wrapped in pink and gold

I am not the only one wrapping all day long at the POP UP shop. Since there is now three of us wrapping elves I think I can swing showing you a package a day.............just to keep you inspired for the holiday gift wrapping days ahead. This is a wrapped prototype for a gift order of over 50 book gifts. I will show you the wrapped competitor tomorrow. Sometimes I can't decide which I like better................so feel free to weigh in with your opinion. This one has a pleated detail which I like but is a tad more difficult to keep perfectly lined up with gift wrap paper, easier with tissue paper for some unknown reason. Or perhaps I just need more practise. 

Photo by Sande Chase ~ A Gift Wrapped Life

Diane James......a lasting gift

Though I adore the real thing, as a designer I know that faux flowers have their place in any well-appointed home too. I went around and counted and I do have 14 silk arrangements of varying size and style. From a large forsythia arrangement in a black tole container in my living room to a petite rose arrangement in our guest bedroom, they graciously add colour and shape to many corners and settings in any home. Of course these days I use silk flowers to adorn gifts, but I do think these gorgeous silk flower arrangements by Diane James would make for the loveliest of gifts for a variety of occasions. I know there is a great debate on real vs. faux but I have never had a problem with faux flowers when they are of beautiful quality and realistic style. I am not the only designer to think this of course, high profile designers such as Michael Smith, Barbara Barry and Mario Buatta turn to Diane James for silken arrangements in their well-appointed interiors as well.  So I am in some very good company. I look at these arrangements in another way as well (especially the petite styles) as a beautiful bedside gift for someone recuperating at a far distance, for a special birthday, or as a most gracious housewarming gift. Something to remind them of you and your good thoughts on a daily basis.

You could head over to Bergdorf Goodman, Gracious Home or Neiman Marcus for a Diane James faux arrangement or order online at Diane James Home. Here Diane James has fashioned a table setting at Neiman Marcus with faux flowers. Makes me want to have a lovely garden party.

~ A Table Setting for Mustardseed & Moonshine in Neiman Marcus ~

The Diane James Home website is well-designed and neatly organized by size, colour, season, and flower so finding the perfect arrangement and price is easy and most visually pleasant. Diane James Home also has a floral inspired blog The Buzz which shares divine design ideas and sources with a botanical twist.

All photos from Diane James Home

Vintage Glam and a Wrapping Technique for Guy Gifts

I love how these rust and pink tones are used together in this Vintage Glam setting found at Southern Accents. I kept returning to this photo and wondered how I could combine these tones in a gift presentation. It intrigued me and you know how I love these gift wrap challenges I set up for myself. I don't have every paper and ribbon at my disposal so sometimes I do have to improvise. Perfection would have been a gold and matte silver flocked type of paper (which I do not have) but as I worked with this matte burnished gold gift wrap I saw that it needed a bit more glam and it worked into a good little gift wrap tip, something to do with those leftover paper strips left over from wrapping smaller boxes. Do not be throwing those away.




I often use my leftover gift wrap strips to do this layered effect. One I like to use them up wherever I can and in this case it added a bit more gilt. I also think layering paper adds some dimension to the presentation. Paper strip edges are neatly folded and then simply taped at the bottom with double sided tape. You don't have to be precise in measuring the strips, it could even work if they were of dissimilar width. This technique would also work well with bright colours such as Kelly green and hot pink, look around, bet you have some sheet paper and strips that can be used together.




While I was in the layering mood, I knew the only way I was going to get these two unlikely colour tones together was to layer the rust and pink ribbons and work within the existing paper strips. It was either going to work or look positively awful, I found I liked the combination and kept going. Again, ribbon is simply double-sided taped to the bottom, just keep all the edges lined up nice and neat. The gift could be complete at this point, it certainly could go out the door at this point. This is a great gift wrapping technique for a male-gender gift, minus the pink ribbon of course. Change the pink to a chocolate brown or black and it turns it's feminine direction real quick. Guys get funny when they open a gift with a bow, they actually blush if you ever noticed.




Ok, we're done with the guy wrapping (that was quick!) and there is a pale pink flower in the photo so on goes a silk peony. I have this crinkle ribbon that I have been wanting to play with so I wrapped a continuous length around the flower, almost making a ribboned nest. Again, just to give it a bit more dimension. Sometimes I go too far with my experimenting and have to remove something, today it was a large bow to the rear of the flower, it was simply too overdone with all those ribbon layers.

Here is another pale pink leaf ribbon that I adore. It doesn't take to tying well as the little leaves get tangled and break but it does look good laying flat or used as a dangling length. Check in next week......I'm actually going to do some "Guy Wrapping" for Father's Day. No promises, but I will try some blush-free techniques.

