Laundry On Sundaes

Christmas is coming up so very soon! It’s easy to forget about the rest of the world when you’re stuck in your dorm studying for finals, but the holiday spirit has still made its way to me. So, just in time for the holidays, a super simple DIY tutorial on how you can wrap your presents in style. Don’t get me wrong, I love pretty wrapping paper as much as the next (probably more, actually), but sometimes it’s good to get a little creative when it comes to dressing up your gifts. So here we go!

Project: holiday wrapping paper + bow
Difficulty level: easy

Step 1: Gather your supplies. You will need: colored paper that’s big enough for the present you’re wrapping, a white-out pen, tape, white printer paper, scissors, glue or double sided tape.

Step 2: Wrap your present in the colored paper. I used tissue paper in a festive red color, which works perfectly fine. You can also use brown paper from grocery bags, or any other colored paper you have lying around.

Step 3: Decorate the wrapped gift with your white-out pen. I decided to do simple polka dots, but you can do snowflakes or other Christmas-y designs.

Step 4: Time to make the bow. Depending on the size of the bow you want to make, cut out 9 strips of paper from plain white paper like below. The width is about 1 cm (1/3″), the lengths for my bow were about 8.5″, 7″, 5″, and 2″, and the finished bow was around 4″ in diameter.

Step 5: Starting with the longest strips, tape each strip into a loop and pinch it in the center, and tape. It should look kind of like a figure 8. Make the smallest strip into a circle only.

Step 6: Put the 3 figure 8′s from the longest strips together into a snowflake shape and glue together or tape together with double sided tape. Do the same for the second biggest figure 8′s.

Step 7: Assemble the bow! Stager the 2 snowflake shapes and glue or tape together. Stagger the rest of the figure 8′s and loops on top.

Step 8: Affix the bow to your wrapped present.

And you’re done! You are now ready to present your perfect wrapped present :)

Tags: crafts, diy

So here’s the promised tutorial for the cupcake headband I wore for my California Gurl inspired costume!

Project: cupcake headband
Difficulty level: medium

Step 1: Gather your supplies! You will need: a plain headband, ribbons, super glue or hot glue gun, a plastic bottle cap, felt fabric or cosmetic cotton pads, small beads and sequins.

Step 2: Wrap the plain headband in ribbon. Choose a ribbon of the color you want your headband to be, and glue the end of the ribbon to one end of the headband. Wrap the ribbon around the headband, overlapping a bit, and gluing it down every few turns. If your headband is already in the color you want, you can skip this step.

Step 2: Take a length of ribbon in the color you want the base of your cupcake to be. Glue one end of the ribbon to the inside of plastic bottle cap. Then start wrapping the ribbon around the bottle cap as shown below.

Keep wrapping until the whole bottle cap is covered. Cut off the excess ribbon and secure the end by gluing or sewing a few stitches. Now you have the base of the cupcake! The exposed edges of the ribbons resemble the folds in a cupcake liner :)

Step 4: Take the felt or cotton pads and cut them into 5 or so circles. The biggest circle should be around the same size as the base, and each successive one is slightly smaller. These will become the top of the cupcake.

Step 5: Arrange the felt/cotton circles from biggest to smallest, adjusting their sizes if needed. When the pile of circles look like icing on a cupcake, glue them together.

Step 6: Decorate your cupcake! Glue beads, sequins, and anything else you like to the top of your cupcake.

Step 7: Assemble your cupcake by gluing the base and the top together. Your cupcake is now finished!

Step 8: Attach the cupcake to the headband. You can glue it, or, if you want to use the cupcake later for something else, pass a ribbon through one of the ribbons on the base and tie it to the headband.

Tie a bow with the ribbon or just leave it hanging.

You’re done! Now you can wear your cupcake headband with pride :) The little cupcakes are super cute by themselves too and can be used as pin cushions, Christmas ornaments, or just looking so sweet on your desk.

Tags: crafts, diy