This Christmas my gift wrapping was all about decorative tape!
It's so easy to add simple stripes of washi or glitter tape to plain parcels, and the effect is fantastic. I wrapped all my gifts with brown paper then decorated them with lines of pretty tape: narrow but super sparkly glitter tape, and a trio of green and pink tapes with festive woodland designs on them.
I'd really recommend this as an easy way to wrap special gifts, whatever the occasion. Just choose tape in appropriate colours and designs and get sticking. Everyone was a lot more impressed with the results than my level of effort really deserved!
The glitter tape looked really fabulous against the plain brown parcel paper.
Top tip: if you're adding stripes to the centre of a parcel, start with the line that's in the very centre then work outwards.
Try to keep your lines evenly space and if you're adding two overlapping sets of stripes make sure to take extra care that you're sticking the colours in the same order each time. I wrapped these gifts quite late one night and didn't pay enough attention to the colours and was super annoyed when I realised my mistake.
Of course, this is one of those things where really no-one will notice you've made a mistake unless you point it out to them but if you're a crafty perfectionist like me it will get on your nerves!
The gifts I wrapped with the pretty woodland tape were much more subtle than all that colourful glitter (everything is more subtle than glitter, isn't it?) but the finished effect was still very lovely.
As you can see I used six stripes per parcel, varying the position of the stripes to give each package a slightly different look.
I didn't get a chance to take close-up pics of these so you can see just how pretty that tape looked because my camera battery died about 30 seconds after taking the photos in this post... but here's a card I made using tape from the same range. Isn't it charming?
Click here for lots of ideas for making simple cards with washi tape (this post was originally designed as a Christmas crafting post, but if you use non-Christmassy tape I think these card designs would work all year round), or visit my tutorial archive for lots more card-making and gift wrapping ideas.
Laura, your packages are beautiful! I remember as a very young child that there was sticky patterned tape that was available and used in place of cello tape (maybe cello tape wasn't even around then) and my Gran liked to use it (and sometimes used coloured string) for packages - usually she used the white paper that no longer seems to be available. It's a nice memory and suggests that what's old is new again. Happy 2020!
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year, Kate! I remember patterned tape being available years ago, too, and of course now we're all going back to plain paper parcels in a bid to be eco-friendly, aren't we? Did your gran save old Christmas cards to make gift tags for the following year? My grandmother always did that and it's a habit I'm tempted to start myself.
ReplyDeleteС новым годом! любви, счастья и удачи!
ReplyDeleteThank you! :)
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