasonable price.

 

 

 

Though I don’t think everything in gift wrapping has to be “perfect” a nice symmetrical bow is a great way to finish off wrapping a present.

The following illustrates how I tie my bows.
I spliced together two different color ribbons in an effort to make the process easier to visualize.
plus it makes a kinda cool bow!!

 

STEPS 1-6

1. the green ribbon coming from the right goes above the blue ribbon coming from the left

2. then bottom blue  ribbon loops over and under the top green ribbon

3. make a loop with the bottom blue ribbon

 

 

 

 

 

STEPS 7-11

1. flip bottom blue loop up and to the left

2. bring upper green piece of ribbon over and around the blue loop

3. pull the green loop through

 

 

 

 

 

STEPS 12-13

1. tighten the bow

2. trim off the two ends

 

 

 

 

 

If you want a bow without loops continue by pulling
out the tails.

I use this kind of bow all the time.

 

 

 

HOW TO
no tape.
1. leave the ends long when wrapping the gift
2. fold the ends into a point
3. fold them either way over the gift
The picture shows both options

 

THE PAPER
Whenever I paint wrapping paper, I try to do an extra matching solid sheet. In the example above, I used a sold silver band to go with the silver snowflakes.

The stamping doesn’t have to be perfect. NOTHING has to be perfect!! In fact, it’s more interesting if there are mistakes and color gradations.

Remember: It’s WRAPPING PAPER : : someone is going to be tearing it off a package and they usually throw it away. Sad but true.

 

For Christmas in 2014, I wrapped gifts in hand painted scraps of paper from previous years. I used ribbon from Ikea and gold paper ribbon with added washi tape accents.

 

 

 

 

another year, another gift of peppermint bark

 

 

I always wanted to wrap something in this packing material!

 

 

 

 

Instead of hiding the folded over edge, it’s fun to play with it.

My son Sam is an origami enthusiast.  I was getting ready to throw out a big bag of his old cast-offs when I realized their gift wrapping potential.

The coordinated sparkly ribbon is one of my favorites I bought at Ikea a LOOOOONG time ago. I use it very sparingly because I love it so much. Yes, I get very attached to ribbon.

I wrapped this gift with an origami ostrich as a joke.

 

ORIGAMI BOOKS

Paul Jackson’s book on folding techniques has a lot of simple but elegant folds that can be applied to gift wrapping.

Sam used the instructions in Eric Gjerde’s book to make the inclusions shown above. They aren’t easy!! This type of folding takes a lot of patience.

Rubber stamping is a good way to decorate paper for wrapping small gifts. Using a rubber stamp on large sheets of paper can get really tedious. Both of the above were wrapped in 8.5 X 11 paper. The ribbon is Ikea paper twine.

I got this set of plain geometric shape stamps in a children’s educational set.

You may have noticed I use this paper a lot.
I made up a bunch of sheets to sell at a local museum and they decided they didn’t want to use it (long story).  The stamp is made from a foam bath toy.

Above is a twenty year old gift wrapped for a kid’s birthday party. His name was Harry.

Same vintage as the above – this time teacher’s gifts. One of my favorite stamps is a circle offset inside an oval.

I wrapped these gifts years ago using a kids painting tool made by Crayola®  and of course they don’t make them anymore (see below) . There’s a hole in the center of the foam where the paint comes out providing an extra dot in the center each time it’s stamped. You can achieve a similar result by cutting a little chunk out of a round piece of foam so that is holds a little extra paint. You can also stamp dots and then go back over them with an extra dot in the center. It works best with sparkly paint.

 

My favorite fluffy wired ribbon. I bought this at Arne’s Party Warehouse in Houston.

Suzanne’s my buddy.
We met at an exercise class in Oslo, Norway in the 80s and have been friends ever since. So, I made a big deal of her 50th. Anything for an excuse to do some crazy wrapping.

I found this metal heart at a museum gift shop. Suzanne hosts a Valentine making party every year for her friends so, it was a perfect gift. The wired heart ribbon came from Ikea.

My signature move… taping ribbon inside the pleats. I have a lot of foam letter stamps.

HOW TO

1. mix orange and bronze metallic tempera paint
2. paint in stripes in two directions
3. cut paper and lay the gift at an angle
4. fold in sides
5. wrap paper around gift
6. fix underneath with double sided tape
7. cut out little heart on flap with heart punch

Thank you, Martha, for the multiple brush tool!!

