Quick Valentine's Day Gift Wrap Tutorial

I wanted to dress up the gift I got Sean for Valentine's day this year, but I already spent the max for the budget we set on the gift itself. I don't have any Valentine's Day appropriate gift wrap laying around... so I decided to make my own out of supplies I have lying around my studio. Here's a quick tutorial in case you're in the same boat as me these last few days before Valentine's Day, and of course, you could adapt the colors and stamp shapes to make your gift wrap appropriate for any holiday.

Supplies:
Craft paint
2" Styrofoam ball (or something you can cut a heart shape out of... a pencil eraser would be good too if you want tiny hearts)
Fabric
Sharpie
Scissors
Paint brush (optional)

Directions:
First, cut the Styrofoam ball in half. I opened the scissors up and sawed at it like you would with a knife. Then, draw a heart shape onto one flat side using your Sharpie marker like you see in the photo below.

 Next, get out your craft paint. Dip your styrofoam "stamp" into the paint and press it onto your fabric. I used a random pattern, with pink and white hearts. Note: make sure your fabric is on top of something you're willing to throw away, as the paint may bleed through the fabric as you stamp.)

If you're not happy with how some of the hearts came out, you can fill in some places with your paint brush. I did this on a few just to make sure they definitely looked like hearts, but I like the sponge-y texture the styrofoam gave most of them so I just left them as is.

Then, let your paint dry. Once it's good to go, you can wrap your gift! The fabric I chose to use was a pre-finished linen napkin, 18" x 18", to wrap a 4" x 5" x 1.5" box. If you're extra ambitious and have a scrap piece of fabric, you could always finish the edges with a 1/4" hem yourself, but I think a raw edge would work just as well for this project.

To wrap, set your gift on top of the fabric with the wrong side of the fabric facing up. Orient the gift so that the flat sides of the box are parallel to the four corners of your fabric.

 Take one corner of the fabric on a long side of your box up and over the box, and tuck the corner under the box.

Then do the same with the opposite corner, except this time, fold the excess fabric corner under itself and lie neatly on top of your box.

You should have two corners of fabric left pointing out from the short sides of your box, like a little fabric burrito.

Twist these up and toward the middle of your box and tie a secure knot, and you're done. You can even reuse this fabric wrap for V-Day next year.

I decided after I got to this point that my gift wrap wasn't quite the level of in-your-face gawdy Valentine's hearts I was going for, but I'd already thrown away my Styrofoam stamp! So I went back and added red (This is what happens when all of your craft paint is running low... what you thought would be one color turns into three.) polka dots with a pencil eraser. Only the best for my Sean :)

Have a Happy Valentine's Day!