Wedding gift packaging 1

Talking about gifts, Since I have not celebrated Christmas in a long time and we dont having a gift giving tradition during Diwali, my major gift giving opportunities are occasions like weddings, engagement, birthdays and House warming ceremonies.
I often like making a hand made gift for these occasions for two reasons – a) its personal, customized and often unique and b) its much nicer than a store bought gift of the same/higher value.

I have been wrapping gifts and decorating cards for many years now and I am like the official gift maker/wrapper for my family and friends. These days however everyone prefers cash to gifts and since that doesn’t involve much creativity. So I try and do something innovative on the cover.  On the right are traditional envelopes which you can pretty much whip up if you have some colored paper or card stock with you. I usually cut motifs from old invitations and use them as decoration. I whip up a bunch whenever I have time and it works for 6 months

This one (right) is a cash cover for a Rs.1000 note. I used the flap of another wedding invitation which had a holographic beautiful silver print on it and converted it into a thin box. Since the material was very thick, it wouldnt stick well with glue, so I used some holographic tapes in silver and blue on both front and back of the box to make it like a design.

I really wanted to use a bride-bridegroom silhouette but couldn’t get a print that looked Indian. so I just drew on on a gateway sheet and dabbed marker colour on it. As it was translucent, it looked as thought the girl was wearing a blue saree with silver print on it. I finally finished of with a ribbon bow and a cloud tag. It is customary for us to give cash with a Rs.1 coin. Since I couldn’t drop it into the box for obvious reason, I stuck it like a charm under the cloud to give some weight to it.

Finally here is a gift card envelope I made for my friend last year. As gift cards are even more impersonal than cash, the sole objective of this envelope was to make it personal. Eight of us friends pooled our money together to get the card, so I first picked photographs of everyone and combined it in photoshop. Fort the base a picked a lovely beige textured image and added floral scrolls to it (they are actually  from a blog layout I saw on the net). Then I wrote the sentiments on top, made my own layout, printed it out on an A3 sheet and folded it into a card

I then added a golden bow at the back and tiny rhinestones on the front for some bling. In the actual slot to hold the card, I made another bow and embellished with an image of Lord Ganesha and added more sentiments to the bottom. In between I just scoured out semicircular slots to hold the card. This one was a real hit at the wedding.:)

Hope, these give you some packaging ideas for the upcoming wedding season. My next post, a continuation of this one, I would be sharing some ideas to package jewelry for a wedding through a tutorial, so do catch up.