HOW TO

1. Paint gold over red/green striped wash
2. Spin the above tool to make circles
3. Tie up with unraveled gold paper ribbon

Yarn letter G from Anthropologie.

This was the year I discovered this tool.
A ribbon shredder:

Pipe cleaners make embellishing very fast and easy and fun.

I’ve found this material in a number of different forms. I’ve  found spools of pipecleaner at Hobby Lobby and Michaels.

The blue and purple examples below were sold at Habitat in London as a Christmas tree garland. I’ve been re-using them for years to wrap around and around really big presents.

Pipecleaners from a package for children’s art projects.

Red sparkly wired ribbon from Michaels.

There’s just something about white paint on kraft paper. A local gallery once asked me to supply them with sheets of white on kraft painted wrapping paper. It’s the only time I’ve managed to sell my paper.

The above gift was inspired by my favorite gift wrapper, Essimar. I highly recommend a scroll through her flickr photos for fabulous pleating and washi tape ideas. You can see she’s a woman after my own heart.

Using tissue paper as ribbon

Getting lazy with the pre-made bows from Ikea.

This was a two minute wrap for my six year old neighbor.

Below is how I created the embellishment. (I also used these as Christmas cards one year)

For these honey wraps I painted black and yellow stripes on white paper.

I left large gaps at the edge of the paper and tried not to make the strokes too solid for a brush effect. It’s hard to see here but, the yellow is a soft metallic.

I found the bee for the gift tag via a Google image search and printed it on kraft paper.

I used this paper over several years:

For ribbon, I used this roll of plastic I found at Fit, our local Japanese two dollar store.

I found this naked baby calendar at a discount shop in Camden, North London. I bought it thinking it would come in handy someday for baby gift wrap and it did.

Yarn from Michael’s bargain bin.

I wrapped this baby gift from Baby Gap about 20 years ago. It was a t-shirt and three pairs of socks.

I wrapped the rolled t-shirt,  then wrapped the socks and attached them with ribbon using a figure 8 to attach the sock packages to  the t-shirt package.

This  baby gift was a Wrapagami book on swaddling.

The wrapping paper is watercolor plaid.

I  attached two Chinese love knots from the book:

A couple of years ago I noticed this oleander shadow on our garage.

so I rushed inside and grabbed a giant piece of paper… taped it up

snapped some photos

adjusted the hue and saturation

and printed it out

and VOILA wrapping paper…

I noticed this texture on the back of our couch one morning.

future wrapping paper!

 

Great for wrapping gift cards
or small items.

While researching Origata, a Japanese art of gift wrapping, I came across pictures of these little hexagonal packets sold online to hold a fragrant incense called “fumikou”.

I REALLY wanted to know how they folded these little hexagons.

One day I stumbled upon the instructions in Tomoko Fuse’s origami wrapping book:

A google image search of the term “origata” reveals all kinds of Japanese wondrous wrappings.

I get my Japanese and Korean books from Kinokuniya Book Store, www.kinokuniya.com.

For books with no English on the cover I send the bookstore a picture.

Sometimes you can find foreign books at your local library.

HOW TO FOLD THE ORIGATA HEXAGON

Pretty easy to fold. Works best with A4 euro-size paper

ORIGATA BOOKS

A lovely book about origata published by the Origata Institute in Tokyo, Japan.

First published in 1985, this is still one of the best books on Japanese gift wrapping in English. It may be out of print but, there are tons of used copies around.

band with Orizomegami paper (fold, clamp and dye Japanese paper technique)

I spent an afternoon dipping folded rice paper into food coloring years ago providing me with a lifetime supply. It’s really fun to make.

cut strip off my Gudrun Sjoden catalogue.

Anthropologie catalogues are also good  for page strips. Both catalogues are printed on lovely matte paper.

folded strip into a point and wrapped around
the gift

unraveled paper ribbon

tied with bow

and VOiLA!

 

No muss, no fuss This is a good way to wrap soft items.
No tape necessary just wrap the gift and go crazy with the twine.

HOW TO

I made the gift tag from hand painted Christmas flourish gift wrap paper.

I used this squeeze bottle moistener for painting the flourishes. They still sell these for sealing envelopes. I filled mine with watered down tempera and painted in a flourish pattern.