typographic christmas presents

Presents! Man oh man 19 days ago I never thought I would have this all together, but somehow I pulled it off. I’m going on year three of having a fully themed wrapping scheme, and it’s the third year I used brown kraft paper as the base (check out last year’s presents). But there are so many different things you can do with the simple paper that I’m still not tired of it.

The trick for successful “theme wrapping” is to keep it simple and just use a few different materials. I found 4 coordinating gold and white ribbons (3 of which came in a pack together) and a roll of gold and silver foil wrapping paper all at World Market and then called it a day.

To make the letters, spray mount the wrapping paper to a piece of thin cardboard. Then make and print out letter templates in Illustrator (or other vector program) by creating outlines of each letter and scaling them to the right size. Cut out the templates and trace them backwards onto the back of the cardboard. I used thin cardboard so I could just cut them out with scissors. My letters are all lowercase Adobe Caslon Pro.

Attach the letters to the gifts by punching a hole at the top and threading the ribbon through, or, if the letter permits (hello, lowercase g’s) just tie a piece of twine through the loop and to the bow

A word to the wise: if you have people who share the same letter, note on the back of the letter or on the actual gift who’s gift is who’s. While wrapping these presents I realized we have a ton of T’s and M’s in our families, so a secondary labeling strategy was definitely necessary.

How is your present wrapping going? Do you make all your presents match, or use a variety of different papers?