Have a Grand Weekend

Put on a pretty dress, some fancy shoes, and dance around the living room.

A round shape always presents a wrapping challenge. The paper doesn't fold as well and my policy is "if it's not working, then change direction". Tissue isn't just for filing up a bag, when creased into tuxedo-pleated style it can be quite elegant as a gift wrap. The two ribbons are held in place with the fabulous gift label, no tape required. In order to fit multiple gifts into our gift boxes, I have been experimenting with simpler presentations. It's a great way to use up smaller lengths of ribbon and leftover tissue, something we all seem to have. Do you do know you can iron both tissue and ribbon? Re-use and re-gift your gift wrap supplies, when all neatly pressed, no one will know.

Top Photo-source not known, Bottom Photo by Sande Chase-OoohlalaCadeau

Pink Blush

Something about this sooooo............. soothing pink bedroom makes me want to blush. I ashamed to admit I really, really want a pink bedroom.

Here's a lovely la la bouquet for you today.

My friend Stephanie introduced me to the floral creations of Jane Packer when she actually went to her 5-day floral design workshop in London, England. It was first on her very-long list of post-retirement projects, all kinds of wonderful adventures, new things to learn, and helping out her friends. Nobody creates alone and that certainly includes me, Stephanie parked herself in my studio many a afternoon and helped me along the creative path to making packages so much more beautiful. Sharing is such a gracious gift and the best kind. Thank you to my most talented la la friend.

Top Bedroom Photo from House Beautiful, Floral photo from Jane Packer

Eggplant Organza & Amber

A sheer cape recently filed away in my fashion folder reminded me of a gift order which went out during the holiday season. I love, love this Ilana Wolf organza cape and how it adds such stylish dimension to basic black. I wear a lot of black, way too much, but looking to dramatically tone down the clothing budget and embellish what I have. Wouldn't this do the trick?

Basic black gift wrap again, but customer wanted this gift to be less-holiday looking and more sophisticated. Nothing is going to do that level of drama better than black, chocolate brown silk, a eggplant sheer organza ribbon, and a little pair of silver ornaments. What's inside? I try to set a mood so the gift style builds up the anticipation of what to expect when they begin to unwrap. Certain products just tell you how they want to be wrapped, the Cote Bastide amber-scented crystals (refresher oil available) had me transported to another era, so I used a 6" wide bronze taffeta ribbon in a couture fashion, no paper as the black linen box is gorgeous on it own. What a fabulous gift and enough crystals to dispense this heady scent in little bowls all over the house. It's gender-neutral, both men and women respond to the elegant fragrance. It was supposed to be my private-stash gift item, but this product from France was too good not to share, my supply disappeared in days. Reminder to self, must re-order and share again. Though a bit pricey at $79.00 (it smells expensive!) it lasts forever with the refresher oil which can be ordered extra. I stashed one box on my desk as I can't quite get enough of this amber scent..........aah, it reminds me of my past life sashaying around Versailles. I knew I would remember.

Top left photo by Sande Chase, Cape Photo from Neiman Marcus, bottom photo by Sande Chase - Oooh la la Cadeau

Laptop Heaven

Ladies, feast your eyes.......

Someone at Hewlitt Packard should get a promotion for pulling together this concept! Of course our digital friends should look like this! What took so long! Vibrant peony blooms signifying good fortune and prosperity show some high styling from fashion designer Vivienne Lam, and a coloured keyboard, can't you just see the possibilities? The"designer digital clutch" is considered a mini edition(10.3 L x 6.56 w x 0.99 h) so at 2.45 lbs. it can travel in your purse, more graceful than the shoulder lug of bigger models. Run with this HP, give us some designs by Kate Spade, Vera Wang, maybe even Burberry?

Wrapped in Paris

This makes me want to re-style my dressing table and perfume bottles. Though I don't have any vintage bottles as evocative of Paris as these, I can work with what I have and see what happens. Don't you think Lampe Berger should come out with a Vintage Paris collection that looks as fabulous as these? While I'm thinking of vintage Paris, this little idea for wrapping a petite cadeau came over me..............

