When I originally started doing these relatively elaborate gift decorations—particularly after some recipients made a habit of removing them so carefully they were in effect intact—I thought it would be fun to bounce a given decoration back and forth, say with other friends who also liked this sort of thing, each time adding more stuff.
In order to get what appears to be a dead on view without the wall or other clutter showing, I actually propped the gift up at an angle, which shows a little bit more of the top than just laying it flat on the floor would've.
Well, that never really gelled; quite often the occasion demands a different color scheme, and unless the wrappings have been perfectly preserved, I just rip the components apart, putting each in its color bin. However, on the occasion I do have a complete (or nearly so) wrapping—and time to fiddle with it (as opposed to simply reusing it as is)—I do occasionally do the additive thing, as I did here. This wrapping was featured earlier as one of a set of three. However, now I was wrapping a lime green box, and I wanted to incorporate that.
This angle shows the top of the box, to which I've added a white bar bow, additional lavender ribbon, and the green bow and wire ribbon. The silver bow is glued at an angle to the top and front of the box, providing an additional transition.
Since I had only two kinds of lime ribbons (the thinner of which doesn't show in the photo) and one lime bow, rather than starting from scratch, I decided to add them to this decoration, the only piece of paper I could find not overtly christmas-y or feminine (the recipient was male, and though I've been known to subvert conventions before, in this case, I really needed black to do that—and I have even fewer black decorations than lime ones). I rotated the original bows and ribbons from the top to the side of the new gift. The lime ribbons tied up at the top, and I added my one lone lime bow, plus some additional white and lavender stuff to fill in. I had a short section of lime ribbon, which, since it was wire-edged and would hold its shape, I shoved into the front mass of ribbons—it's not even glued, just threaded in.
The wrapping on its second go-round (the first being its original use, since I'm too cheap to go and buy wrapping paper...)
The end result was a bit much, and it occurred to me I probably should've thinned some of the ribbons on the side. —But I didn't. After all, the point of recycling this way is to save time and effort;)
file created 27nov05, photograph (and additional wrapping) 25nov05.
Purple, green and gold giftwrap for a New Orleans themed `Fat Tuesday' party. 20feb2013
Purple redux: a decoration is recycled with the addition of some lime green accents. 27nov05 27nov2005
Three gifts from 2005 . Includes brief comments on the creative process, but still nothing like a definitive howto. (24mar05) 25mar2005
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
