You have done all your last minute shopping and now the time has come for Craftmas! This weekend is all about wrapping presents and writing well wishes. Add that little extra special ‘personal’ touch to your gifts by getting creative and following a few simple tips and tricks.
Little added accents of twine or ribbon can really make it look like you have gone to great lengths wrapping a gift.
Most people have baskets of mismatching baubles sitting in a closet that didn’t make the tree. Threading a bauble onto your ribbon when you wrap is an easy way to jazz up a gift.
As well as it being Christmas, you may have noticed that the weather has heated up. When it is 39 degrees outside, passing someone a card with a picture of Santa snuggled by the fire or hanging a snowflake on your tree just feels strange. It makes sense, of course, that Christmas is related to winter when 85% of the world’s population live in the northern hemisphere. We chose to leave the white Christmas references to a minimum and draw upon the Australian experience for this holiday.
To imprint a bit of botany and realism on your gifts, you can either draw your own design or print and trace your card.
Once you have a basic illustration you can repeat and tessellate the image to create wrapping paper or a card. You can add twine to your design for a subtle injection of Christmas colours.
Wreath Card
1. Collect branches off a lovely little bush or tree.
2. Draw a circle of glue on the front of the card.
3. Break the branches at joints and gently layer them around the circle, adding more glue when they overlap.
4. Add a few extra flower heads in places to balance your composition and add colour.
5. Once the glue dries clear you will be left with a rustic looking wreath.
6. You can add a ribbon or whatever finishing touches you like.
The freedom of being the crafts-person permits you to personalize or generalize, you can simply write ‘happy holidays’ on the front of this one instead of Merry Christmas; thus, allowing you to cater to friends and family from different cultures as well as put a unique spin on things.
Handmade cards are also great for hushing grandma’s whining about how ‘kids get too much these days’ and ‘in my day we used to make gifts, we couldn’t afford all these…’ *slip her the hand made card*, grandma just got served.
Merry Craftmas everyone!
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