How to...Send a Party in a Box

My cousin had a baby last month. I was kind of busy wrapping gifts for everyone under the sun, and I sort of forgot about it (not about the baby exactly, just about the social norm of buying a gift before the kid is walking and talking). Finally, last Monday I managed to both remember the need to buy a gift and to find myself the time to pick one up. My friend K and I were running errands on the right side of town, so I swung into Babies-R-Us to find something. K is amazing at baby gifts (Seriously. I’ve seen her in action and considered slipping my inferior gifts back in my bag so as not to be totally upstaged by her awesomeness. She’s that good). We printed out the remaining items on the registry, and K led the way to useful baby products.

After filling my basket with a pile of pint-sized necessities, we headed over to giftwrap. It was right about then that I came up with my awesome packaging plan. One of the blogs I read is Dusty’s All Things G&D, and back in November she wrote a post called Birthday Party in a Box. Genius. Meet: Baby Shower in a Box.

Dusty uses flat rate boxes from the post office, but since I had a box upstairs that I thought would work, I tweaked the lining a bit.  Her suggestion to open the box flat and line the entire interior with one piece of wrapping paper is definitely superior.  I used one rectangular piece for most of the box and patched in the odd shapes.  On the other hand, I used spray adhesive (instead of a gluestick) which worked really well. Next time I’ll cut the paper her way and glue it my way. That should create perfection, I think…

After lining the inside of the box, I added a bit of tissue paper and the gifts:

To top it off, I added another piece of tissue and scattered some confetti I made. To make your own, just grab a hole-punch. My 1/8” hole-punch has a little plastic piece that catches the holes (dots?), which makes it much easier to corral your confetti!  Finally, I made a banner (out of the same cardstock I used for the confetti and a length of ribbon) that says Congratulations. Using SuperGlue, I attached each end of the banner to the flaps of the box. This way, when she opens it the banner will pop up and wave nicely. Cute, right?  You can't really tell in the picture, but the flaps hold the banner out over the package by an inch or two.

In all, this only took an hour or two to complete.  My method for papering the inside of the box definitely added time that I wouldn't need to include using Dusty's method. Regardless, it was time well spent.  For someone who is as committed to the presentation of the gift as I am, the Party in a Box idea definitely takes your gift to the next level, and isn't that what you want when you can't be there to present the gift yourself?

Let me know if you have questions!  Also, I haven't linked a tutorial to Home Stories A2Z lately (still Beth's blog, slightly tweaked name), but I thought this post might be worth a link!  Head on over for more great tutorials and tips!!