Christmas Gift Wrapping

As I mentioned in an earlier post this year I’ve decided to go with a more natural Christmas theme.  For years I’ve admired the simplicity of wrapping gifts with kraft paper or plain white paper and adding simple embellishments.  When my kids were younger I felt like they would have missed out on a rite of passage  had I not wrapped my gifts in snowmen, reindeer and all other sorts of Christmas themed paper.  Kids love all of the bright colors.  My daughter used to complain that our Christmas tree only had white lights.  I love color and enjoy a little bling every now and then, but the natural theme is a little more soothing to me.  If there’s a lot of pattern going on it’s overwhelming to my psyche.  We all have our personal preferences.  My mother is a big fan of pattern, and I don’t ever recall having our Christmas packages wrapped up in twine.

There are hundreds of ideas for gift wrapping on pinterest and it can be a little overwhelming.  I have many images on my pinterest board I wanted to share,  but I decided to just showing you my packages.  I had to add a little bit of whimsy to my packages and used some cute owl paper I found at Target and World Market.  The brown paper is packing paper.  You can find white paper at craft stores, discount stores and Hallmark.  I keep the front of Christmas cards I receive to add to plain packages or use as gift tags.  My favorite wrapping tool is the Pop-Up Scotch tape. You can put it around your hand and the tape is pre-measured in little pieces.   I also like to add a little embellishment to my bows.  This year I used some bells I’ve had for years that were waiting to get noticed.  I also decided to continue with my fountain grass theme and used it on my packages.  Who knew there were so many uses for dried fountain grass plumes?

I don’t know if I’ll ever buy another gift tag after learning how many free gift tag downloads are offered on the internet.   In keeping with my theme, I really liked the hand drawn tags shown above.  You can find them on the website hey look.  If you haven’t wrapped your Christmas packages yet, I hope this gives you some inspiration.  I’m usually frantically wrapping my gifts for my family at the last minute and therefore don’t put the time and effort into adding special touches.  This year I decided to put some music on and moved my supplies to another room where I could spread things out instead of wrapping them on the cramped floor of my spare room.  It was a much more pleasurable experience and something I should have done years ago.  I continue to live and learn.  Happy gift wrapping!