New Paris Vintage Labels gift wrap!

Sometimes you just need to wrap up a special little something. Nothing too big or extravagant, could be a co-worker's birthday, the friend who listens really well, or a hostess gift. The gift may be small, but the giving message is the same and you want your petite presentation to reflect that. I used a thin velvet ribbon so this Paris vintage label pattern remains visible, then layered a decorative label over the ribbon. Decorative labels come in the same images as the paper so this is especially effective and easy. I tied in a amber crystal heart (taken from a keychain), but you could just as easily use the tiny paper flowers shown in last weeks post or any bauble you take from old costume jewelry. I'll show you more of these decorative labels as I prep them for addition to my website.

Photo Image from Jo Tyler-discovered via Beautiful Things To Share, Vintage Paris Gift Wrap and Vintage Decorative Labels Tin from Cavallini & Co.

Friday at last..........

I hope you enjoyed my first week of blog posts. There was lots to learn in the past week though I must say I can't quite believe I managed to figure out how to design a blog all by myself. My webmaster came to my rescue on Wednesday and cleaned things up a bit, we'll take another look at my blog banner which was the most I could handle on my own. I promised this week that in an upcoming post I would discuss some more practical techniques of gift wrapping, double-sided tape being one of them. My new shipment of pattern gift wrap is leading to a post on how your gift can stand out with the right paper. I'll match it up to affordable ribbons to show you more understated approaches.

There's a whole weekend ahead........................enjoy it in a lovely way!!

And Slumdog better win.

Top photo image by Daniel Farmer - Bottom Image -Crystal Door Hangers - Lollia

Too Clever of a Gift

If I was as clever as I sometimes think I am, I would have thought of this idea myself. And I almost missed it when I was checking out of the Iomoi website after purchasing some of their paper (old-school) stationery. I just barely caught the line sign-up for free trial on e-stationery and off I went, right into email heaven. Within 5 minutes I had sent off my trial email- the Pagoda style- ordered my own subscription, another one for my friend Stephanie, and then spent 2 hours figuring out how many more emails I could send in such a stylish fashion. It's a great way to send off a thank you (the email kind, not the written ones that get mailed to a real mailbox), birthday greetings, little notes of support, and whenever else you want to be more personal in your email correspondence. You can do these all day if you want, and each one with a different design, I counted over 120 stationery designs in the everyday section alone. The font choices are an added bonus, I favour the handwritten style seen on top sample because it's better than my own. For a $15.00 US yearly subscription price, this is the kind of gift that just keeps giving and giving. Go through the site and when it registers how fabulous this is and how easy, you will be emailing your first thank you to me. When you do, please tell me how clever I really am.

Orange, orange and more orange...

photo images by Sande Chase-Oooh la la Cadeau

When a customer says you pick the gift wrap, even I can be surprised with the results, and often find a new favorite combination. Orange wrap, orange double-face satin, orange hand-dyed silk ribbon, peach sheer ribbon, and a peach silk peony takes this gift to it's over-the-top status, just as the customer requested. Silk flowers can add beautiful volume to a gift wrapped box and are readily available (and often on sale) at home stores these days, so if you see a pretty one, grab a bunch for your next gift wrapping project. Clip off the stem leaving approximately 4 inches so it tucks nicely under the ribbon tie center. I can't stand paper seams showing on larger boxes so adding a length of wide ribbon around the perimeter hides it nicely. Just use double-sided tape to secure on the inside of ribbon edges. You aren't trying to gift wrap without double-sided tape are you? More on that in an upcoming post.

Multiple gifts were inside the gift box shown above and which goes to show the effect of using multiple gift wrap patterns. When stocking up on wrap papers, look to buy solids and patterns that can work together. Think the way you would for buying room accessories and you stay in a colour zone. Pick a gift wrap look (and it doesn't have to be forever) stock up and stick to it for the season anyways. Less wasteful and your gifts will have a distinctive signature look which you develop. We'll get back the seals shown on the tissue wrap at bottom, Fed Ex just delivered my new styles that I want to share. Need a few days of prep.

