I learnt it from a book: Wrapping gifts

 I may be in the minority but I REALLY love to wrap gifts up. I take pleasure in finding the right wrapping paper, matching the bow, finding a gift tag, making a card, jazzing it all up and FINALLY gifting my gift.

Over the weekend, I had two presents to wrap up for a friends birthday and I thought that it was time to up my game so I trotted off to the library. I returned with a stack of books to pour over and got some really great ideas, from three of them, to try out.

From Handmade cards and gift-wrap I took the idea of stamping my own wrapping paper using Kraft paper as the base. I also had a little gift box so I stamped the top of it to tie it in.

From Giftwrapped: Practical and inventive ideas for all occasions and celebrations I followed the instructions to wrap a simple box, which I have done many times before but I really liked how the ends came out looking sharp and even.

I find that often when I have a small giftbox. I just scrunch up a bunch of tissue paper and place the item amongst it. I found a section explaining how to line a box with tissue paper which I followed to the T. 

Finally, I learnt how to tie a corner bow and finished off the whole gift with a tag. Now, my calligraphy skills leave a lot to be desired but I gave it a crack using some images I found in Creative calligraphy as a guide.

Now to actually gift it...

-Kristen

I learnt it from a book: Fashion origami

I have always admired origami and have been slightly (read more than slightly) jealous of people who could actually follow written instructions and create the most beautiful origami pieces.

Ask anyone who has watched me try and they will tell you that I end up acting something like this:

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Over the years I have seen various images of beautiful origami dress garlands so imagine my excitement when I found a book in the junior non fiction section called Fashion Origami by Catherine Ard with a picture of a beautiful dress on the cover. My mind started ticking over and I wondered if maybe this was my time to learn a new skill and shine!

The book has screeds of different fashion items such as dresses, skirts, shorts, mittens and high heels. Each item is rated either easy, medium and hard. I found the pattern I wanted to try first (of course it was rated hard) and after a few attempts, a bit of time, several curse words, rage quits and scenes like this:

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I had my first completed dress! Yes, it had some fold marks in the wrong places and was dog eared and ripped but I felt so accomplished.

The next morning with a good nights sleep and fresh eyes I sat down with some beautiful origami paper and created 10 dresses one after the other! By the end I didn't even need the instructions.

While I was riding high I thought I would give a shirt and shorts combination a go. They were rated easy so I was feeling (prematurely) confident. After another bout of wrong folds, multiple attempts, time, curse words and rage quits I correctly folded the shorts - I aced the shirt first time.

I finished the day with two beautiful garlands and a new skill. Who knows what pattern I might try next.

-Kristen