How To Be A Gangsta Wrapper

It’s that time of year, y’all. Everybody sing…”It’s beginning to look a lot like an Amazon fulfillment center, everywhere you go!”

It’s also known as “If it fits, I sits” season by the feline member of the household. 

Online shopping is wonderful. Getting all of your Christmas shopping done early is even better. The part that is daunting for me, however, is having to wrap it all in beautiful paper and make it presentable enough to be torn open at the appropriate time.

I’ve never been a good wrapper. I’ve never been a good rapper either, but that’s beside the point. I can get the paper on there fairly straight and slap a bow on it but I’ve never been the creative type who could turn ribbon into a fluffy, shimmery, fancy pouf of love for my gifts. I grew up in a household with a mother who worked full time and would rather chew off her left arm than do anything domestic, so we used those little self-stick bows that come one hundred to a package and fifty of them are squished and flat.

Then, because my father grew up during the depression and my mother grew up during and post WWII, we had to save the bows and reuse them the next year. We had some really sorry looking bows over the years.

One time, as a teenager, I made the mistake of pointing out my friend’s mom’s craftiness.

Me: J’s mom makes all of her own bows out of ribbon for EVERY gift!

Mom: J’s mom has time to do that because J’s mom doesn’t have to work. J’s mom has a husband who is rich and who also has a side family that we’re not supposed to know about and he gives J’s mom unlimited use of his credit card to keep her quiet about it. Now hand me that bag of bows and be glad you know who all your siblings are.

Ouch.

As a teenager and during my college and early adult years, I used to make a big production out of wrapping gifts. I would put some festive music on the stereo (you all remember what a stereo is, right?), pour myself a drink, and proceed to wrap to my heart’s content. I could take my time and go slowly and be careful about my corners and edges.

Then life got hectic. Work with greater responsibilities. Marriage. Kids. Grandkids. More work. Then a blog where I suddenly had a self-imposed goal of two original pieces of writing per week. 

I suppose there are years when my family is lucky they don’t get stuff wrapped in Walfart bags tied with colorful twist ties. Let’s just say the invention of the gift bag was a boon to my holiday seasons!

Every few years, though, I’m able to carve out a little niche of time in which I can sit down, relax, and actually wrap gifts.  I like to make a big production out of it. I spread out on the living room floor because the dining room table, even with the leaves in it, is not big enough. I need plenty of room because wrangling the roll of wrapping paper while simultaneously keeping it from tearing while carefully folding it around an oddly shaped gift has become somewhat of a contact sport for me. I’m going to wrestle that bitch into submission.

Once I have my wrapping paper and gifts out and ready, it usually takes me another hour to remember where I put the five rolls of clear tape I bought when they were on sale. Putting them in the same box with the rolls of wrapping paper would be too logical. Putting on shoes and real pants to go buy some more is completely out of the question. So, after hunting through the desk, the junk drawer, the mystery bag of stuff in my bedroom closet, and garage…I find them underneath all the wrapping paper in the wrapping paper box.

Of course.

Now it’s time to get serious. And by serious, I mean, fixing an adult beverage because I’m quickly losing steam for this wrap crap and I’m quickly realizing I inherited my mother’s penchant for chewing off her left arm rather than do anything remotely domestic.

Drink in hand, gifts all around, wrapping paper unfurled…all that’s missing is Christmas music. I turn on Pandora and create a Christmas music station.

Then, pretty much this happens.

 

On a side note, I’ve always hated my recorded voice, ever since I was a little kid and got a tape recorder for Christmas. I used to record myself reading my favorite books and then play them back for myself. Horrified, I would go back and record music or something else (anything else) over my voice recordings because I couldn’t stand how I sounded! 

When I reviewed this video before including it in this post, I suddenly found myself laughing. Apparently, at some point, and unbeknownst to me, I acquired my Aunt Z’s speaking voice. 

I was not especially close to my Aunt Z. She was one of my Dad’s older sisters and there was a fairly large age gap between them. My Mom actually had her as a math teacher in high school, and she was the one who eventually made the love connection between my parents, so Mom always had a soft spot for her. She had a distinct voice, though, with a bit of a nasally twang to it. 

And now, apparently, it comes out of my mouth. When did that happen?

The video also gave me the feels because it includes my beloved Cleo, my black lab. She went to the Rainbow Bridge a little over a year ago and I still miss her terribly!

Back to wrapping, though. After about three different versions of “White Christmas” and half my beverage, I decide that I need something with a little more edge to it so I switch Pandora to my Seether station and get a little more into the spirit of things. Or maybe it’s the rum and coke. Who knows?

I got really cheap cute a few years ago and decided to combine my love of handmade stuff and re-purposing old stuff, and fashioned my own Christmas bows out of scraps of wrapping paper that were too small to wrap actual gifts in. Remember my parents who saved and reused bows? That’s why I couldn’t just throw out those scraps of wrapping paper. 

The scraps were collecting in the bottom of my wrapping paper box, going unused, so I started playing around with them and actually came up with some cute bows. Other people liked my trick, so I thought I’d share it for those who are somewhere between the 100-count package of ready-made bows and handmade artsy-fartsy bows that rich people pay somebody else to make.

My apologies for the poor quality of some of the photos!

Creating Wrapping Paper Scrap Bows

Materials:

Scraps of wrapping paper in different colors, styles and prints.

Clear tape

Scissors

White card stock or index cards (optional)

Assembling Your Bow

Start with a small scrap of wrapping paper. If you like a uniform, monochromatic look, use a scrap of the same paper you are wrapping your gift in. Otherwise, pick a scrap that coordinates or contrasts with the paper on your gift. I’m using a contrasting paper in this tutorial.

Next, you’re going to cut your paper into nine strips. Each strip needs to be 4-6 inches long and about an inch wide. Don’t worry about cutting a perfectly straight line or making it exact.  (unless you’re OCD, in which case get your ruler or your paper cutter out!)

Cut a much wider strip of paper and fold it over so that it’s squarish. I don’t know if that’s a real word, but it is now for the purpose of this post. Folding it over and doubling the paper makes it more firm as the base of your bow, but you can also just cut a square from a piece of card stock or an index card. I’ve done that before too!

You will now use the “square” as the base of your bow and the strips as the loops of the bow. Take your strips and loop them over so that they touch end to end. Tape the ends together to form an oblong loop. Leave one strip for later.

 

You will now tape your loops to your square base. There’s no wrong or right way to do this, but I’m just OCD enough to prefer following a certain pattern. I start with taping a loop to the four “sides” of the square like this.

Next, I tape four more oblong loops to each corner of the square, filling in the gaps between the loops I did before. 

Take that last strip you didn’t loop before and form a round loop with it, securing the ends with tape.

Tape it to the center of your bow. Now “fluff” the loops out to make them stick out more and tape the bow to your gift!

Here are a few more:

It may seem like a lot of work, but once I got the hang of it, I could get a bow made in about five minutes. Of course, this is strictly for the person who has some extra time (and desire) for crafting. A lot of us are too busy this time of year.  There’s always Mom’s option…

Until next time…Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring.