The Holiday Season is not one for the faint of heart.

Planning dinners, get-togethers, parties, gifts, and decorating can leave even the most merry of us feeling tired by the time we reach the last few weeks before Christmas.

And we know one holiday task tends to take the brunt of most people’s festive fatigue: gift wrapping.

Not only does one have to find a thoughtful gift, but then wrap it in a semi-presentable way too!

We know the challenge and time required for wrapping gifts can sometimes leave us in the lurch (hello late night Christmas Eve wrapping).

But when it comes to gift presentation we’re believers in making the packaging as thoughtful as the gift. Rather than simply show you photos of beautifully wrapped gifts, this year we’ve created a step by step guide on how to perfectly wrap your presents. And we recommend a glass of eggnog to help make the task less tedious.

For our wrapping this year, we’ve chosen to use fabric with unconventional patterns and florals to give our gifts that final, special touch – but a simple paper will do just as well.

With fabric, we used small pear shaped safety pins rather than tape but we followed the same steps as you would with paper wrapping.

How to Perfectly Wrap your Gifts

STEP 1

Begin by gathering your wrapping materials – this includes your wrapping paper or fabric, gift boxes, scissors, clear tape or pins, ribbon, gift tags, and any bows or other decorative material you’d like to include.

STEP 2

Place your item(s) inside a gift box if necessary, and place that box face down on a sheet of wrapping paper or in our case fabric. Here it is essential to ensure that you have enough wrapping paper to generously cover the box, you can do this by folding the right side and the left side of the wrapping paper over the box and having it slightly overlap so that it covers the entire gift. Take time to make sure that both sides of your box also have sufficient wrapping paper. Once you’ve allocated the right amount, take your scissors and create a clean and straight cut. We suggest using a ruler for an exact cut.

STEP 3

Once the wrapping paper or fabric has been cut, continue by folding the side closest to you two inches over the box, then fasten with a piece of tape or pins. Complete this step by gently creasing the wrapping paper or fabric along the line of your box with your fingers.

STEP 4

To follow, bring the other end of the wrapping up towards where you taped two inches of the wrapping paper onto the box, ensuring that it meets the edge of the box where you had made the crease. Secure with another piece of tape or pins.

STEP 5

In order to close the sides of your gift, start by folding the top of the overlapping paper inward to the box and secure with a piece of tape. The left and right sides of the paper now need to be creased to the shape of the box. Continue by folding your bottom piece of wrapping paper upwards to cover the previous flap. Make sure to cut any excess paper on the bottom flap before folding up to the top flap and fastening with tape.

STEP 6

Repeat on the other side of the gift.

STEP 7

Add ribbon, bows, string, and any other decorations to your preference.

In our case, we’ve chosen to finish off our gifts with a beautiful assortment of colourful ribbon along with some more traditional, vintage styles of ribbon in velvet and satin.

You’ll note that we chose more unconventional colours like apricot so as to avoid an overload of green and red – both in the ribbon we chose and the fabrics we used.

To make the whole process more of a creative exercise than a chore, we wanted to go for a less traditional or expected look in our gift wrapping and instead embrace a wide range of colours and patterns for something a little different.

We hope this guide gives you a few helpful hints to embrace a unique way to wrap your gifts this year – and makes the task a little less daunting.

Wishing you a happy and peaceful Christmas season.