How-to: Scandinavian Flag Gift Wrap

This week has kinda become, “hey, my great-great-great-grandparents are from Norway” week on Hands Occupied. I touched on my Norwegian heritage  on Monday when I shared my grandma’s sandbakkel cookie recipe, which I guess put Scandinavia in my brain for the past couple weeks, resulting in this gift wrap idea. If you’ve got a rectangular gift to wrap for someone who is particularly excited about their heritage, this project is for you!

To be clear, my triple-great grandparents are actual Norwegian-borns, making me a not-so-glamorous fifth generation American. The thing is, though, that I’m still almost half Norwegian. My dad’s side of the family lived in rural Minnesota up until my dad went to college. Everyone married other Norwegians, and there’s one Dane and one Irish person thrown in there. There’s a whole lot of Scandinavian pride in a variety of flavors in that neck of the woods (and a lot of phrases like “uff da” in our lexicon). The convenient thing about Scandinavian flags are their similar design. This project can be easily done for any of these countries…

Image via Wikipedia. 

Supplies

construction or wrapping paper in appropriate colors

ruler & scissors or paper cutter

clear tape

Directions

For the purpose of illustration, I’m doing the Norwegian flag and all my directions will refer to the color scheme of that flag. Not Scandinavian? Never fear – you can put together most geometrically inclined flags easily to personalize gift wrap for the patriots in your family.

Wrap your box in red as you would any gift. The Norwegian flag design features a Nordic Cross design, which will be created with overlapping paper. Cut two long pieces of paper into 1-inch strips. Wrap one around the short side of your box, cut any excess length, and secure with rolled tape, creating a band around the box like a belt. Then do the same for the long side of the box.

Cut your blue paper into two 1/2-inch wide lengths of paper. Wrap and tape those pieces over the white cross and secure with rolled tape just like with the white cross.

For the long piece, since it’s the last element being added to the wrapping, I recommend placing your rolled tape as you see in the picture below. This  sticks it to the short side of the cross and helps keep it from sliding.

I kinda wish I’d have remembered to put a gift in this thing before wrapping it. Uff da!