As we reach the end of November the Christmas rush has begun people are thinking about buying their gifts and getting ready to wrap them to go under the tree that will be decorating many households across the world in the next couple of weeks. 

When it comes to wrapping the gifts, there aren't many people that really put a great deal of thought into them, go buy a huge roll of festive paper, grab the sticky tape. Cut, fold, stick, job done. Some retailers and artisans will offer gift wrapping with a product. Other people may choose to take all their gifts to a service and have them make their packages more beautiful than the 20 foot adorned tree in the city square.

It needn't be a chore though to achieve these beautiful looking parcels wether you are thinking of offering the service as an artisan to your customers or if you are just wrapping your own gifts.

Traditional wrapping papers - White or cream background vintage styled with snow covered houses, children building snowmen or Santa's sleighs. These look fantastic with ribbon either choose one colour and use a stick on bow at the top or really go to town and use red and green ribbon in 4 lengths and hand tie an elaborate bow.

Children's Papers - Disney papers will always be around other favourite characters are only usually found on birthday gift wrap. For an idea take a plain red or green paper that can be brought quite inexpensively and get a sheet of the birthday wrap with the child's favourites. Cut out the characters and stick them to the plain parcel for instant recognition of whose parcel is whose. 

Accents to parcels should be kept simple, multi layered tags look fantastic on plain papers, matching tags are lovely when they have a border so you can see where it is on the parcel. If you have matching tags and paper stick them onto a deep green or red (dependant on the main paper colour.) The stick on bows mentioned earlier don't look as inviting when stuck onto a parcel with no ribbon and Christmas tape can ruin the look of a perfect gift, clear will allow all your wonderful wrapping work to really stand out rather than have some dancing snowmen interrupt the picturesque vintage paper. If you are feeling adventurous why not some cheap baubles and a black sharpie and write the recipients name onto the bauble and dangle it from the corner of the gift. You can even recycle those year after year. 

Heres a collection of guides for gift wrapping, more ideas means more fun.
Hallmark 2006 gift wrap guide [pdf]
Recycled Wrapping
Rip Cord Wrapping (for the eager to see what's inside.)
More Recycled Wrapping

Have fun wrapping your gifts this year.

Image courtesy of cynstock