Last solstice I decorated two brown cardboard boxes with a krinkle paper ribbon in a matching brown colour and magnolia silk flowers, but I wasn't really that happy with my photography of them: the one was simply too big to properly crop the background to plain-ness.
![](/static/std/1e7021981245bd6bde0d3f5726292b2b.jpg)
gift wrapping with silk flowers, paper, acetate?, wire edged & curling ribbons, musically themed ornament, hot glue, 24 or 25dec; photography, 25dec22 sony ILCE-7C, sony macro 90mm, f/2.8, ev +0.7 1/100s, ISO 1250, WB: cloudy; light source (natural through window); rotated, cropped and scaled in gimp
I liked the actual decorations, however, and saved them for nearly seven months as fireplace screen decorations—however, I had another gift to wrap, and as it was a deer skull, a natural organic colour scheme—I decided to recycle these decorations. However, in the meantime, my bestie had given me a bunch of wrapping paper, so I actually wrapped the gift:
![](/static/std/cc19f2f7b35db0b65accf7d3e1096f1b.jpg)
gift wrapping with silk flowers, paper, acetate?, wire edged & curling ribbons, musically themed ornament;
Though technically it's xmas paper, the colour scheme was perfect, and besides the recipient likes music (plus buried in there somewhere, but evidently not a single one of these shots shows the musically themed xmas ornament....)
![](/static/std/1314b93e1db3ef1eb6da0b3c60ec1eca.jpg)
gift wrapping with silk flowers, paper, acetate?, wire edged & curling ribbons, musically themed ornament;
Because the wrapping table is covered with an embarrassingly high pile of crap, and I was too lazy to bring up my glue gun, I basically just pulled apart the original decorations (which had been very lightly glued just for this reason) and retied them around the box.
![](/static/std/a06f324ff8915df26e116d816406066f.jpg)
gift wrapping with silk flowers, paper, acetate?, wire edged & curling ribbons, musically themed ornament;
I sort of just tied the paper bow togther, and then, as you would for traditional flower arranging, poked things in.
![](/static/std/1324677cf90d9d4b74a535d7f264cf3f.jpg)
gift wrapping with silk flowers, paper, acetate?, wire edged & curling ribbons, musically themed ornament;
I'm not certain the photography is any better than the original iteration, but for whatever reason I was happier with the backgrounds, as you can see from the five different views I took of it...
![](/static/std/f1b2a3dbd480aff045b12bcd8d4e9366.jpg)
gift wrapping with silk flowers, paper, acetate?, wire edged & curling ribbons, musically themed ornament;
Really, I was pretty happy with this reworking, though if I'm honest I'm not certain it's actually any better than the first effort. At least I've finally got a page of both!
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
Sylvus Tarn