Design Crafters

OK, I admit it.  Every holiday all of my friends and family know exactly which gifts I am giving just by looking under the tree and finding the mangled, wrapped by a five-year-old looking, presents.  I am the worst present wrapper you will ever find.  It is not intentional - I have tried many different techniques, but the result is almost always the same.  Disaster…

This has been a long running joke for my family for years.  My presents are always pushed way under the tree, so no one sees how bad they are wrapped… To fight back this year, I am once again trying some helpful hints to improve my wrapping skills.  Hopefully these tips will work.

First, start with putting the gift into an appropriately sized box.  Too many times I have tried to wrap an unconventional shape, only to realize that wrapping a “cone” or a “sphere” is not the easiest method.  Don’t forget to take the price tag off the gift before wrapping it!

When placing the gift into the box, lightly stuff tissue paper around the gift to add a fun flare.

Next clear off a large flat surface to work from, and go gather your supplies.  You will need:

• Tape
• Scissors
• Wrapping paper
• Ribbon
• Decorative bows
• Tissue paper
• Gift tags

Once your area is prepared, you can begin to wrap.

Place your first box on the flat surface, measure how much wrapping paper you will need and cut the appropriate amount.  Next, place your gift in the center of the wrapping paper, and tape one side of the paper to the present.  Then wrap the rest of the paper around the gift.

To finish, tuck the ends in by making crisp creases, and then folding the bottom flap up and the top flap down — like an envelope. Add tape to seal in place, then do the same to the other end.

Once the present is wrapped, add  touches, like decorative bows, gift tags, ribbon, etc…

Finally, my favorite tip of all, take the gifts to a mall or outlet and let the professionals wrap the presents for you!

Every year I get stumped when trying to purchase gifts for my dad, brother and fiance.  To help gain a better understanding of the male psyche, I polled my twitter audience, asking for advice on the top gifts to get a man this holiday season.  The results were a little surprising, the varied quite a bit, and I even wanted a few of the gifts for myself.  Here are some of my favorite ideas:

• Portable DVD Player
• The new MacBook Pro Laptop (this was one of the favorites - over 60% recommended this gift)
•  Any Guitar Hero video game  (another favorite)
• 3G iphone
• 300 piece Poker set
• Laptop Bag
• Espresso Machine and a years supply of gourmet espresso (I would love this one for myself!)
• Racecar driving school
• Luxury bathrobe (slightly surprising how many men asked for this gift)

These were a few of my favorites.  What are some of your favorite gifts to receive?

In yesterdays photo Christmas cards blog we talked a little about how to handle the situation of broken, damaged or defective Christmas gifts, assuming they came from a store and included a receipt.

What if the gift came from a store but there was no receipt (a.k.a. invoice) inside the box? Then what? Well…that’s where modern technology can save the day. Hop onto the internet and look up the stores contact info. In order to do an exchange, most places need to have the original order number to link it to, but without an invoice you can’t tell them what it is.  Depending on the computer program or filing system, many companies can find that invoice/order with information such as the senders email address, phone number, last name, etc. So have handy as much of the senders information as possible. Give them something to work with.

Now in the case where the broken gift was shipped from the individual versus a store, the first thing to do is look at the package to see if it was insured. If it was, then great! The recipient would just follow the steps to get the insurance money to replace the item, which may or may not need to involve the sender.

If the gift wasn’t insured some people would simply thank the person for the gift and not mention it’s broken. However, they may prefer you say something before the return/exchange policy period ends. We’ll go into more details about this in tomorrows photo Christmas cards blog. See you then.

There are so many different combinations of gift baskets or “gift
basket” type of ideas that can be assembled for Christmas gifts, that you can
really customize almost anything and the recipient will feel very special that
you have gone to the trouble to put something together that is so perfect with
their taste and interest.

Do you need to buy a Christmas gift for someone who is into gardening? What you
can do for them is to buy a nice flower pot (look for a sale); half fill it
with crumples tissue paper or straw. Then arrange some packets of seeds, an
inexpensive hand trowel and fork, plant labels/ties, a notebook, green string
and a budget gardening book or magazine. Stick a Christmas card in
there and wrap it all up with cellophane and tie with a crinkly ribbon and you
are all set.