Simple Made Difficult

Chocolate to wrap

One of my clients (who is also a dear friend) asked me if I would wrap his Christmas presents this year (this is the third year he has asked me to do so). His wife cherishes the wrappings (and saves the paper and ribbons each year) so I am always willing to fulfill his requests. He gave me five gifts to wrap and this was the first gift--three bars of quality chocolate.

First, I went to my stash of materials and decided to wrap each chocolate bar separately with tissue and ribbon. With the wrapping, I always try and blend traditional and non-traditional colors and wrapping styles. I chose orange, red and green tissue paper and peach, red and olive colored ribbons.

Raw materials

After wrapping each bar, I chose an alternative colored ribbon to bind the bind: Peach grosgrain ribbon went on the red package, olive grosgrain ribbon went on the orange package and red organza ribbon went on the green package.

Three individual packages

If I were giving these away, I would have then stacked all three packages on top one another and tied them together with a large wire-edged ribbon and gifted them as a package. Very simple and yet elegant.

Instead, since I was dealing with a friend and a fan, I decided to up the ante a little bit by creating a handmade box to exactly fit the three bars of wrapped chocolate. Once the chocolate is removed, my friend's wife will have a keepsake box to hold buttons, coins, or any other miscellany. This way, she can keep the box out during the entire year to remember the original gift.

Handmade gift box

Once the box was completed, I covered it with a sheet of paper that was screen printed by hand. The red color and the polka dots are very on trend at the moment. The top and bottom interior of the box was lined with red velvet paper.

Bottom box filled with chocolate packages

The lid could be added and gifted accordingly but I decided to make it a little bit more elegant. Once the lid was attached, I wrapped the box with a red mesh wire edged ribbon and attached two personalized ornaments to the ribbon to finish the gift.

The final product