Christmas Present Wrapping Soon? Here's some we made earlier

I've always been a bit of a wrapping and packaging geek. When we were shooting the wrapping latest ranges, rather than just doing our usual plain background photos, we thought it'd be nice to get creative and see just how the Christmas Wrapping Paper  works when you're showing off a bit!

First things first - you're going to need craft supplies - this is probably my favourite part of the whole process, wandering around haberdashery isles, crafting supply stores and the Christmas sections of places like The Range and Hobbycraft. The great thing about dressing your gifts in this way, is that if they are gifts around your fire, or under the tree, the crafty biys can be used time and time again. This year, much of what we're suing at home is already planned for candle and table dressing - a lovely festive pastime in which the whole family can get involved.

Using strings and yarns can also mean no tape. As you'll know if you've read out blogs, or bought any of our products, sticky tape is a sure fire way to see even recyclable wrapping paper hit the landfill pile - if you must use it - bin it before you put the paper in the recycling. But as you'll see from the photos below, some yarn, ribbon or string makes a really striking alternative and makes your gift wrapping sing.

Here's what I did with a pack of our Festive Knit Christmas Wrapping Paper. It's got Nordic wooly jumper written all over it, so what better way to dress it than with wool and fir cones! 

The unbleached wool works beautifully with the paper and makes a nice string loop for the gift tags too. The little wooden snowflake was part of a string decoration that I bought from the range and later disassembled to access the snowflakes, Christmas trees and other festive lovelies that were FAR nicer than anything I found in crafting packs.

Here's that snowflake close up on our red festive ornament tile design. So pretty. If you've got the bits to hand, that extra minute or few really makes the gift look loved, before they even open it.

I used the same techniques on a few gifts as you can see in the top photograph. We'll have a live potted tree at home this year, and from here on in; I can't wait to pile the presents for family and friends underneath it and around our stove... No doubt those photos will appear on Instagram at some point!

If you want to copy what's been done here, the cones, wooden ornaments and wool all came from The Range. I also bought a log slice so we can use the bits again for our own Christmas Day table dressing. With 5 children between our two families, Christmas Day is a bit of a big deal!

For smaller boxes (think phones and tablets, books, computer games, jewellery etc). One pack of paper should wrap around 12-16 gifts. 1 sheet is 50cm x 70cm so plenty to wrap a couple of games boxes, or a tablet and a bracelet box.

Happy wrapping and we'd love to see what you do with the paper.