I quite liked this red and white wallpaper that a careful friend stripped off a neighbor's house; the owner, having no idea what to do with it, presented it to me to use for something or other. —It's beautiful stuff, but so rotten with age that it made no sense to use it for anything other than a very ephemeral purpose, such as giftwrap.

24dec19, lumix LX-100: wallpaper, plastic snowflake & apple, flocked, fabric & curling ribbon

Perhaps even older were the burgundy flocked and brown sateen ribbons I used to frame the snowflake that served as a focal point: these snowflakes, which I purchased (from Meijer, I believe) after xmas for something like 75% off, are among my favourite gift decorating accessories, and I thought this subdued, but still winter-holiday-appropriate colour scheme of dark red, ivory/white and brown worked well together.

closeup.

For the following image, I particularly liked the softening of the background, and which also pushes the vintage quality of the components:

lensbaby, on an E620 body.

For me, this is quite a simple giftwrap: paper, (doubled) ribbon around the box (to pick up on the paper's stripes), vertical framing element (snowflake), focal (subdued, but still there: the apple! —though the square knot could nearly as well served—one of those little gold knicknacks might've been better...) and contrasting edging element (the curling paper). That is my current go-to arrangement^[1] in a nutshell. It's nice to see it work so well, and a good illustration that, even for me, less is usually more.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.