Happy New Year!

I hope you are having a refreshing Christmas and New Year's season! We're currently hanging out with family and getting in some much-needed down time. Several factors - some expected, some a surprise - made this month one in which we expended a lot of energy. It feels great to rest.

I'm taking a blog vacation and will fill you in on the news in the new year. Joy and peace to you in 2011!

Snowflake Gift Wrapping by Mika

If you haven't checked, there have been some fun additions to The Gifted Blog Flickr pool recently! This charming snowflake gift wrapping idea was added by Mika of mikamade.

Inspired by cool gift wrapping around the blogosphere (and this 5-point snowflake tutorial), she put this together using repurposed kraft paper and origami paper. The red and silver are the perfect foil (no pun intended) to the plain brown paper.

If you have a moment, snap a photo and share your Christmas gift wrapping in the Gifted Blog Flickr pool! If I have your permission to blog about your gift wrapping idea, please select the Attribution Creative Commons license (under "Owner settings"). I'd love to share your work here!

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Free Printable Gift Box by Thinking About Pretty

As regular readers know, I like to feature free printables for gift wrapping. It makes me happy to give you access to fun gift tags, gift wrap and cards for free - and to feature talented people who've generously shared their work.

Today I am VERY excited to share a free printable gift box that was made just for Gifted Blog readers! This mini pillow box was generously designed for you by Mandi C. of Thinking About Pretty. Mandi customized and revised until she hit on this adorable, candy-striped design. She even made 3 coordinating gift tags!

These boxes are a great gift wrapping idea for a gift card, candies, or a mystery gift for your office's white elephant gift exchange.

Find your own free printable gift box here! For best results, use heavy-weight paper. If you use this for your Christmas gift wrapping, please snap a picture. Mandi and I would love to see! Finally, you can find more free printable goodies by Mandi on Thinking About Pretty.

Happy gift wrapping!

Please read: For personal, non-commercial use only. Please do not distribute the PDF from your site - link back to this post so your friends and readers can download here. As always, it's best practice to give credit where it's due - tags designed by the lovely Mandi of Thinking About Pretty. Thanks!

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Woodland Gift Box | Tutorial

Looking for an alternative to the traditional red and green for your holiday gift wrapping? Try your hand at this Woodland Gift Box and see how a few simple materials can be transformed into a shabby-chic keepsake box. Here's how!

Materials:
- Kraft box, available at craft or packaging stores
- White acrylic paint
- Paper towel
- Seed pods (whole cloves, cardamom pods, dried lentils or beans would work, too)
- Strong glue (I like Aleene's Original Tacky Glue)

With a bit of paper towel, apply a layer of white acrylic paint to the box.

Don't worry about getting it exactly even. Use light strokes for a rustic, antiqued look.

After the paint has dried, take out your seed pods (or cloves, or lentils, or dried beans) and play with them to find an arrangement that you like.

I ended up liking the bottom right one the best. Take a digital picture to help you remember. Carefully transfer the seed pods from the box top to your work table, keeping the arrangement as intact as possible.

Starting with the seed pods on the bottom (if your arrangement is slightly layered), apply a generous amount of glue and place on box.

It make take some experimentation to apply the glue where the pods make contact with the box top!

Let it dry. You did it! Beautiful and easy, right?

I can imagine this box holding a gift for a woman of any age. Since the 'gift toppers' are a part of the box, I love that it's something she can keep and use long after the excitement of opening it.

One thing, though - I'm bummed that I don't know what the name of these pods are! Does anyone know? I noticed they were even used in The Art of Gift Wrapping, but they weren't identified. Googling "flower shaped seed pod" hasn't worked either.

N has observed me foraging for interesting gift wrapping materials on our walks around campus and at church, and has become quite the acorn-spotter as a result. Haven't tried this box with them, yet, though. Readers, please take a picture if you make this box. I would love to see how yours turns out!

