Many times throughout the year, we get invited to a dinner party to celebrate a birthday. We’ve all been there… Fun with family and friends, tasty food, a little bit of drinking, lots of fun with people we love! So naturally, you decide to buy a bottle of wine for your friend and it’s time for wine bottle wrapping. Yep, if you’ve tried it before, you know what a pain it can be. My wrapping skills are pretty descent but when it comes to wrapping a wine bottle, it looks like a 5 year old did it! So I came up with a few ideas of my own. Let’s ponder!
Gifting A Bottle Of Wine
When someone’s having a birthday, and that person is an adult, gifting wine is number one on my list… Unless of course that person doesn’t like wine, in which case we probably wouldn’t be friends in the first place ;) Choosing and buying the wine is the easy part, wrapping it up is a completely different story. Like I said before, you can’t really show up at that party with a bottle that looks like it’s been wrapped at the nearby liquor store by the owner himself. So I came up with some “costly” ideas.
Gifting Wine With Class
Wherever you buy wine, you’ll conveniently find clever wine wrapping accoutrements. They come is various shapes and materials. Some are in paper, others are in leather, you’ll even find burlap for those who prefer the natural look. Some are vertical, others are horizontal, and made to look like a handbag! Regardless of the design, they all feature the latest and greatest marketing skills with one goal in mind… For us to buy them all! Even if we only need one. Damn you consumerism!
Depending on the style, those wine gift bags can cost anywhere between $3 and $15. They look really cool and slick but it gets expensive, and it’s just weird when the bag starts costing almost as much as the gift itself. So to save money, I started regifting some of the reusable gift bags people gave me for my birthdays. Needless to say, I quickly diluted my gift bag inventory and was running low. So I came up with another idea…
Wine Bottle Wrapping Crafty Trick
Growing tired of spending more money than I really should, I had to think of something. One day, I ordered a large poster on Amazon and it got delivered in a mailing tube. I hate wasting stuff, and I reuse and recycle as much as I possibly can. I kept looking at that tube and then it hit me… There it is, my very own wine bottle wrapping crafty idea! All I needed to do was to cut sections of that tube to create multiple bottle sleeves for my winey gifts. Let me tell you how I turned these boring cardboard tubes into a veritable work of art!
Crafting The Wine Bottle Sleeve
Now let me know share with you my crafty little wrapping secret… Because I don’t like keeping things under wrap ;) Wrapping… Under wrap… Get it?
Anyway, the tube I got was conveniently 3 inches wide (inside diameter). Most wine bottles are 3 inches wide so that worked out well. Certain wine bottles, like Pinots and Champagne can be as wide as 3.5 inches wide, so choose accordingly. Make sure to measure the total length of the bottle and add 1 inch to that measurement. You’ll use the extra space to plug the end of the tube. And for that, you can use the plastic caps that came with the tube or make your own with some dense polyethylene foam, which is another shipping material we often get. Simple place the bottle inside the tube/sleeve and plug each end.
Wrapping The Tube
The shape of the sleeve is a lot easier to wrap than the wine bottle itself. It’s just a cylindrical shape that can be easily wrapped by rolling the wrapping paper over it, and folding the ends. You can use wrapping paper or make your own design by asking everyone to sign their name and write a cute birthday message. I had some leftover wine-themed wrapping paper and that’s what I used. If you ask me, that’s a lot better and more civilized than singing this god awful happy birthday song.
Oh and by the way, I often travel to France to visit family. Naturally, I come back from France with a few wine bottles because it would simply be a crime not to. TSA isn’t known for their soft and delicate methods when handling luggage. So, I use the same method to protect wine bottles when flying, and wrap the tubes in hermetic plastic to keep it waterproof (just incase). I’ve never had any broken bottles since.
One More Wine Bottle Wrapping Trick
Another crafty idea is to simply use multiple layers of tissue paper. Set them down on a flat surface and put the standing bottle on top of them. Simply wrap the tissue paper over the bottle and use twine or a bow to secure everything around the neck of the bottle.
So that’s a WRAP, people! Wrapping… That’s a wrap… Yikes, tough crowd. What can I say… I love puns, especially wine puns!
Don’t walk around town with a naked bottle of wine in your hand. Rise to the occasion, my friend. You have an opportunity to look like a VIP going to an exclusive birthday party. Make it classy with a DIY wine bottle wrapping sleeve that will make any wine look like a collector item from the most acclaimed winery. Just don’t say where it’s from… No one needs to know. But make sure to tell everyone about Wine Ponder ;)
Quick side note on being a good human… Keep your shipping material, reuse and recycle! Certain people are too busy looking for ways to colonize other planets. That’s all fun and games but until then, we love our own planet and we only have the one. So let’s all do our part to keep it a livable place.
Be good!