In keeping with my usual, ‘gee the gift is really bad, so's I'd better wrap it real pretty’ this was merely some samples for a matching necklace. The beads were dead simple, but as usual, somebody else's beads, even really easy ones, can prove to be harder to copy than expected. I wasn't helped by the fact that I'm still have difficulties working the torch, because of the broken collarbone.^[1]

The gift pretty much fit into a 2x3 inch ziplock, but I packaged it in a computer power supply box to have more real estate for decorating—so the largest dimension was probably about 8 or 10 inches. Silk flowers, mardi gras beads, ribbons, and bows. Shot with a coolpix 8400, 16apr2010

So I wanted to do a nice job decorating it. The recipient likes blue and is a big fan of lighthouses, so I used this paper my mother-in-law gave me ages ago (like, say 15 or 20 years past, back when I was really into xmas) to wrap it. That in turn dictated the color scheme.

Though I probably could've shot this in the light cube, I just thought it would be really pretty amongst the matching hyacinths, so I did that instead. Despite the sun, high winds, icky white siding in the background, etc...Shot with a coolpix 8400, 16apr2010

The flowers had wires in them, so after clipping the stems, I bent them up at a 90 degree angle, using lots of hot glue to get them to stay in place. Then I (rather haphazardly, I'm sorry to say) filled in with curling ribbon, covering the stems with bows. The beads, which I should've done right after the flowers, went on last, and it wasn't till I glued one end down that I discovered a break in them; so I twisted the strands together to help disguise this flaw.

But it's been quite awhile since I've done anything this elaborate, so I was pretty happy with it, despite its flaws.

gift wrapped, photographed, 16apr10; file 17apr10; original images recropped & imported at full resolution, 22jun24

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.