Meghan's 10th Birthday Gift

The white and gold wrap: Target dollar isle (from when it was still a dollar!)
The white and gold decorative tissue: TJ Maxx check out isle (weird find, out of nowhere)
The mint solid tissue: Target
The blue and mint card: Target dollar isle

Bow: Who knows? I found it in my gift wrap box.

I'm so excited that our niece Meghan is 10 and finally old enough to appreciate beautiful and interesting things! It might be a stretch, but it makes giving her a gift more about her experience as the birthday girl rather than about my own hobby of trying to outdo myself. Okay, maybe it's still a little about me.  The difference between kids her age and younger kids is that younger kids are ALWAYS excited to open gifts, even if the gifts are a bust. Meghan, on the other hand, spends birthdays in a relatively calm, quiet anticipation. I called her last month to say happy birthday and to tell her she would not be getting her gift from me for another month (at our family Fourth of July party) since I wanted to give it to her in person. She was happy to hear from me and very excited at the prospect of a gift that could not be shipped. (I had to break the news that no, it was not, in fact, a live animal. I am planning to include flowers with this gift. Super boring compared to a chinchilla, but she will love them anyway.) Point being: when we pick the right gift for Meghan and really nail it, she gets genuinely excited and I know she's being the realest. 

That's why I got REALLY excited when I asked my sister, Beth, what color or style dress Meghan might want for her birthday and she had a definitive answer for me. "She's really into the mint color." I was standing in a Charming Charlie, so I sent this photo back to my sister immediately. Meghan knows what is "in."

"The Mint Color."

If you don't know this store, it is an accessories store organized by color, as evidenced. I knew that if nothing else, I could at least get lots of cute accessories in Meghan's favorite color, but I quickly came across the cutest little dress and sent this terrible photo to my sister for her approval.

My shoes were terribly uncomfortable all day and
I haven't worn them since this photo was taken.

After grabbing a couple accessories to make it an outfit, I was on my way back home, ready to start digging through my wrapping paper stash to make this extra special for Meghan's big day!

Clearance at Charming Charlie. Don't tell Meghan.

I wanted to stick with the mint theme, because when you are ten years old, there is no overdoing a color or theme. More is always better. 

Mint on mint? Why not? You're ten. No one can judge you.
(I had to buy that pink NY&Co polish to meet my minimum spend
to activate a discount coupon code. Don't tell Meghan.)

All together, not bad!

A single piece of tape holds it together.

I like to wrap gifts like this in small pieces before placing them together, and here I started with the dress itself since it's the star. I used my gold and white tissue paper because it's got texture and will make an impression right when Meghan opens the box. 

So regal. 

I need to take a moment and point out the texture of the decorative tissue here. It is almost like a fabric! I didn't notice it when I bought it, but after I opened it I was so in love! 

The necklace, while an inexpensive addition to the dress, adds a little something special to the gift. I never want to just toss a gift like this into the box; I want to treat it like it's own special gift within a gift. Here, a simple bit of tissue paper folded around the card that the necklace was sold on, and a gold circle design cut out of the wrapping paper to "seal" the "envelope."

The last piece of Meghan's gift is her nail polish, which I bundled in some mint and white tissue paper and tied with blue and white twine. All together it is a nice little set that gets boxed up together.

Now what?

The problem with Target dollar isle wrap (other than it's NOT A DOLLAR ANYMORE) is that it's terribly thin and shows whatever you're wrapping through it. When this happens, I first wrap the package in white tissue paper to cover whatever markings might show through the shitty dollar isle wrap. And in this case, I actually slid Meghan's birthday card between the tissue paper layer and the wrapping paper layer.

Another gold circle turned into a "seal."

I considered several types of ribbon but ended up going with the simple but oversized metallic bow shoved in my gift wrap stash. I do like how the gift turned out!

I'm super excited to see Meghan this weekend and watch her open her gift!

Here we go...

My gift wrap obsession started with boredom. When I would find myself with extra time, I would end up wandering the isles of Target browsing clearance items. (You know the end caps that many have described as "dangerous.") I ended up with quite a collection of gift wrap and tags. I had a hell of a fun time mixing and matching styles and patterns for every age and occasion. Gift wrapping became a little hobby instead of a chore that was done at the last minute before leaving for an event. Eventually, after enough Christmases, birthdays, and weddings, my stock of clearance gift wrap and accessories decreased. I briefly transitioned to visiting specialty paper shops for interesting patterns and textures, but lately I am more interested in using items I have laying around the house and repurposing pieces of invitations and gift bags to give them new life and create beautiful packages that people are excited to receive.

Gift wrap sets the tone for what is inside, and it can be just as interesting as the gift you are giving! As long as it shows you took time to consider the person who is receiving the gift, you're doing it right. Simple paper and a short, thoughtful card can be perfectly beautiful if it suits the person opening it.

Each gift I wrap is a tiny little art project. Some projects turn out better than others, and some I struggle with and they don't turn out like expected. The good news is that your only enemy is time. Leave yourself enough time to wrap and rewrap, you can open the gift and try again until you get it right. (This is especially true if you are using inexpensive materials!) I am using this blog as a space to catalogue some of the gifts I've wrapped, some practice (fake) gifts that I've done for fun, and maybe even show the not-so-pretty gifts that I ended up rewrapping. I like to remember what works, what didn't work, and to share that with you.

This is the part of the blog where I close with something witty, but I wasted all my pun power on naming the blog Gift Wrappers' Delight. Maybe next time you'll get a funny closing line from me.

-Kate