Happy Saturday everyone! Every Christmas season I get SO excited to not only shop for presents, but to wrap them! I seriously love gift wrapping so much! My mom taught me well! My favorite thing is to turn on a Christmas movie, make some hot cocoa and snacks, and gift wrap in my pajamas! This week it was two late nights of watching The Holiday, one of my all-time favorites. This week I shared mine and my mom’s gift wrapping on Instagram Stories, and I got SO many questions and requests for a gift wrapping post, including tips & tricks!
To start off, each year I always have a theme picked out, sometimes I already know what I want my theme to be for the next year as soon as Christmas is over, lol! There’s just so many cute ideas. Themes make it easy to picture what you want everything to look like, and make staying focused and shopping for gift wrap easier too! Not to mention, they look so much prettier under the tree when all of the presents create a beautiful, festive theme! Here are my tips for choosing a theme:
1. Search Pinterest
2. Find an anchor point and go from there. Whether it’s a certain paper or gift bags you found and loved, or ornaments to tie on to the packages. Each year Target puts out their bins of ornaments that are already separated by theme for you, and they’re always so cute! Last year that’s how I chose my winter camping theme (see post here) and that’s also how I chose my Nutcracker/Sugar Plum theme this year! I tie the ornaments on with the ribbon to dress up the presents (you can also keep them for your tree once the presents are unwrapped!) Once I have my ornaments picked out, I choose the matching paper, ribbon, gift tags etc. from there to create my vision!
Here are a few other fun tips I have for making your presents look extra pretty!
- Layer your ribbon! Find a couple different types of ribbons that match your paper and theme, and layer them differently on each present, or tie it different ways! You can see above how on the silver presents I had the burgundy ribbon tied in a 4-square, and then I added the red/white or gold/white twine! The twine is one of my favorite ribbons to use each year, and you can tie it however you want! On the present with the lollipop, you can see I just wrapped the twine around a couple times and criss-crossed it. It’s cute when it doesn’t look perfect! I love that twine almost looks like peppermints, and a little more old-fashioned Christmas. I use it every year no matter my theme to accent other ribbon. Also, you can find twine pretty much anywhere: in the craft section at any store, sometimes in the dollar section at Target, in the baking section, or in the gift wrapping (The Sugar Paper collection at Target always has some in their Christmas wrap!)
- Use multiple different wrapping papers. I usually have 3 or 4 different ones that go along with my theme. I just think that it looks more fun that way at the end when they’re all together! You could also do one paper per person too!
- As I said above, I love embellishing my presents. I love to use ornaments attached to the bows, candy, or sprigs of greenery. If you want to add a little greenery to your presents, I recommend using the tree picks or sprigs of greenery that you can find at places like Michael’s or Hobby Lobby! They always have so many cute tree picks that are perfect for attaching to presents with the ribbon! My mom is using the cutest little plaid Scotty dogs for her theme that are tree picks from Michael’s. PS- if you’re using candy, be very careful if you have pets! I would never attach chocolate or anything that would be bad for my dogs! My peppermint lollipops are still covered in plastic wrap, and we keep a close eye on my two dogs 😉
- If you want your ribbon to look a certain way or stay in place, use scotch tape, double sided tape, or hot glue. None of the ribbon I chose had wire in it, so on some of them I used a dab of hot glue to keep it in the shape I wanted it to be, to give a little dimension!
- Find fun gift tags! There are a million to choose from, and they all look so cute on the presents!
- Check out the DOLLAR SECTION at Target. It’s SO good this year it’s crazy! That’s where I got a lot of my wrapping pieces, and so did my mom and sisters! We’re talking gift bags (big and little!), ribbon & twine, tissue paper, wrapping paper, gift tags, and all that good stuff for $1-$3!! They also did so many different themes and patterns!
- I mentioned above that I love wrapping on the floor while watching a movie. I just spread everything out on my bedroom floor and have at it! Easy clean up too with a vacuum! You could also do your kitchen table/countertop.
- Buy all your gift wrap early! It will all start to get picked over and the good stuff will be gone, or the bins will be a mess to dig through, haha! Even if you plan on wrapping closer to Christmas, just go out and stock up on your wrapping essentials!
Those are some of my best tips for gift wrapping, and hopefully you find some of those helpful! Just have fun with it!! Stay tuned for a little gift wrapping tutorial on my Instagram Stories (rachelpuccetti), I’ll show you how I actually wrap them/tips!
Details:
Wrapping Paper:
Silver Sparkle-Target
Snowflake- Hobby Lobby
White/Gold Dots- Sugar Paper at Target
Ribbon:
Burgundy and Blush Pink Velvet- Michael’s
White Ribbon/Bows- Target
Red and Gold Twine- Target
“Joy” Gift Tags– Target
Sticker Gift Tags– Dollar Section at Target
Nutcracker Ornaments– Target
Peppermint Lollipops– Christmas Candy Section at Target
Small Gift Bags– Dollar Section at Target
Large Car Gift Bag– Target
Burgundy/Gold Fleck Tissue Paper– Target
If you have any other questions, please let me know! I’d love for you to share your gift wrapping ideas/theme with me too! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Xo, Rachel
