Gift-Wrapping Tips From A Pro
By Hadas Kuznits
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - As you hunker down to do your last-minute wrapping, KYW Newsradio's Hadas Kuznits sought some tips for professional-looking presents.
Carolyn Ross is a volunteer at the Cherry Hill Mall gift wrapping stand and she's seen it all, "One year we wrapped bowling balls."
She says the most common gift wrapping problem is dealing with presents of unusual shapes and sizes.
Listen to all of Carolyn Ross' tips in this podcast:
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"See, if you can find a box, and even if you can't find a box big enough, sometimes you can piece two boxes together and make a box. Like, we wrapped a skateboard the other day, so we took two of our coat boxes, which are 24-inches long, cut the ends off, taped them together the length we needed top and bottom and then we had a box that fit the skateboard."
And if you're not crafty like her, "The best thing for unusual shapes is cellophane which is just the clear thin colored plastic and then you can just wrap that around it so it looks like a basket."
Ross says the wrapping process begins with your choice of a place to work. "The first thing that I always tell anybody is to not sit on the floor and gift wrap because it will be a mess."
The second faux pas is using too much paper, "Because the more you fold it, the messier it looks."
Ross says you can use your ribbon like a measuring tape on your present. "Have a one-inch overlap and then lay that out by the paper and just cut off that amount of paper. That's all you need."
For curling that ribbon, she says pull it across a closed scissor.
"There's no reason to have it open with your thumb on the edge of the blade and you just hold it with one hand and pull tightly across the blad of your scissors with the other and it just curls it."
