In the middle of the busy run up to Christmas, take a few moments of calm to add a little creativity to your wrapping this year. Grab yourself a mince pie and find a quiet corner to experiment with your Tombow ABT Dual Brush Pens and Tombow Mono Drawing Pens. These two pens are perfect partners as you can use the Tombow ABT Brush pens to create large brush strokes then add lots of detail with the Mono Pen fineliner tip. We asked artist Rebecca Cahill Roots to share some of her ideas for creating your own wrapping paper this year to make your gift giving truly unique.
Rebecca used blank brown coloured wrapping roll and white art roll paper for her designs. You can also use the inside of any wrapping paper you can save from other gifts to give it second life.
Start by roughly measuring the size of the piece of paper you are going to need and work on it flat before wrapping your present. If you try to decorate the present once it is wrapped you may risk getting pen on the gift underneath and writing on a three-dimensional shape is much harder.
Idea 1 - Winter Garland Leaves
Using a selection of winter greens, reds, browns and purple tones, begin by drawing small groups of holly leaves dotted across the page with your brush pens. Using a lighter green, add fern shapes behind the holly leaves at angles and bay leaf shapes in between until the groups of foliage begin to look full and cover the page.
You can them add pinecones, berries, dried oranges, cinnamon sticks or any other elements to give it a Christmassy garland feel. Once most of the paper is covered, use your Mono Pens to add details to it to make the edges of the leaves stand out and give depth to the drawings. Pick a contrasting coloured ribbon to profile your design.
Idea 2 - Personalised Wrapping
Here’s a really lovely way to add a personalised touch to a gift this year. In this example Rebecca has used the words Merry Christmas to decorate her wrapping but you could use a recipients name or a different festival you are celebrating. To create this wrapping paper, use a ruler to mark out lines across the page roughly 3.5 centimetres apart on a diagonal. If you feel confident you can begin to write your chosen words on repeat across the page, or pencil the words out first and go over them if easier.
Once you have covered the page with the words, use your Mono Drawing pens to add details to the downstrokes of the letters. Add berries, stars or other Christmassy motifs to the edge of the letters across the whole page.
3 - Hand-drawn Bows
This is a lovely way to add a finishing touch to a plain coloured wrapping paper. Measure out the centre point of your piece of wrapping paper and draw two central pencil lines that meet in the middle to make a cross. This will be the centre of your bow so imagine this is where the knot section will be. Draw a small oval as your central knot and then two large ovals for the loops. Then add two longer stands at the bottom to be the hanging ribbons from the bow adding some thicker section and thinner lines to make the ribbon look more three dimensional.
Using brush pens draw lines down the cross or ribbon across the page and the bow drawing making sure to match the thickness of the lines as you work across. Pick a lighter shade to act as a blender and use it to draw the colour down to give the ribbon the feeling of movement. Finish by using Mono Drawing Pens to highlight the edges of the ribbon and give it some depth.
4 - Scandi Winter Houses
Create this whimsical wrapping paper style by drawing yourself a very light set of pencil guidelines for your illustration. These Scandinavian style houses are all tall and thin so this wrapping idea works best on longer presents and would look great on a wine bottle bag.
Begin with a border to your work to frame the drawings then add a name section to the top on the page in a Brush Lettering style. Carefully pencil out your houses with light pencil lines to make sure you can rub them out easily. Now use your brush pens or Mono pens to go over your design. The ABT Brush Pens will give you a more chunky effect where as the Mono Pens create a more delicate and vintage feel to the wrapping. Add tiny stars to the back of the houses to give it the feel of a Winter’s night.
5 - Sparkly Tinsel Patterns
To create this pattern, use a Mono drawing pen to draw a continuous line across the page in different directions, imagining what it would look like if a piece of tinsel was draped across the page. Select a range of colours that you like together and begin to slowly work down the fine line to add strokes of pen either side of the line. Use one colour first and work across the whole length of the line, then repeat with each colour until you are starting to really build up a full bushy effect.
Once it feels like the tinsel is looking plush and full, use fine liners to highlight some of the strokes along the line to add movement to the tinsel. Some can be simple lines and others you can draw around whole strands of the tinsel. Add tiny stars at the base of some some of the strands in lighter colours to give the idea that it is sparkling.
If you have ago at any of these wrapping ideas this holiday season share your designs with us @tombow_uk