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6 Ideas for Gift Wrapping Food

Are you making any edible gifts this year? Today I'm honored to be a guest at The Pink Apron, a great cooking blog written by longtime reader Kelly. I'm sharing 6 ideas for gift wrapping food, which you can find right here!

If you're still on the hunt for Christmas gift ideas, you can see my gift brainstorming from last year here, here, and here. Hope you have a great rest of your weekend!

{Image via Martha Stewart}

Birdie Gift Tags | Free Printable Friday

Christmas is almost here - I can't believe it! Today's free printable is a lovely pair of birds just waiting to adorn your gifts and maybe someone's tree after the present's been opened.

You can find your own little chickadee and cardinal here. Many thanks to Creature Comforts for the tip, and to Lisa Rupp of That's Happy for sharing her work!

How is your Christmas gift wrapping going? We've had a pretty eventful week in our household and it's been hard to fit ours in. I took a trip with N to a local store called Box City for some mailing tubes today. We've always poked fun at its bright yellow exterior and name, but we take it back. There are tons of packaging options inside! Hopefully we can get our gifts ready for the mail this weekend. Wish us luck.

In other news: a tutorial is coming! Look for the instructions for my Woodland Gift Box on Monday!

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Recycled Sari Ribbon from Darn Good Yarn

After reading about Wanda Wen's use of luxurious materials in The Art of Gift Wrapping, I felt compelled to try something similar. Wanda owns the paper boutique Soolip, and a number of her gift wrapping ideas utilize rare handmade papers and hand-dyed silk ribbons.

Since wrapping gifts with old juice bottles and t-shirts is more my comfort zone, I wanted to do something different. I genuinely want to grow my gift wrapping abilities, and one way to do that is to copy the masters! I went on the hunt for silk ribbon.

Enter Darn Good Yarn. A few Google searches in, I found that this company offers a recycled sari ribbon, made with silk and rayon remnants from the sari-making process. Gorgeous and green - right down my alley! It's sold in skeins of about 130 feet, making it a more affordable option than purchasing shorter lengths of silk ribbon from Etsy.

I was just going to try a red skein for my Christmas gift wrapping, but Nicole, the owner of Darn Good Yarn, convinced me to try the Tibet Jewels colorway (above and below). Because I knew already I'd be blogging about it, she generously gave it to me on the house. Thanks, Nicole!

It is truly gorgeous. I love the juxtaposition of colors and pattens. The reds are lovely, too!

While I don't have a formal gift wrapping theme at this point, I am really excited to incorporate the red sari ribbon into my Christmas gift wrapping ideas.

Thinking of browsing for some silk ribbon of your own? Here is my nutshell review.
Pros: 
- Adds a unique gift wrapping look to any gift you'd use standard ribbon on.
- A bohemian, global vibe - unlike any other ribbon I've seen.
- Recycled.
- Supports Nepalese women's co-ops with fair wages.
Cons:
- Loose threads. (Perhaps this is just a con for Type As like myself!)
- Colors and patterns are randomly juxtaposed, so in gift wrapping, you never know what will end up next to each other. (Again, coming from my control-freak personality. I'd bet there are some for whom the surprise element is perfect!)

Visit Darn Good Yarn to see their full selection of recycled sari ribbon. If you'd like to pick up a skein or 2 for yourself, use the coupon code GIFTED5 for 5% off your order!

What do you all think? Do you like it?

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Gift Wrapping Ideas for Knitters, Crocheters & Collectors

I came across Rubyellen's gift wrapping ideas on Cakies, and they just about did me in. How adorable is this? Though I've written about it before (#2), this is the first time I've actually seen a mini scarf on a gift. I love how it turned out.

I was also impressed with the texture Ruby achieved with a simple length of yarn. Knitting and crochet fans, take note. Put the odds and ends in your stash to good use as you gift wrap this season!

