printed felt gift wrap

In my recent post coloring time I talked about making prints onto acrylic felt using fabric crayons.

To enlarge the idea into gift wrap first I made a rough pattern.  I took gifts waiting to be wrapped, a cd and a dvd, and traced the outline onto a piece of plain paper.  Then, to add depth, I tipped the item up along each side of my tracing and traced again along the outer edge.  I ended up with a rectangle with flaps on each side.  I used a ruler to straighten my lines and then add about 1/4" seam allowance. I cut it out for my pattern.

I traced the pattern onto another sheet of plain paper using a pencil and drew over the line with a fabric crayon so the outline would transfer.  Then I planned my design.  For words I wrote the word in the margin first, then wrote it again backwards and used the backwards design to draw my letters (in pencil) in the design area.  Once I had the letters in a size and shape I liked, I drew over the outline with fabric crayon.  I filled in the big letters above with random doodles that I colored in.

In my pile of "stuff" I had a saved card that turned out to be just the size of the cd-size pattern.  I made rubbings of it on paper with the crayons. Some were more successful than others (yellow was a total bust--no pattern at all once ironed.  Blue and purple worked better.)  On the left below is one of the rubbings--you can faintly see the tree pattern. I need to work on my technique.  The initial is one of the letters I made a while back in the original blog post.  I closed these packages with contrasting perle cotton big running stitches so it's obvious and easy to open. 

I outlined or embroidered some, left others plain.  I hand stitched three sides (machine sewing would work just as well and be a lot faster.  Along the way I unearthed a baggie of seasonal sequins and added some.