Do It Yourself: Valentine's Day Gift Wrap

While my last year's Valentine's Day gift wrapping was simple and elegant, I wanted to do something completely different this time. I decided to go back to the good-old brown bag and embroider it with red yarn.

First step was to draw an outline of a heart and break it in even increments, marking each one for a new stitch. As this was my second take, I made sure the marks are farther apart from each other: paper is easy to tear when stitches are too close.

Then I punctured paper at each mark with my crochet hook (you can use another sharp object, just make sure it is thicker than a regular needle).

One-by-one - I stitched each line making sure they they are parallel to each other.

Then I went back in the opposite direction, creating perpendicular yarn lines.

I love how much texture it created. Just like my last year's idea, it turned out to be warm and fuzzy. Most importantly, this year it has more of a hand-made quality to it.

Holiday Gift Wrapping

Photos by navyblueshoe

Brand-New Week: Home-Made Ribbons

This was a total experiment. I got this yellow raw silk awhile ago from a friend of mine. Not thrilled about the color, I decided I dip dye it using Indigo Blue color. It ended up transforming into this beautiful sea-foam green, almost turquoise color. Happy with the result, I decided to tear it into strips and use the ribbons to give my gifts a home-made touch.

I selected Liquitex Bright Aqua Green to hand-paint a memo on the package.

Photos by navyblueshoe

Do It Yourself: Valentine's Day Felt Heart

Here are a couple of ideas I came up with for the Valentine's Day gift wrapping. I cut out heart out of Maharam Divina wool felt. Then I made two symmetrical cuts in it and pulled a ribbon through. It is simple, modern, warm and fuzzy! LOVE them both!

All Wrapped And Tied

I am finally done with wrapping all the gifts!
One of the gifts I give out every year is preppy socks from JCrew. Everybody loves them and awaits for a new pattern to come out of the box. This year instead of using JCrew's signature boxes I made little baggies out of brown paper lunch bags. I used white and red yarn to tie them and painted snowflakes with white acrylic paint.

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Happy Holidays!!!