wrap with anything ❖ john boak
Marketing literature can deliver a lot when you are making a quick wrap. I had saved a large mailer with these tasty saguaro on it. The brochure was very large, so no words were revealed. After a bit of positioning and observation, I wrapped up the box rapidly. I added orange ribbon to complete the secondary color triad that was begun with the photo’s own purples and greens. And last of all I used a skinny piece of dark-green christmas ribbon. A delicious wrap in no time at all!
Berry packers buy some of the loveliest pieces of throw-away plastic in our world. When these two identical blue boxes passed through our recycling bin, I immediately diverted them into the wrap stash. This is the second one of these blue berry box wraps I have done. The first used foam boxes. This is shiny plastic. But, like its predecessor, it too had indentations that would happily hold transverse ribbons.
I sealed this pair with strips of thin-cut masking tape. That way I could avoid gluing the boxes together and maybe used them again. I then glued a pale orange ribbon onto the masking-tape seal.
There is a rectangular depression in the bottom (now top) of the berry box. It has debossed type. I made this type disappear by cutting and attaching a rectangle of red shopping-bag paper with rounded corners. Then I attached four pieces of contrasting and skinny ribbons: smooth white satin and rough burlap stripe. I did some simple weaving as they crossed on top. Choosing which ribbon to use was the hardest part of the wrap.
The last detail was to attach a small plastic Christmas tree that I had found lying in a path in Washington Park a few weeks ago. Besides being charming and different this wrap is relatively water-proof and even sea-worthy in minor floods.
Wrapping at the Florence Crittenton High School event this week, I was about to wrap the last gift in my assigned bag. It was a knitted cap. I wanted to put it into a box, but I could see none. They were already cleaning up. I was feeling like I should pick up the pace. The volunteers had outwrapped me in numbers of gifts. I was just finishing my first and only bag of presents.
Undaunted I grabbed a short half of a tube that had once had wrapping paper rolled around it. I took the gift cap out of its plastic bag, and carefully coaxed it into the short tube. I had two full-length tubes and I thought of pick-up-sticks and so I hot-glued the three pieces together. A beginning. It would need more tubes to stand up.
Scanning the adjacent wrapping room, I saw tubes under a table. I scuttled this treasure back to my room and commenced gluing. It takes a bit of patience, letting the hot glue cool down, before you have a structurally sound tube tangle. I waited, holding and tapping my foot, tempering my haste.
I said out loud, “What will I add for trim on the ends.” Jennifer (not Jenifer, if you have read the Purse Wrap post) said, “Bows! There’s a whole box of them.” I crimped the ends of the tubes. I glued the bows. The volunteers cleaning up kept at their work. But at last I was done. A hasty wrap, but distinctive nonetheless. The gift is behind the green bow.
The foam trays of meat packaging have a subtle beauty that emerges once they have been gussied up enough to obliterate their low-caste role in our lives. In this case I have taken the gussying process so far that you can barely see that beauty as the trim takes over.
The first step in foam-tray wrap is easy. Place the gift in a try, just as the butcher places the sausages. Apply little strips of glue along the top of the long edges (the short edges do not actually touch when two trays are placed together) and then apply the second tray face down. Hold to permit the glue to set. Alternately, you can tape the edges, if you plan to cover them with some trim.
For this wrap I had thought I would just run the blue-silver tinsel boa around the edge, my standard technique for transforming the two trays. When the paired edges of the trays disappear, the sow’s ear begins its transformation to silk purse. That change is completed by obliterating the debossed type (manufacterer and recycling info) on the underside of the tray.
Contemplating the wrap thus far, I decided against adding some new contrasting material and began a new round of the same tinsel boa on the shoulder of the tray, feeding the furry forest I saw along the edge. Then I added the silver bow over the debossed type. It becomes the central shrub in this new landscpe.
Some of the beautiful shiny black foam shows through. It is usually a central element of my foam-tray wraps. But here it becomes a subservient but sympathetic dark background to the complex light/dark texture of the mylar tinsel. It’s quite a transformation, from trash to tiara. This gift has a very eager, lively feel. It asks to pick it up and play with it.