Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With... Washi Tape!

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.

It's Nice to Be Nice

If you've bought some felt from me recently, your parcel has probably had this pretty tape on it...

... lovely Russian dolls reading "It's What's Inside That Counts". Here's a better shot of it on my desk, earlier this summer along with some tape from Summersville:

I love this tape, and adore how cheerful it makes all the parcels I send out. So I was delighted to see that the designer, Hazel Nicholls, has some new tape in stock...

... a biscuit-y "It's Nice to Be Nice" (image from her Etsy shop).

I've got that design as a print (it's currently in a box somewhere while I don't have space to hang it, but it used to hang in the kitchen in my old flat) and I do love a) biscuits and b) being nice, so I couldn't resist buying the tape version to add to my parcel-packing supplies.

I just ordered some this morning, so it should be making an appearance on my parcels sometime soon :)

Gift Wrap Idea: Cassette Tape Gift Tags / Toppers

If you're like me, you've probably got some old cassette tapes sitting in a drawer somewhere...

I still play a lot of my old, beloved mixtapes (I actually bought a new walkman recently for this very purpose) but I've also got a whole load of old, totally random tapes that just aren't worth keeping - and which none of my local charity shops will take.

So, I thought I'd use some to make some gift tags / toppers!  This project would be a fun way to decorate gifts for the music lover in your life or if you've got loads of old tapes you could have a mixtape theme to your Christmas wrapping this year...

First up, you need to spray-paint your cassette tape. I chose silver for my tape (which looks great in real life, but which I have to admit is a total pain to photograph!), but bright colours would also look great.

Follow the instructions on your can of spray paint...

 

... and turn something like this...

... into something like this:

To attach the tape to your parcel, cut a length of ribbon long enough to tie around the parcel in the normal fashion. Thread the ribbon through the holes in the cassette tape, so the tape is in the middle of the length of ribbon.

Turn the tape over and knot the ribbon at the back.

Then carefully tie the ribbon around the parcel (you may need someone to help you do this, so one of you can hold the tape in place on top of the parcel while you turn it over) and finish by tying the ribbon in a knot underneath the tape.

If you've used curling ribbon, you can curl it and leave it in place. If you'd prefer to remove the ribbon ends, lift the tape up carefully and snip the ends away so they'll be hidden under the tape.

You can leave the tape blank, or add a paper label to turn the tape into a gift tag.

Measure the label space on your tape and cut out a strip of white paper to size. Position it on the tape to check you're happy with the size, write your message (remember to start with an A or B to mark the "side" of the tape!) and then stick the label in position with prittstick or double-sided tape.

You could also make mixtape gift tags...

Position the tape on a luggage tag and mark the position of the holes with a sharp pencil.

Use the pencil to poke two holes through the tag where you've marked. Then thread a short length of ribbon (the same colour as the tape) through the tape, and thread each end through one of the holes in the card tag.

Secure the ends of the ribbon with sticky tape...

... then stick a large address label or a piece of paper onto the tag to cover up the ribbon & tape. The tape makes the surface a bit lumpy, so if you want to write a message on the label or paper it's probably best to do so before you stick it in position.

As before, you can leave the tape plain...

 ... or add a label with a short message like "Happy Birthday!", "Happy Father's Day", or "Merry Christmas"

Please note: once you've spray painted the tape you (obviously) won't be able to play it any more! So only do this to tapes you'd otherwise throw away, and make sure your gift recipient knows the tape is decorative only.


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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Making Mini Thank-you Cards

I'm working towards getting prepared for the Christmas season at the moment (it seems to come around quicker, every year!), and I noticed that my stash of mini thank-you cards was running low... so I've been gradually working on a big batch of them while watching TV during the evenings.

Whenever I send out an order from my shop, I include a business card and a little handwritten thank-you note. I always appreciate a handwritten thank-you when I shop on sites like Etsy, it adds to the sense that you're buying from / supporting a person instead of a faceless corporation, and I hope my customers will feel the same :)

I've used all sorts of random bits of card from my stash to make the cards, first cutting the pieces to approximately business card size and then decorating them with an assortment of pretty stickers and tape - including designs by Summersville and Joanna Rutter which I also use for prettifying my parcels.

It's good to know I won't run out of thank-you cards during my busy season, and it's great to have at least one job ticked off my pre-Christmas to do list!

Photos from this week...

So, what have I been up to this week?

I got a new delivery of felt squares and spent some time sorting through it all, making up colour bundles and cutting and sorting squares to make some mini felt rainbows...

I also made up a few bargain bundles of "not quite perfect" squares that I've been collecting for a while, and added to my Etsy shop (at the time of writing this there are two left in stock).

I made a start on catching up with my accounts and other admin...

... normally I like to have all my accounts in order by the summer but this year has been so weird that I'm quite a bit behind with this stuff. I'm determined to get it done soon, though! (not least because I literally won't have the time when the autumn rolls round).

I've also been using bits of spare time here and there to print lots of certificates of posting and return address labels and other boring-but-useful things like that.

And I bought some useful-but-not-at-all-boring new tape for my larger/bulkier parcels:

It's got a lovely design by Hazel Nicholls on it - cute Russian dolls on it that spell out "it's what's inside that counts". I got the red tape from Hazel's Etsy shop, and the blue tape from Of Cabbages & Kings (they also sell the red version). I hope my customers will like it as much as I do!

Crafting-wise I'm still doing lots of knitting in the evenings to relax. My sky blanket is getting bigger and bigger, and I'm continuing to work through all the random balls of yarn in my stash to knit squares which will, eventually, one day, become blankets of some description. I've almost used up my whole stash now - I've used up all the large balls of yarn and now only have an assortment of "leftover" balls that (like the olive green one in the photo below) are just large enough to knit a couple of small moss stitch squares.

Amazingly (after taking an unusually long break from it) I've also done some sewing! I'm still feeling a bit creatively blocked but much more in the mood for just sitting down with some work in progress and slowly stitching my way through one task or another. The next job on my list is to finish sewing a batch of owl masks.

As for the "new things" I mentioned last week, I've been enjoying sharing lots of bits and bobs over on my Facebook page  (thanks to everyone who's "liked" my page recently!) and my attempt to give up caffeine continues to go well, though I'm not sure I'd have the willpower to keep it up if decaf teabags didn't exist!

The "switching off the word verification widget" experiment is going less well. If I moderated comments via my blog's dashboard it would be fine, as about 95% of the new spam is going straight into Blogger's spam folder but alas I prefer to moderate comments via my email inbox as it helps me keep on top of publishing and replying to them.

For some reason Blogger "helpfully" emails me all the spam comments to moderate even when its own anti-spam filters have already categorised the comment as spam, and as far as I can see there's no way to change this: I either get all the comments in my inbox or none. If I have missed an obvious setting, please do let me know folks, otherwise the word verification thingummy may have to come back soon.