oof! forgot to show these!

not that anyone really *needs* to see how i dressed up my christmas gifts... especially in JANUARY... but i looooooooooooooove wrapping and it's just not something you can discuss in depth with "civilians" lol.  so bear with me.  who knows, maybe you'll get an idea for next year?

i posted the digi-collages i made for the kids' gift bags earlier, but here they are actually ON the bags:

you can see i didn't do much beyond adding their names in thickers, (with a line of stitching on the chipboard ones for extra security) a wired ribbon bow, and some coordinating tissue paper.

one of the little "extra" gifts i picked up in hawaii were these pretty (plastic) plumeria hair clips for the girls; they made the perfect finishing touch!

in the laurniverse, the BEST projects almost always have the WORST photos! this oversized (approx 13x36") gift for nephew matthew was probably my favorite. i used the same mindy terasawa digi stickers as on the gift bag (just A LOT bigger) and some seriously elderly basic grey monogram letters.  the green "grass" panel and the dinos are both heavyweight cardstock and attached using only a couple of squares of foam tape b/c i *KNEW* matthew would want to hang them on the door to his room... which he did!  :) :) :)

this year, many of my gifts had a hawaiian theme, which i enjoyed hinting at on the outside of the gifts as well. i bought A LOT of these adorable xmas ornaments at hilo hattie, and they were a big hit.

my fallback "guy gift" is candy and money in a cute container. i scored some fun "chinese takeaway" containers (& the best dark-chocolate-covered pretzel balls in the world!!!) at our local "bulk" candy store; the fun luggage tags were like $1 at long's drugs in honolulu!

what do you do with a gift that's too big for a box but too oddly shaped to wrap in the traditional way? for this one (the holiday recipe box i made using my CHRISTMAS IN PARIS pixie kit) i just grabbed nice wiiiiiiide gift wrap and made a "bundle"!

here's the exact same set of products: gold wrap, green glittery wired ribbon and part of a stem of orchids, all of which came from michaels. when i have a bunch of little gifts for the same person, i like to make a "tower" just so i will remember to bestow them all... plus it LOOKS a lot cooler than five tiny boxes. by the way, the best use ever for leftover alphabet stickers is to put the initials of your recipients RIGHT ON the package. unfamiliar with the range of styles made by various craft companies, civilians are completely baffled when, as in this case, there's a gold glitter monogram on their gift. g'head and tell them you did something REALLY difficult and clever... my lips are sealed!!!  ;)

finally, given that i so often make giant and/or oddly shaped cards, people wonder what i do about envelopes. well, sometimes i just skip 'em entirely. oddly enough, no one seems to mind!

thus concludes our giant bumper holiday edition of "giftwrapalooza"! do feel free to bookmark this page in case you suffer from insomnia in future!!!  :) ciao, darlings! ♥