Oh Canada Girls who style

Interiors by NY designer Ryan Korban via Simply Seductive

With one of the best blog banners I've seen, Simply Seductive blog is another Canadian blogger who is listed as one of my favorites over on the right. She is located a bit closer to snowshoe country (Gatineau near Ottawa) than I am (across from Detroit), and I only say this for readers who think us Canadians all wear parkas year-round. We don't, my Burberry trench usually works just fine. I deal with Canadian winters the way I think everyone should, I just stay in until it's over. The advantage to having a home-based studio. Anyways, enough about me, blogs were all talking about new NY designer Ryan Korban (no website found yet) and I couldn't resist sharing his design for a London shop interior via Simply Seductive via Design to Inspire (another Canadian) I love the nod to British interiors with the oil painting sitting amongest all that femininity. I would so want to shop in this store.

Diamonds In The Rough Wrapped Ring from Kateszabone.etsy.com

So delicate, so lovely, and the Etsy seller is Canadian designer Kate Zabone. I tend to lust over bigger rocks (the reason I don't have one), but this could do it for me and those women who have the enviable gift of understatement. A lovely gift for perhaps a daughter-in-law, did I mention I don't have one yet? The daughter-in-law I mean.

Basic Black

Image by Sande Chase. Paper Flowers by IndabaTrading

If you read yesterday's post, you may have thought I was crazy suggesting buying black gift wrap as your basic paper. You might even have thought "how drab" but today's gift combination shows how it acts just like black accents do in a room setting.....it let's other colours pop. accented with bright, lemon ribbon as shown above, this gift box becomes bright and happy, but sophisticated in it's drama. You can change the mood of this neutral base with leftover ribbon of any colour. And that is alot easier than trying to find matchy paper to matchy up to a pile of different ribbon colours.

When you find it, buy it...............you'll tell me I'm right later.

Photos via palomasnest.etsty

You can't reside in a border town without doing cross-border shopping. For me it's a short drive to Somerset in Troy, Michigan, aka The Mother Ship as a client of mine used to call it. In other words, when it comes to shopping, that border is just a toll booth to more things, I feel pretty much the same about website shopping. It just gives me more to choose from and alot more sources to share. Finding Etsy, a marketplace of talented artists was like visiting Pluto, a whole new shopping world, minus the toll booth. I love, love this stylish wood bracelet, even more I love the possibilities of what this gift can say to a friend. You pick the custom words so speak from the heart or be as fun-loving as your friend. The cloth gift bag - Love & Kisses - shown at top is available extra.

Just beginning............

....a blog all about gifting for women.
What to give, where to find it, how to wrap it.

Let the unwrapping begin.........

Two years ago I jumped into a new career after 20 years as an interior designer and launched an e-commerce website called Oooh la la Cadeau which ships boxed gifts to women across North America. The more I wrapped the more the world "unwrapped" for me. Gifting and giftwrapping is a passion which I hope to share with you along with where and how I get inspired.

It can be the products I see at trade shows, the runway of couture, a gorgeous floral arrangement, or a fabulously creative room, all the beauty that sends me down to my wrap room each and every day. Above is a small corner of my studio where I play with pattern and colour. I hope my blog will be much like getting a gorgeous little gift each and every day.



Often the products themselves will inspire a colour scheme and you can never go wrong with plain black paper. If you have to pick one colour of giftwrap to buy, make it black, matte, shiny, tone-on-tone, doesn't matter. Any colour of ribbon looks good on black and instantly elevates it's level of sophistication. Surprisingly, this even works for baby gifts, pale pink or baby blue ribbon looks gorgeous on black paper. There is a few other embellishments as seen above, don't worry, we will be getting to them in upcoming posts.

Products in box by ElizabethW, images by Sande Chase-Ooohlalacadeau.com
Card in top photo Annechovie via Etsy