I hope all of you had a great Christmas! Today, I am planning on sitting back and relaxing a little bit after all the hustle and bustle! Even though Christmas is now behind us, it is a good time to start a little bit of planning for next year. Typically I make a list of the things that I know I want to do again next year. That way when the season comes around next year, I already have a list in hand. This practice has helped me to institute a few family traditions. Today, I thought I would share one of the newest traditions in our house with all of you and it has to do with wrapping presents!
YES I know that we all do this, but I do things a little differently than most. You see both of our children are young and Santa is alive and well in our house. Santa always wraps his presents in traditional Christmas wrapping paper, so to help the kids distinguish a Santa present from a Mom & Dad present under the tree, I always wrap those presents in plain brown kraft paper. YES it sounds boring, but that blank slate allows my creative mind to embellish to it’s hearts content! Here is just one example for you!
Believe it or not, this present only takes a little bit of extra time and it really makes an impact! For this particular present, the shape of the box was odd (like most toys are) so I wanted to disguise it’s awkwardness as much as possible. I decided to cut out the Perfect Poinsettia Cut Pieces from My Time Made Easy. This is a great resource for files to embellish your packages. Before adhering the layers that form the flower, I slightly bent each petal in half to give them a little more life and I also inked up the edges. In between the layers, I added some 3L Scrapbooking Adhesives 3D Foam Squares (in regular height and thin to vary it up some) to add the dimension to it. I then turned to my Year of Celebration eCraft SD Design Card to cut out the holly leaves which also got bent a little and inked up.
Now, you may have noticed that little gem in the middle…well of course I used my Peachy Keen Stamps for that adorable little snowman face. This is what makes the project as far as I am concerned because this present was going to a kid, I felt I needed to make this present more appealing to a kid. The snowman is perfect for this! I stamped him in Archival Ink and colored him in and then added an epoxy sticker on top of it. I was really surprised to see that some of my color spread out when I put the epoxy sticker on. Not sure why this happened, but I decided that I liked the look of it. I then added him to a flattened bottlecap that I colored red with some Red Pepper alcohol ink from Ranger.
The tulle is from Hobby Lobby and I just tied it around the middle and tied it in a knot. The red wired garland was purchased at Target and I just threaded a piece of it into the knot. On the tag, I used the Winter Seasonal Distress Ink Pads from Tim Holtz (Festive Berries, Iced Spruce, and Evergreen Bough) to color the tag. To do this I just swiped some of each color directly onto my non-stick craft sheet and spritzed with water and then dragged the tag through the colors and dried them in between layers until I got the look I wanted. All I did then was use a White Paint Pen from Michaels to write in my To and From. I used some bakers twine to tie the tag to that wire garland. The whole flower with the leaves is then added to my present using some more 3D Foam Squares (love these, can you tell?) and I put it slightly off center so that the petals would cover the knot.
I probably only spent an additional 5-10 minutes on wrapping this present as compared to a present using traditional Christmas wrapping paper. I had my eCraft cut up all the petals and the leaves while I wrapped the box in the brown paper, so it really can be done quickly. This week on my blog, I will be sharing some more of my Christmas traditions with you, so I hope you will join me and maybe get an idea or two for next year and I would love to hear about the traditions in your home and how you eCraft your way through the holidays!
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