Reading further, I discovered this pretty package:

Rubyellen writes, "I can be a hoarder when it comes to cutesy things like tickets, old papers, or random pages that come from other packagings, so when I wasn't in the mood for a plain old bow, this is what I came up with." Delightful. I love how multidimensional this gift wrapping became as she built up the layers of ephemera.

I tend to collect paper too, but the trick for me is knowing when something is worth keeping. After amassing a fat collection of security envelopes, one of the last times I used them was making prize ribbons. Maybe this will inspire me to break them out for wrapping Christmas presents!

Rubyellen, thank you for the inspiring gift wrapping ideas. I am a new fan and reader! Check out more of Rubyellen's creative life on the Cakies blog.

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Furoshiki for G | Gift Wrap Story

This Wrap Story is part of a mini-series, documenting every present I’ve wrapped since the launch of The Gifted Blog. Click here for the whole series!

Between N's birthday and mine, G celebrated his. As adults, it's easy to wonder if we are doing okay at living life. No one is handing out gold stars or report cards anymore, and sometimes we just want to know that we are doing a pretty darn good job being ourselves.

And so, for his birthday, I contacted friends and family to ask them for the gift of an encouraging word for G. Not to stroke his ego, but to affirm the good things that God is doing in and through him. I have a little book that I'm filling, bit by bit, in lieu of giving G cards:

It's made from an old shorthand dictionary by Ex Libris Anonymous (side note: shorthand looks crazy!). The affirming words poured in, and they all went into the book. This one was specially done in color!

N added his contribution towards the end in yellow highlighter. He paused gesturing across the page to look and remark: "I love it!" That pretty much made my day.

I always find myself assembling and wrapping G's gifts at the last minute (thankfully, the wrapping was pre-done last year!). I took out this furoshiki from Kyoto's Karakusaya furoshiki store and improvised a wrap on the diagonal. (One thing I've learned with furoshiki is that bigger can be better! The two we selected for ourselves are smallish and it limits what I can do with them.)

Something didn't seem right. I tucked the ends of the knot under themselves for a more polished and (I thought) manly look:

I loved hearing from the people in G's life and seeing him through their eyes. It made me appreciate him and remember some of his qualities (peaceful, dependable, committed) that I (shamefully) sometimes take for granted.

Happy birthday, honey! You are a gift to many.

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Printable Gift Wrap and Garland | Free Printable Friday

Shivani of My Owl Barn wrote me this morning to let me know about a set of 5 free printable gift wraps available on her site. Perfect timing for a Free Printable Friday! Click here to see them all - 3 Indian-inspired designs (below) and 2 owl patterns.

You can also download materials to make your own Christmas garland.

Shivani, thanks for sharing your lovely work! The bright pink printable gift wrap is my favorite. Readers, if you incorporate these printable gift wraps into your gift wrapping practice this month, snap a picture to submit to The Gifted Blog Flickr pool. I'd love to see!

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Pretty Packaging by Artist Cathy McMurray

I lucked out this summer and won a swap-a-thon on Cathy McMurray's blog, Habit of Art. In exchange for one of my gift card holders, I received a beautiful print from her Etsy shop. Cathy's art is as peaceful as the nature scenes that inspire her, and I was thrilled to adorn our home with her work!

When I received the print, I was immediately struck by the hand-drawn details she added to the package. Below is a close-up of the label.

I enjoyed seeing motifs from our new art (titled Eureka) in the packaging. Below, a "Do not bend" warning is kept company by some trees on a cloudy day.

Here's a detail of the print. I love seeing Cathy's favorite motifs throughout the print and its packaging!

So, Cathy, thanks for the print and the beautiful presentation that accompanied it! I feel challenged to see humble envelopes and printer labels with a new eye in my gift wrapping practice. If you haven't already, please stop by Cathy's blog and Etsy shop. They are a treat!

Readers, this reminded me of an artist's version of this quick gift wrapping upgrade. Adding your own drawings to a gift is a simple and effective way to personalize it. Will any of you doodle your own gift labels come this Christmas?

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