Author: johN1Boak

In keeping with my fascination for cubist ideas, I took a small flat box of long proportion and drew a line from one corner to its opposite corner. I then placed the box on the table of my scroll saw and cut the box in half. By rotating one of the halves and joining it to the other with two pieces of tape, applied to the pointiest ends, I had a box shaped like a christmas tree.

I wrapped the box with paper from a large marketing flyer that had lots of solid black areas. This kind of coated paper makes easy folds and creases. With care I slowly folded with gentle finger work and trimmed with occasional scissorwork. I taped the folds and had a nicely wrapped black tree.

Next I took one of those green-plastic web sleeves that they put on one’s wine bottles to keep them from hurting each other, and trimmed it to wrap around the box. Its dimensional grid added symbolic pine branches, and, coincidentally, matched the angles of my sliced box.

Since the plastic was not large enough to cover the whole wrap, I was left with a triangle of space at the bottom. I added a patch of red metallic shopping-bag paper.

I thought the tree needed a star. I cut it from gold ribbon and mounted it on a small piece of twist-tie using hot glue.

And I finished the wrap with initials made with my ancient supply of rub-off type.

Today’s wrap embraces the 21st century’s mandate for greater transparency in all things. I was giving a small sculpture commemorating son Canyon’s 20th birthday, and I had the idea of using the same two-cylinder recycle-wrap design that I had used two weeks ago with shaving can lids. This time I would use PET soda bottles.

I picked two clear ones and cut them six inches above their baseline. I had imagined simply inserting the gift, taping it shut and adding some kind of opaque band around the wrap. But some typical material-plane challenges reared up immediately. It is important to have the two halves aligned with parallel sides. This is hard to do unless you have made the cuts perfectly. I had not, so I used a technique honed while cutting (the) mustard bottles in half to get the last dollops: after the big circum-navigatory incision, I make a small one ninety degrees to it. This allows one to pinch one half of the bottle slightly and push it into the other half. I did this with my soda bottles. They snugged together. They could be taped into one.

But first I put some foam packing peanuts into one half, adding in the gift (a small driftwood and aspen-fragment sculpture of a “20” with red-trimmed crossbar) and then adding more peanuts. It is a little tricky getting the right amount of the foam objects, but at a certain point you can achieve a balance between mobility of the foam & gift and semi-visibility of that gift. I used small pieces of tape to hold the two halves together while adjusting the gift/foam mix. Then I put one large piece all around to seal up the wrap.

At this point began a typical process of trial, error and learn to determine what constituted a good belt of wrapping around this odd object. I tried lots of papers. Patterns lost out to solids, and flat solids lost out to this very wrinkly piece of green mylar, the color a contrast to the red driftwood crossbar that was peeking out through the foam peanuts. I added a simple yellow cotton ribbon and then an oval of adhesive plastic with the recipient’s name written on with a fine marker.

The wrap was definitely a bit goofy looking. So I added a tiny bow on the top, a wrap equivalent to a clown’s over-sized shoes and under-sized hat. I feel I have achieved some significant innovations in this wrap. 1) I have moved the lowly packing-peanut from its usual role of mess-after-the-fact to a new prominence as the equivalent of stage-smoke, both hiding and revealing the lead actor, the gift. 2) I have also found a way to make transparency a viable tactic for the wrap artist; you can see the gift before unwrapping but without abandoning the mystery of what that gift might be.

If you want to see what the sculpture looked like, click here.

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I thought of this one while lying in bed early one morning. I have been saving the plastic lids from shaving cream and deodorant for a while. Some are simple solid colors. Others have a metallic look. They are simple, flexible and tough. I have been using them as feet on boxy packages.

The idea here is speed and elegance. Pop the small gift (in this case a gift card) into the two lids. Join them together with tape. Wrap a piece of ribbon around the join and tape it shut too. Stick on a bow. Write the label on an office dot. You are done.

Of course, you will have given a proper amount of thought to the concept of contrast while knocking out this quick wrap. In this instance the tape contrasts in color and form with the smooth plastic caps; one has color and no pattern; the other has pattern and no color. The ribbon also avoids color and has a fair amount of texture, compared to the lids.

PS: if you run the initial tape join all the way around the two lids,  this wrap is waterproof and will even float, should you go overboard in rough seas.

Today I made a birthday gift wrap for Linda using the poster-child material of the recycling craft world, the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) soft-drink bottle.

I lopped off the top and, using scissors, cut vertical slices down to within 2-3 inches of the bottom of the bottle.

I massaged and rolled the resultant leaves tightly between thumb and finger, pulling the leaf slowly downward, while just avoiding forcing an actual fold into the newly-bent plastic.

I waited until this leaf bending was complete to trim the tips of the leaves into a more appealing shape than that left by the initial slicing.

Now it was time to place the gift. I loosely wrapped the box in tissue, and, since the gift’s box was a handsome piece of box-making, with a sorely-needed contrasting graphic complexity, I chose to leave part of the box exposed. The emerging box’s linear pattern constitutes the stamen of this wrap-art flower.

Continuing my fascination with the transient and expendable plastics of food packaging, I have been saving the flimsy molded materials found inside cookies, and candies. These translucent brown pieces from madelaine packages caught my eye because they look like tall cooking molds.

I took two of them and placed them together, creating four small chambers for four small gifts. Crumpled tissue hides the gifts and is itself partially visible as a texture. A dab of hot glue holds them together. I then made tissue bands and wrapped them around the three spaces dividing the four towers.

I picked some ribbon with a compatible caramel color scheme, and vertical lines to complement the vertical towers of trays.

I cut out some ovals of sparkly red shopping-bag paper and glued them onto the tray-tower tops. They suggest the jellied centers of certain cookies and tarts.

One day I peeled the labels off a plastic bottle that had held skin cream. I was impressed with the elegant form of this white object. I cut it in half and made a wrap out of it.

I continued to save these specific bottles. This gift-basket wrap is my first attempt at joining a number of them.

I traced a half-circle on the tops of the bottle, cutting the top off with my scroll saw. I had to sand the edges to  remove a burr.

I used a plastic 35mm film can to join the five bottles together. I applied a stripe of hot glue to the side of the film can and joined it to the first bottle. I arranged the five bottles into a pentagonal array, marked the film can, added stripes of glue and, one-at-a-time, joined the five bottles into the basket.

In reference to the floral form, I added five stamen made out of drinking straws with craft foam on the top. Then I stuffed the five pockets and the central well with recycled wrapping tissue.

This wrap accommodates small gifts such as candy, gift cards, pens and pencils, or jewelry.