Top photo from Southern Accents/Remaining photos from Sande Chase ~ Oooh la la Cadeau

Linen On My Mind

A friend called me before Mother's Day and asked me to wrap up a special gift that she could take to her mother. The gift was a gorgeous ivory linen wrap from Italy with ivory and white linen layered flowers on the back. So....of course this gorgeous creation needed an elevated gift wrap ( and I adore her mother), something that would capture it's simple but stylish elegance. I enjoy it when the gift wrap suggests the contents and gives you a hint of what is to come....in this case I figured I might as well use the real thing. I was curious to see if the fabric look I was picturing could translate into a gift wrap. I do have yards and yards of it in my storage room, it was my favorite fabric of choice for draperies the past few years. It always has that casual but elegant "french look", especially when I would have a tone-on-tone embroidered design somewhere on the panels, very subtle. Sometimes it was a scroll pattern along the bottom crawling up the side, once a French word embroidered along the bottom edge of a roman blind. If I was to do one today, I think I would look to add silk or linen flowers along the bottom in a somewhat random pattern like Dior did with that Vanity Fair photoshoot I posted a few weeks back. In other words, and as you will see over the next few days, this neutral linen can handle a varied selection of presentation materials.

It's not a fabric to gather when wrapping like the "pouf" wrap I did before, it would be a wrinkled mess. I simply folded and taped just as I would with gift wrap paper. You do have to use more double-sided tape than you would with gift wrap paper, but it does hold. These first two are quieter presentations as I think linen in any colour is by nature a quieter look, it's beauty is in it's understatement. This gift shows how little is needed when the base is setting the mood, I simply used 2 velvet flowers (from a scrapbook collection) and a thin taupe velvet ribbon on the top one, the bottom one a beach shell napkin ring. In order to secure the ring I had to loop through and then knot the ribbon back to the main ribbon, but I liked the look. I have been on the hunt for a variety of belt buckles so I can do this technique with wider ribbon. A little French gift tag and it's done.

Once I started experimenting with this linen base, I simply could not stop. I enjoyed how it could handle just about any look I cared to try. Even when I mixed two colours, peach and pink with a taupe polka-dot grosgrain.

When using fabric in this manner, do not strive for perfect folds like you would with paper. It simply cannot be done. It's fabric and there is no mistaking that fact and it becomes part of the look. I'm not sure the ribbon was needed around the base, now that I look twice, the taupe polka-dot ribbon peeking out of the flowers seems quite enough, after all those flowers don't really need any competition.

I used this linen fabric in a bedroom for a client not too long ago and was reminded of it when I was experimenting (fondly, she was a fabulous client). They had an existing wood sleigh bed with one of those generic leather upholstered head and footboards and faux brass nailhead trim. The bed had to stay, but way too masculine and the look too heavy. We took the leather off and had both sections reupholstered in this exact neutral linen with silver nailhead trim, the whole room and scale shifted. We then wallpapered the walls in a silk grasscloth in this same neutral colour and installed multiple recessed picture lights. The drapes and embroidered valances were in this linen as well. Something I insisted on was all-white, high-quality bed linens, beautifully crisp in this setting. When the bedside lamps and four picture lights went on, the artwork (a mix of oil paintings and historical prints) and silk grasscloth just shimmered with an understated elegance. To make a long story short, I just love taupe and white together. Here I get to use up the foliage that is left on all those silk flower stems I cut for gifts. The look works whether it is a small pink bud or a larger magnolia.

A triple white satin bow with simple rosebud. I would like to try this with pink ribbon, or blue, lavender or purple would be lovely......I just can't stop and it works with everything. Hope you like this linen wrap, tomorrow I will show you even more variations with a little twist. Remember I do have that wide ivory linen wide ........I really meant it when I said I couldn't stop.

All photos by Sande Chase ~ Oooh la la Cadeau

Va Va Voom...for music to my ears

We have an exceptional symphony in our medium-size town of Windsor, Ontario. We are one of the cities in Canada that is right in the heart of the economic downtown and car industry meltdown, so the only music a lot of people want to hear is the hum of a well-functioning auto assembly line. But we are the keepers of our children's future world as well so I don't think this should mean we ignore the arts, though sadly it can be the first to go when concerns are more pressing. I think it means we should support it if we can, go listen to the local talent, go to that local artist showing, look around closer to home. Music needs to be heard, artists need to draw, and we need to hear and see beauty more than ever. Some of the most creative solutions will come from this very bleak time as the world re-aligns itself. With that in mind......I decided to do some va va voom in exchange for music to my ears.

