There's no escaping this year's woodland trend, with oak leaves, acorns, squirrels, deer, tree stumps and of course good old faux bois (fake wood grain) popping up all over the place. You may even be buying some Christmas gifts with a forest-y feel to them, so why not extend this trend to your parcel wrapping?
The key ingredient to get this look is a roll of dark wood-effect sticky back plastic / self-adhesive vinyl / Fablon / whatever else it might be called in your part of the world! I was lucky enough to find a roll for the princely sum of 49p in a local charity shop (amazingly this find happened the very day I thought of this idea, like some sort of charity shop magic) but you should be able to get a roll quite cheaply from your local DIY emporium:
Start with a nice plain parcel, wrapped in brown paper:
Measure round your parcel, cut a piece of the vinyl to fit the way you want (I opted for a large decorative band around the width leaving the folded ends free for easier unwrapping) and apply it very carefully:
You might want to try applying a test piece to get your technique right before trying it out on your real parcels. Also remember to cut enough to have a bit of overlap and to start on the back of your parcel so the join is hidden and so it won't matter if you don't stick it exactly straight...
If you are a true minimalist this may be enough for you, but if not you'll need a bit of yarn or ribbon or rustic-looking twine...
... I only had a small bit of this and had to cheat and stick the ends to the underneath of the parcel with sticky tape (tsk tsk) but ideally you want to tie your knot on top of your parcel leaving a few inches of string left for securing your leaves.
The leaves are simple brown paper oak leaves, like the ones
from yesterday's garland how-to (leaf templates included) but with a hole punched in each of them. These are a great way of re-using old brown envelopes, and using a mix of envelopes will give a great mix of browns and different paper textures. For each parcel you'll need three or four leaves in an assortment of sizes plus one large leaf to use as the tag.
Glue the large leaf to some thin card, cut it out and (if you want to) draw on some detail with a black biro or marker pen. Then punch a hole near one end - you can attach some string as I've done here
- or attach the tag directly to your parcel with the string already tied round it. Tie the tag and the other leaves to your parcel in a bunch. If you wanted you could draw the vein detail onto all your oak leaves but I quite like how the tag stands out here:
A simple oak leaf tag like this would make a sweet addition to a more traditional Christmas parcel, or you could make simple woodgrain tags with leftover pieces of your vinyl. Stick your leftover section to a piece of card (I used a cardboard box from some shortbread we scoffed this week) ...
... then draw your shapes on the card in pencil, cut them out, punch a hole and attach some string and voila! Terribly fashionable faux bois tags:
PS, can't get your hands on any wood-effect paper? For a lo-fi, DIY version you could always just take a marker pen to some brown paper and make your own woodgrain giftwrap - just remember to do this before you wrap your parcel so the marker doesn't seep through to your gift!
Please feel free to borrow one or two photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial on your site. Thanks!
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... but instead I am feeling all Christmas-y and have been wrapping a few presents, doing a bit of Christmas crafting and curling up under a pile of blankets drinking tea and eating lots and lots and lots of yummy Lebkuchen: 
To celebrate such a big number the person who buys the 1,400th item will be getting a big bundle of freebies with their order :)
I fell in love with this vintage crockery I spotted in a charity shop a couple of weeks ago, mentioned it to my boyfriend and lo it appeared in our kitchen:
(that's my parcel packing station, aka our kitchen table, in the background). The boyfriend (who is very long suffering) reports that he can't stand the pattern and thinks I am quite mad for liking such things, but I am just in love with that orange: so springlike and cheerful and fresh! I can picture the teaparties already...
Gorgeous additions to my kitchen linen, and the packaging is rather nice too! They're printed with environmentally friendly inks, and are available in lots of awesome colourways (I had such a hard time choosing). They're also on sale at a discount price until December 2nd to celebrate the first year of Flower Press.
Gorgeously wrapped as before...
... that lot should keep me busy for a while!
(The adorable house fabric is Avenue by Summersville). I'm making rather a lot of these this year so I hope not everyone I know reads my blog!
... a cushion-cover I made for a GCSE Textiles project when I was about 15 :)
So exciting seeing my teacups photo on the contents page...
... and I get a whole double-page spread all to myself & am introduced as "one of the crafting world's hottest felt designers". Heehee! Blushing now.
You can view or download the whole issue here - be sure to check out the fab crafty tutorials throughout, especially the cute recycled paper ornaments and bows (I'm definitely going to have to give those a try when I wrap some more presents).
... available on Etsy and now on Folksy, too. All that pink is very much cheering me up during these grey and wintery days and I've also been greatly entertained thinking of things you'd have to win to get awarded one of these...
I had Christmas in mind when I first made these and I think the brown oak leaves would look lovely strung along a mantlepiece and combined with more traditional Christmas colours like baubles and ribbon in red and gold... but they're also obviously suitable for autumn decor.
Now draw round your templates with a soft pencil onto brown paper (you could reuse old envelopes for this) - I just used my oak leaf templates for this -
or bright sugar paper (construction paper) in autumnal shades:
Once you've cut out lots of leaves (it takes time but it's well worth it!), sew them together using an ordinary sewing needle and a length of brown thread. Sew one short stitch at the end of your first leaf, then a long stitch along the back, and another short stitch... then repeat until you run out of leaves! 
You can use a bit of sticky tape to hold your thread ends in place, and then a small bit of bluetack will support your garland as the leaves are so lightweight. You could also try stringing small lengths of leaves together and hanging them vertically: they spin beautifully!
... and working on some fun crafting ideas inspired by autumn leaves (coming soon!)
