And It's a Wrap!

Before I am going out tonight to send off a former colleague of mine who is leaving Ireland and heading off to different shores, there is a quick post to show you something. I don't want to celebrate her leaving without giving her a little pressie to remind her of Dublin. A photograph was quickly picked from my archives and mounted. Then it came to wrapping it nicely. Would you like to be sent off with this:

Instead of using some red ribbon from my newly organised ribbon rail I felt like making something. Also, I haven't really got much "grown-up" wrapping paper (most of the gift-wrapping I do these days goes towards kids' birthday presents, and I have a roll of colourful kids' paper for that).  

Is it really bad form and cheap to re-use an old photocopy as wrapping paper? Well, I'll claim that I did it with recycling in mind. I turned a bit of blah scrap paper into a stylish gift wrap by simply printing an origami paper design onto the white back of the photocopied page.

Then I made a gift bow from strips of paper. I won't go through all the stages, because there is already a great tutorial out there. How about Orange posted this last year - and I bookmarked it for eventual use. Check the tutorial here. And while you are there, make sure you look through her other posts. She comes up with the greatest paper design finds EVER and is one of my regular craft reads! 
Basically, the gift bow is made from nine strips of paper which you arrange individually in an "8" shape. You then stick them on top of each other and finish up with a paper circle in the middle.  I slightly adapted my version. I used a bit of a red calendar page which was left-over after my filofax inserts. The light blue back of the page is also visible in the gift bow - I like the contrast of the colours. Here's the finished bow:

Whoops, a bit lopsided.


This is what I will be handing over tonight:

Well, even if it was a free gift and free gift-wrap - I took the time to make it. I hope that balances the cheapskate-ness out...


Ok, off to the pub now. 

Be good!


   

Upcycled Packaging

Have you ever noticed how beautiful commercial packaging can be? We all love antique enamel signs and biscuit tins and we know how carefully they were designed decades ago. Most of the packaging nowadays seems to be utalitarian, cheap and cheerless. So imagine my delight, when I saw this beauty of an icing sugar packet in the shop. Well, I needed to buy some icing sugar, anyway, but I would have bought it regardless, just for the cute and nice design.

I have always had a soft spot for nicely designed containers and tins. Here is a selection of - empty but beautiful - tins that I just cannot throw out. They are attracting dust in my kitchen...

 

 

Anyway, back to the icing sugar box - I am not really a pinky-pink girly-girl, but the box was just so sweet, if you pardon the pun. It didn't take me long to figure out what to do with the lovely humming bird-design. It's kind of obvious, even:

 

I trimmed the front of the box and then cut out the "spoon". The opening created exactly the right size and shape for a sweet little portrait. Next I printed out a recent picture of my daughter and cut it the right size to fit behind the opening.

I also had to cover up the writing at the bottom of the design, so I simply printed out my daughters name and the year her photo was taken and glued it over the writing. It looked a bit bare like that, so I embellished the picture with a bit of ribbon that I had at hand. I actually used some nifty glue dots to stick it over the picture.

I had an old white frame the right size at hand. And presto! A sweet little portrait to hang up in my daughter's room. Ooops, I have just remembered that she doesn't like pink. Well, maybe she'll graciously overlook that...

Best,

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