I remember back in elementary school, our class made pizelles as Christmas/Chanukah (one Jewish kid) gifts for our families. We were made to giftwrap them. :eek:
I remember clearly: The girls’ pizelles were all beautifully wrapped, with crisp folds, tight corners, and barely-visible tape. The boys’ pizelles looked like they had been wrapped by… 9-year-old boys.
To this day, my wrapping resembles the pathetic efforts of my 9-year-old self. However, every last woman with whose giftwrapping I’m familiar can wrap beautifully.
I’m pretty good, having helped my mum since I was a wee girl.
I usually don’t do anything to fancy, but I avoid gift bags, as tearing wrapping paper off is 75% of the pleasure of receiving gifts.
I generally don’t bother to be too fancy, but try to fit the wrapping to the gift and the receiver.
I do a fairly passable job, but I often way overestimate the Y dimension, making my packages look a little like they’ve had a sock stuffed down their pants.
I took a blue ribbon at the county fair with my 4H gift wrapping skills. I also got my gift wrapping badge in Junior Girl Scouts, so yes, I do a mean job of making it pretty.
On a continuum, I’m between passable/pretty. My wrapping is very neat and efficient, and I can wrap oddly shaped boxes pretty well… but I don’t do ribbon, bows, layers, tissue, etc. My giftwrapping is to “pretty” giftwrapping as military bed making is to an interior decorator’s bed making.
Oh, I can get a gift wrapped up OK. But I always end up either cutting the paper too big, resulting in. . .bulges somewhere. . .or too small, resulting in cutting another sliver of the same paper to “fill in” with!
My mother wasn’t a pro at gift wrapping, but she had an ‘eye’ for the size paper she’d need. She’d look at a gift, pick up a roll of gift wrap, hack off a piece, and voila! It would be the perfect size!
norinew, have you tried ‘rolling’ the gift over the paper first? Say for example it’s a rectangular shaped box. Start on one edge of the gift wrap roll. Lay the box on a thin side, longways up-and-down to you. Then roll the box on a fat side, then the other thin side, then the other fat side. That is how big the paper needs to be that way. Leave a couple of inches for overlap. Length the other way is two widths of the end.
Great. I see I’m one of two women on this board who can’t wrap (well, at least for the moment).
Way to ping my inadequacies, Mr. Homie.
In high school, I worked at the service desk of a department store. One day before Christmas, I was put on the gift wrap desk. I begged them not to do it. I made it clear that I SUCK. Supervisor insisted it wasn’t brain surgery (Dung Beetle… you didn’t happen to work at Richman Gordman in 1987?? Are you a blonde woman? Were you a blonde woman?).
God, the stress. Waiting for someone to ask for giftwrap.
It was horrible. When I finally emerged from the back room… well, you should’ve seen the customer’s face. After that I did gift wrap no more forever.
I chose “award-winning” even though it’s not QUITE that great. I do put a lot of effort into it, and tend to color-coordinate all paper/ribbons/etc. - One year it was blue/brown, another silver/red, this year blue/silver. I like the pleasing aesthetic of piling up a bunch of nicely wrapped gifts that all tie together, so to speak. I also usually do handmade gift tags instead of the little sticker ones.
