Gift Wrap Idea: Doilies

Want to add some prettiness to any parcel in an instant? Use paper doilies as your gift toppers!

I am a bit obsessed with doilies at the moment, especially the white paper ones: they're crisp and modern and simple but also fussy and old fashioned and oh so retro ... and I couldn't resist using them while doing some gift-wrapping.

I layered them with shapes cut from sugar paper (construction paper) and decorative papers like vintage sheet music and maps, to add some extra colour and detail.

The top parcel has a butterfly shape (cut using the template from last week's tutorials) made from two layers: an old map of France "framed" by some dark blue sugar paper.
The bottom parcel makes use of some of that awesome cake ribbon I used in my giftwrapping before Christmas (update: the ribbon is now available in my supplies shop!), a layer of purple sugar paper backing a small white doily with a simple red sugar paper heart on top (well, it is Valentines Day this week, after all!). I love the combination of red, white and purple. So pretty!

Regular readers will know that I'm a huge fan of gifts wrapped in brown paper - you can use almost any colours with it and it always looks amazing and really chic. Here are a couple more paper & doily combinations I was playing around with and will be keeping for future presents:As you can see, I also bought a pack of gold paper doilies. These are a little more expensive than the white ones but you get a lot of impact for a relatively small outlay.

Vintage sheet music looks particularly fab twinned with gold, and red and gold is always a winner ... so for the parcel on the right I topped a small gold doily with a large sheet music heart, and glued smaller hearts all over the red paper to make my own giftwrap (all the sheet music hearts came from BombusCraft)
The larger parcel on the left is simpler, and yet also much more bling! I cut out a heart shape from the centre of a small doily and stuck this on top of a larger doily with its middle cut out (so the red paper shows through the heart and the lacy holes of the smaller doily).

I think the variations on this are pretty much endless, and I'm so pleased with the results that doilies are definitely going to become a regular part of my giftwrapping stash! I might even start using small white doilies instead of plain white labels to write my "to so-and-so with much love from..." messages when I'm wrapping gifts in a hurry.

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 post on your site. Thanks!

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