How Good Is Your Giftwrapping?

My father and grandmother were both artists and I have a tad of the gene, but don't really have time to use it anymore, so wrapping gifts is my outlet. I am very picky about my paper, coordinating it and I do nice ribbons (sometimes just tulle) and add little goodies, depending on the paper. This year the papers are various plaids and the goodies are cinnamon sticks, copper ornaments, and fresh holly.
I use 3 rolls for wrapping almost exclusively now:

Brown mailing paper
A roll of white butcher's paper
The hugest roll of heavy Mylar I ever seen in life. Bought it in the '80's and it's first use was to wrap the walls of my then brownstone foyer entrance in it and then decorate the space with white painted branches and baskets of dried angel's breath and white lights. Was a fantastic entry way and detracted from the lack of furniture in the L/R, LOL.

All can be customised with stamps, free form acrylic or water paints and are easy to wrap with the exception of the Mylar which takes way more work to make square corners.
 
Eh, I can do a decent job with some wrapping paper and ribbon. My packages look nice, but it's not something I enjoy.

Back before I was born, apparently my mother used to do AMAZING packages. No joke, people would save the boxes and hang them on the wall as decorations. After she had kids, mom cut way back and only did a few packages a year. These were for me and my sister. Mom says these were the only two she ever did for us. Mine was a reindeer and my sister's was a tin soldier.

(As an aside, I was not very grateful or gracious about the work she put into it. My dad used to sing a song about Rudolph's brother, Barfy the White Tailed Reindeer. I hated that song. I'm not sure whether it was intended to be or not, but my dad said "Hey, you got Barfy!" and I didn't want anything to do with it after that. There were fishing poles inside both, by the way.)
 

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Wrapping used to be a point of pride for me. Fancy ribbon and bows, the whole shebang. Then I got the 2 for 1 deal when we decided to have another kid and my wrapping duties tripled. I’m a very neat wrapper and am really good at knowing how much paper I need etc. but my packages are much less fancy these days. You can always tell what gifts were wrapped last because they’re merely presentable. By then I’m just tired.
 
I have friends whose husbands are the gift wrappers. It's more about individual strengths than gender. I can't understand why my husband isn't a star gift wrapper with his skillsets, but it eludes him. I don't think it ever occurred to my father that he should begin to even attempt it, but that was a difference in the times.
My DH is an excellent wrapper. Very precise, straight lines. No embellishments though, not even tags.
 


I'm decent I would say. My husband is better. He's more meticulous than I. I take my time too--he's just better at it lol

Gift bags are good as well :)

We don't do bows or ribbons. In fact we don't do 'To,From' actual tags---just use parts of the wrapping paper. That is until this year. We bought 'To,From' labels from LTD Commodities. 2,000 of them to be exact for the grand price of $11.16+a portion of the shipping charges. Our grandkids will be still using the labels :rotfl2:. We figured it was a real good price and we'll finally upgrade that part of the gift.

Mother-in-law though does like to do bows and ribbons to an extent. Not Martha Stewart level though lol.
 
Wrapping used to be a point of pride for me. Fancy ribbon and bows, the whole shebang. Then I got the 2 for 1 deal when we decided to have another kid and my wrapping duties tripled. I’m a very neat wrapper and am really good at knowing how much paper I need etc. but my packages are much less fancy these days. You can always tell what gifts were wrapped last because they’re merely presentable. By then I’m just tired.
::yes:: Yeah, me too, to the point that wrapped gifts were actually part of my Christmas decor. But that was during the era I was a housewife. There was plenty of time and energy to devote to all things domestic and I excelled at it and greatly enjoyed the results. Now I spend 50 hours a week at work and I've had to reallocate my mental and physical resources, KWIM?
 


::yes:: Yeah, me too, to the point that wrapped gifts were actually part of my Christmas decor. But that was during the era I was a housewife. There was plenty of time and energy to devote to all things domestic and I excelled at it and greatly enjoyed the results. Now I spend 50 hours a week at work and I've had to reallocate my mental and physical resources, KWIM?
Slightly related/slightly OT:

Last year mother-in-law was wrapping gifts upstairs on Christmas eve. She'd been crazy busy for weeks before. Anywho she wrapped a gift for me and I opened it on Christmas morning--it was solar LED Christmas lights. Turned out she had ordered some--didn't like them (can't remember the exact reason)--but they got put in the gifts area on the bed mixed in with all the other gifts by mistake. She totally felt embarassed at that and explained she was just too darn busy to have paid close enough attention and she was trying to wrap all the gifts and was getting exhausted and foggy brained but honestly me being the more practical of the bunch I was ecstatic..hello free Christmas lights for our house lol. She did tell me I didn't have to keep them if I didn't really actually want them but I assured her I did. They're wrapped around our rosebud tree currently :)
 
I absolutely loathe wrapping gifts. I HATE it. One here and there isn’t a big deal, but when I have a bazillion gifts to wrap at Christmas, I just want to lay down and cry. I am miserable the whole stinkin’ time I am doing it.
 
I'm not bad at it. I enjoy wrapping but don't mess with ribbon anymore at all. Sometimes I use bows at Christmas, but I have two teenage boys, and they really just don't care about ribbons.

