Easy gift wrapping idea

The holidays are upon us, and I'll spare you the I-don't-know-how-it-got-to-be-December rant because...well, I'll just spare you.

If you're like me you don't give a gift without wrapping it to within an inch of its life, or at least making it look really pretty. Or handsome. But I'm also all about making things as simple as possible, especially when you have a bajillion presents to wrap and it's 1 a.m. and all you want is to be snoring into the pillow.

This idea came to me when I was upstairs and had to wrap a gift and was too lazy to go the 16 steps downstairs, open the closet door and sift through a pile of junk looking for some decent gift wrap.

Luckily the gift was from Anthropologie, which has super nice gift boxes, so I was pretty much halfway there. Their boxes are very sturdy and slightly off-white, making them great canvases with which to start. But for this project pretty much any box will do.

I didn't do a step-by-step for this because basically a monkey could do it: Measure each side of the box (you can include the bottom but I skipped it) and cut a piece of paper 1/2 inch smaller than two sides. In other words, if one side of the box measures 5 inches by 7 inches, you'd cut a piece of paper 4 1/2 inches by 6 1/2 inches.

Glue stick the entire back of the paper and adhere to the corresponding side, centering it. Repeat until all sides are done. Voila! Wasn't that easy? There's something about that 1/4-inch border that makes the box look really nice. Don't worry if it's slightly off--a lot of boxes are crooked--no one's going to notice.

I made this with map paper, but you could use anything: scrapbook paper, newspaper, magazine pages, vintage ledger paper, sheet music...you name it. You might even use the paper to provide a hint as to what's inside. Maps or atlas pages can be tailored to the giftee as well.

I added a simple twill ribbon (again, it was upstairs and I didn't feel like schlepping downstairs to look for ribbon) which is pretty much all you need.

The box looks nice unadorned, too. 

Need more wrapping ideas? Check out The Gifted Blog, there are some terrific examples and tutorials!

Happy Holidays!

Comments

[Norman]

I love this idea, and will totally be doing this for a lot of gifts!

[Jeannine]

Yay! And I'm sure you'll put your own great spin on it!

[Charissa - The Gifted Blog]

It looks lovely. I can totally relate to being too lazy to go find the 'real' gift wrap...sometimes the improvised wraps turn out the best, though. Thanks for the shout-out, too! I hope you are well!

[Jeannine]

Hi, Charissa! Thanks--you're always my inspiration for things like this. Hope you're having a wonderful holiday!