A la la friend of mine is involved with the local Windsor Symphony and every year they have a fundraising gala. You know what that means.......silent auctions. I donate this Tower Of Gifts for three reasons, my friend is a really good one, two I hope it raises funds for our symphony, and three.......I hope the bidder has a wonderful la la moment when she opens it all ( last year's bidder had a "la la " un-wrapping party but they didn't invite me). I expect it will take about 3-4 hours to unwrap this production because it took double that time to put this tall lady together. It did run through my head to downplay the gift production, being that the economy is awful and I don't want to send the wrong message. Then I thought......just go crazy, I'll try to make it gorgeous and maybe it will fetch a few more dollars for our worthy symphony, in which case I'm going to bring out all the stops. I thought you might enjoy seeing this presentation, it's not often I do a tower (3.5 feet tall) that includes 5 boxes and 17 gift wrapped gifts (every single one of them) and likely about 200 yards of ribbon , I'm exaggerating, not quite that many yards.

The gala colour scheme is Black & White so I thought a strong dose of coral and orange would make it stand out and loosen some wallets. I used my vintage Paris label gift wrap and all 17 gift items of various sizes are from France (or look like they could be). In wrapping each item, I used 10 different gift wrap styles for a delicious pattern mix and just about every ribbon colour I have ( I did pass out at 10 pm). The Windsor Symphony director and conductor John Morris Russell is a fabulously energetic and creative one and I hope he will stick around, we are lucky to have him.

Just in case you think I've lost my mind with this over-the-top presentation, I thought I would share a simpler gift wrap presentation I used when wrapping up this lovely notebook. Look......no bows, just simple knots over matte gold metallic paper, it can be done.

All photos by Sande Chase ~ Oooh la la Cadeau

Love Love Chartreuse

photo by Polly Wreford

I am fascinated with the colour Chartreuse. I adore the colour, I even love the word, how it rolls off your tongue as you say it, when I'm looking for visual impact, it's my go-to ribbon choice. As an exact reference, her bag and the wide bow on the fourth box above are chartreuse. I try not to play favorites, but I admit to being partial to this vivid tone. It's a potent, potent colour..... chartreuse is the exact colour located halfway between green and yellow (50% green 50% yellow) and it is the most visible colour to the human eye since it sits directly in the middle of the frequencies of visible light. In other words, if I was to wrap 50 gifts in all different colours and arrange them all together, your eye would immediately drawn first to this vibrant colour. As a colour description, it's first recorded use in the English language was in 1892, before that this brilliant colour was simply referred to as yellow-green. I much prefer Chartreuse.

First and foremost, green Chartreuse is a famous french liqueur developed as the "elixir of long life" and named after the La Grande Chartreuse monastery, the Mother House and headquarters of the Carthusian order of monks. Originally developed for medicinal purposes in1764, it is composed of distilled alcohol flavored with 130 herbal extracts, one of them known to be chlorophyll. The recipe took over a hundred years to be perfected and is a closely guarded secret. At any time in it's long history, only 2 monks (some say 3 monks) know the identity of the 130 plants that give it it's distinctive and natural green colour. Though originally located in Vauvert near Paris (the chartreuse mountain region), back-and-forth property disputes over several hundreds of years (and the French Revolution) led to it's present location in Voiron near the French Alps. There is also a yellow Chartreuse liqueur, a knock-off so to speak, it's a milder and sweeter taste and more yellow tone is likely due to the addition of saffron.

A Chartreuse flapper dress by fashion designer Philip Lim. Not a wearable colour for everyone, but if the colour suits your complexion...go for it, you'll will be the most noticeable in the room. Put a turquoise necklace with it and it's positively electric. I bought a chartreuse scarf last month at Target for 12.99 and I can't stop wearing it.

Though it's complementary colour (opposite on the colour wheel) is violet, it's a colour that gets along happily with all the other colours, it loves pink, red, turquoise, you name it, it works. It certainly isn't worried about any competition. I have only been able to find one true chartreuse ribbon and I go through this slinky double face satin quite quickly. Used with black it makes for a sophisticated gift wrap, here I wrapped black glossy paper with a wide black damask flocked ribbon that lies flat better than it ties. It's not the least expensive ribbon so this is a clever way to use it sparingly to great efect. A fuchsia silk floral pin gives it a fashionable zap of even more colour. Soon I will tell you why that ribbon has a Chartreuse imprint.

Top photo by Polly Wreford-Sarah Kaye/2nd Photo via Chartreuse Fr/3rd Photo via Neiman Marcus/Bottom Photo by Sande Chase-OoohlalaCadeau

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.