I got a laugh out of my gift from them last Christmas. They were 16 and 13. They picked it out themselves, gave DH the money and asked him to order it from Amazon. When it came, they didn't know how to wrap it, so the older one got out the clear packing tape and wrapped that all the way around the box, put a tag on it and put it under the tree. It was so funny--there was no way to snoop, even if I wanted to! The younger one told me I had to leave it alone until Christmas. (It was a new case for my ipad; purple, which is my favorite color. They had noticed that mine was falling apart and that I needed a new one.)
 
I absolutely loathe wrapping gifts. I HATE it. One here and there isn’t a big deal, but when I have a bazillion gifts to wrap at Christmas, I just want to lay down and cry. I am miserable the whole stinkin’ time I am doing it.
Have you thought about doing something like this for some of the gifts (if you like the idea that is some people don't like the idea):
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ETA: I should add it's basically a drawstring wrapping paper bag and you buy it like that so all you have to do is put in your gift and pull the ribbon together to close the drawstring then if you want tie the ribbon into a bow (or a knot works as well).
 
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Back in third grade (1978ish), our class made pizelles as "holiday" gifts for our families (we had a Jewish girl in class, so the teacher was loathe to say "Christmas," the Establishment Clause having made its way to central Illinois by that time), and we then had to wrap them. The girls' wrapping jobs were utilitarian if not professional: straight cuts, clean folds, etc. The boys' wrapping jobs looked like they were done by, well, third-grade boys.

To this day I can't wrap a gift to save my life, and I"m pushing 50. I can't cut straight, I can't fold cleanly, I sure as hell can't estimate properly how much paper I need to cover this side of the box or that. Anything I wrap immediately harkens back to my elementary school pizelle-wrapping job.

Mrs. Homie's wraps are like those of my 70's girl classmates: functional and well-done, if not particularly noteworthy. However, I've known women who take giftwrapping to Martha Stewart levels. I'm talking ribbons and bows curled and tied and zhuzhed this way and that; if the State Fair gave out ribbons for giftwrapping, these women would win them all.

How's your giftwrapping?
It's pretty good, but in a creative sense, not a Martha Stewart sense. I don't have great spatial awareness, so my giftwrapping often has irregularities, but I make good use of color and ribbon. I usually make the bows myself out of wide ribbon rather than use the little stick-on pre-made bows. I also often buy vintage wrapping paper, so the presents don't look like they came from Generic Holiday Presents & Co.

Btw, my state (Texas) actually passed a law to allow teachers to be able to say things like "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Hanakkuh", and not have to worry about getting in trouble or sued. I'm glad we have that law, as I'm not into laughable levels of self-censorship...
 
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My wrapping is pretty good. I’m the one who wraps all of the presents. DH gives up and asks my mom to wrap my gifts. Our first Christmas I ended up wrapping my own present from him under the impression that the gift was for his sister.
 
It's pretty good, but in a creative sense, not a Martha Stewart sense. I don't have great spatial awareness, so my giftwrapping often has irregularities, but I make good use of color and ribbon. I usually make the bows myself out of wide ribbon rather than use the little stick-on pre-made bows. I also often buy vintage wrapping paper, so the presents don't look like they came from Generic Holiday Presents & Co.

Btw, my state (Texas) actually passed a law to allow teachers to be able to say things like "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Hanakkuh", and not have to worry about getting in trouble or sued. I'm glad we have that law, as I'm not into laughable levels of self-censorship...
That's nice:).
Having grown up in NYC giving a religion specific greeting is the norm for people you know are adherents and "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons' Greetings" works fine for mixed groups or when you plain just don't know. This is one of the ways we live chock a block a top each other and still have a semblance of etiquette.
Easy too.
 
My mother with 5 kids relied on me, the eldest to hurry and wrap for everyone as quickly as I could so my skills were basic at best!

I'm pretty decent at it now but when some of DH's relatives were still alive I couldn't compete with their wrapping skills! Each present was literally a work of art and they also practiced the 'save box' method of carefully wrapping the lid and the base box each perfectly. I had no idea how they did all this but it pushed me to try harder.

Nowadays I can scale back a little since most of our gifts are mailed and need to travel well rather than look great!

But I'm lucky if DH and DS even put my gifts in a gift bag! Gift tags are forgotten and sometimes DH just tapes the gift right in the mailer or box it came in!
 
My wrapping is good usually. When I'm in a great mood while wrapping I pull out the whole presentation wrap thing.

I've got 2 tubs full of ribbons, picks for decorations, bags ect to choose from for Christmas wrapping. I quit buying wrapping stuff except for the occasional paper until I use up those 2 dang tubs. At 54 years old, I'm starting to think that my kids may inherit those tubs still half full.

I also have another tub full that just for birthdays. Yeah - I had wrapping fever for many, many years. LOL
 
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::yes:: Yeah, me too, to the point that wrapped gifts were actually part of my Christmas decor. But that was during the era I was a housewife. There was plenty of time and energy to devote to all things domestic and I excelled at it and greatly enjoyed the results. Now I spend 50 hours a week at work and I've had to reallocate my mental and physical resources, KWIM?

So true! I remember one or two years handmaking tags that matched my paper.

But I'm still a pretty decent wrapper - fast, neat, and I actually enjoy it. :santa:

And yes, I helped my Dad wrap for my mom when I was a kid! (I learned some of my best wrapping skills from a guy in college, though, so I don't think it has to be a girl thing.)
 
My gift wrapping is so-so. It usually looks ok, and I’m the only one who knows where the boo-boos are. My mom was a fantastic gift wrapper.
 

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