Valentine’s Day is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering chocolates, and sending greeting cards, also known as “valentines“. I’ve never thought it was a day for elaborate or expensive gifts.

It’s more about the gesture, the invitation out to a special dinner, sharing a special moment or outing together, the surprise delivery of flowers, the special messages and chocolates left for a loved one or a treasured gift given to mark the day. Now I’m not here to give you gift ideas but instead offer some quirky gift wrapping ideas for those gifts you might exchange.

It’s always a good idea to have a store of gift wrapping items and cards at the ready all year round. If you are both organised and thrifty and keep the useable pieces of wrapping paper and ribbon discarded from unwrapped gifts each year, then these items will be put to good use throughout the year.

I love using brown kraft paper as my base colour for all gift wrapping and then using bright ribbon, strips of coloured paper or other quirky items to embellish my wrapping. You can usually pick up an inexpensive roll of kraft paper from a discount store as your starting point.

Flowers – A lovely bunch of flowers or roses picked from the garden or purchased for the green grocer, is an inexpensive way of celebrating Valentine’s Day. Some quirky gift wrapping suggestions for your bunch of flowers include:

Wrap the flowers in brown kraft paper and secure a paper doily to the front with natural twine – this is a lovely way of dressing up a bunch of flowers.

Wrap the bunch in newspaper and again, add a paper doily to the front of the bunch and tie off with bright organza ribbon

Use a sheet of brightly coloured cellophane and a contrasting strip of ribbon – these might be easily found in your box of wrapping bits and pieces

Pick up a sheet of inexpensive wrapping paper from a discount store to wrapping your flowers in, tie off the bunch with ribbon & add a handmade gift tag using a piece of card stock, a spare strip of paper from the sheet used to wrap your flowers; the possibilities are endless!

Each of the items listed above can be easily picked up from a discount store. You’ll be surprised by what you can find and how easy it is to dress up and embellish a gift.

A gift topped with flowers –

This is a lovely idea for Valentine’s Day. Two gifts in one. A gift box is great for wrapping most sized gifts. You can pick up a good sized gift box from a discount store and this can easily be used again and again for gift giving throughout the year. Pick up a larger size that can be used to wrap most things and you will find it has many uses.

Using a large gift box to wrap vouchers, movie tickets, dinner vouchers and those items that you might otherwise just place in an envelope shows more effort with your gift giving and makes your gift look more like a “gift”.

Select a box that plain in colour wrap your gift in tissue paper (another inexpensive wrapping item) and then you can embellish the gift box as you choose. Embellishments for Valentine’s Day might include:

“¢ a small bunch of hand picked flowers

“¢ a few long stemmed roses attached the the lid of the box

“¢ a small box of chocolates tied into the ribbon

“¢ a gift voucher to a store or for movie tickets or a dinner out and the voucher might double as your card/gift tag

“¢ a handmade card or gift tag

Try and be as creative as you can with your gift wrapping. As I’ve said before, I think the wrapping is part of the gift but you don’t have to go to a great deal of expense or effort to wrap a gift beautifully. I hope these suggestions help you out and offer you some new ideas. Enjoy!!

Happy Valentine’s Day!