Gift Wrapping Guide | Part 1 | The Basics

Hello there. Welcome to White Black Grey's Gift Wrapping Guide. This is Part 1 - The Basics. To follow we'll have guides on wrapping tricky shapes (like puppies and things), and beautiful finishing touches to really make your presents stand out from the crowd.

This guide will show you how to perfectly wrap a boxed parcel, with no visible tape for a pristine, professional finish. 

First, gather your materials:

Gift (we'll be using our adorable geometric rabbit candle, Hoppa), Gift Wrap (ours is from M&S, not very 'indie' I know, but it is pretty), Scissors, Tape. Just out of shot - tea, chocolate. 

For 'invisible tape' wrapping, we recommend Scotch tape. If you want visible tape, make it wonderful - go Washi!

Next, prep your tape loops. That way you won't run out of fingers halfway through:

Now trim your paper to size. The long side should have a decent overlap (as you'll be folding over the 'open' edge). For the short sides, the length of paper at each end should match the height of the box:

Neatly fold over the long 'top' edge of the paper. A couple of centimetres will do:

Bring the two sides together with the tape on the underside of the creased edge:

 Repeat at the other end, leaving this beautiful clean, tape-free edge:

 Fold the paper down at the short end with sharp creases, as shown here:

 Fold the two sides towards the centre, and make sharp creases again:

This *should* leave you with a nice neat triangle onto which you apply your tape:

Stick and repeat at the other end (the parcel is now the other way up in this photo, in case you got confused!):

And, finally, decorate!

In this photo, we've used grey Baker's Twine, which you can get from the lovely people at Papermash. The rubber snowflakes are by SEJ Design. We have their rubber stars available here if you fancy replicating this look. 

That's it for now, thanks for joining us! We'll have lots more wrapping tips and tricks for you in our future Gift Wrapping guides, so watch this space.

If this all seems like too much hassle (we feel ya), we're offering a free gift wrapping service this Christmas, just leave us a note at the checkout and we'll do the hard work for you!