HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Yes, Christmas has gone, this beautiful family gathering time, but another celebration is just around the corner. 2013 is the new year which is waiting for us. Some superstitious people might not be very happy with this year, but we’re looking forward to starting this new year plenty of illusions and dreams.

Anyway…what are you planning to do this New Year’s Eve? Will you stay with your friends or is it family time? And what are you going to do at midnight?

I guess it depends on the country where you live. We’ve googled a little bit to know about all the countries. Correct us if we’ve made any mistake ;)

We’re originally from Spain, then let’s start for this country first because it is the one that we know properly.

When the clock pins show the midnight, it’s time to eat grapes. It’s 12 o’clock, we need to eat twelve grapes, one for each ring of the bell.

Why do we do this weird tradition? There’re a lot hypothesis: it is said that at the early XX century, it was a grape abundance and it was decided to sell the grapes as ‘the lucky grapes’ to get rid of them.

Another gastronomic tradition is set in Italy, in this case, lentils at the New Year’s Eve dinner, good fortune symbol, but it seems that it was set as another excuse to avoid a surplus harvest.

These food traditions make sense if we think in the celebrations that take place in the cradle of the European culture, Greece. In Greece New Year’s Eve also means the Festival of St. Basil, one of the founders of the Greek Orthodox Church. So, they serve St. Basils cake or what is the same, Vassilopitta.

What's this cake special for? A silver or gold coin is baked inside it. Whoever finds the coin in their piece of cake will be especially lucky during the coming year. 

If we move to Northern Europe, we find one of the countries where the Christmas holidays are celebrated the most, the United Kingdom. These are so important for them. We also have to sum up all the different parades they celebrate around the country. We don’t know if it’s because of the English punctuality known all around the Globe or what, but one of the major events at New Year’s Eve takes place at the Big Ben in London, cheer and fireworks on. Same feeling in Scotland, or as they named New Year’s Eve: Hogmanay. It’s a four days celebration, and its summit is on the 31^st of January, although it doesn’t end ‘till the 2^nd of January, which is also a bank holiday. Don’t miss the welcome of the new year on Princess Street in Edinburgh.

But if you want to enjoy one of the largest parties and fireworks in Europe, you just go to Germany. Berlin, concretely the Brandenburg Gate, hosts this celebration. Germans toast the New Year with a glass of Sekt (German sparkling wine) or champagne.

Unfortunately, we can’t explain all the celebrations that are taking place all over the countries, we wish we could. But we’ll be delightful if you send us the way your country celebrates the New Year’s Eve.

Happy NEW YEAR to all of you!!! ;)

SelfPackaging team

BOXING DAY COMPETITION!!!

Let’s celebrate BOXING DAY!
You know, we love boxes... and if they are plenty of things, much better.
That’s the reason we'd like to celebrate this date with you.

We’ll give you a deal: send a photo of your Christmas ‘packagings’ or of your perfect wrapped gifts to hello@selfpackaging.com

You’ll have the chance to win your first name in cardboard letters*


Hurry up, the competition is going to end on 26th of December at 23:59.

WOOL IS COOL

In winter we need to wrap us up because it’s cold. Then, why we don’t wrap our ‘gifts' up?

We don’t want them to catch a cold. That’s why we decided to buy a wool skein from Katia to make them warmer.

Take the wool and use it as a ribbon. It gives them a wintry look, ideal for your Christmas gifts.

You can gather a small amount together in a corner, it will look like a cool wide ribbon. 

Or just tie the wool as a bow or hang it as a pendant. As you can see in the pictures the options are varied and a lot.

Or combine it with a jingle pendant or a little Christmas ball hanging on your Christmas packaging.

Or just forget about our tips and create a new way to use the wool on your gift-wraps. Remember, this winter Wool is Cool, just let them wrap your presents. There are lots of types of it: different colours, -even there are yarns which mix colours- sizes, and with trendy details. We discovered a new world of wool which was unknown for us. We chose the degradé one in grey.

Or if your Christmas presents are already gift-wrapped, another wool use might be just for decorating. Wrap whatever you want, we chose to cover our star-shape box with wool in a disorganised way.

What’s your name? Mary? Take one of our letters, the ‘M’ in this case, and wrap it up with wool. So, you can change the wool colour depending on your mood. It’s winter, why not in grey? It’s Christmas, maybe in red? St. Patrick’s day… Do you guess the colour?

 If you want to get our cardboard letters for free don't forget to participate in our Boxing Day Competition! Good luck! ;)

CHRISTMAS MARKETS WE LOVE

We’ve just landed from London! If you want to inspire yourself and be surrounded by the Christmas spirit what a better place in Europe: London. That’s our first stop, we’ll be glad to visit more Christmas Markets all around the old continent. Let’s start our tour.

This weekend in London, in Brixton, it was held one of these Christmas events. Good music, warm welcome and a lot of lovely handmade objects. Between knitting and designing we spent a great time. We hope to visit London again and if it coincides with Crafty Fox Market, much better, we’ll go there for sure. We bought some of our Christmas gifts for our Secret Santa at the office.

But London has a compulsory stop at Christmas: Winter Wonderland. For whom doesn’t know it, it’s a Christmas fair you can find in Hyde Park, plenty of Christmas rides, food and crafts stalls, and of course, lights, mulled wine, Santas, ice ring, reindeers and Christmas carols playing everywhere.

We spent a wonderful time there, meeting craftsmen and craftswomen or experienced marzipan, cupcake and cookie bakers.

We brought the Christmas magic back to Spain, where our headquarters are, to spare it around our office and to inspire our studio staff to make and customize our littleboxes much better.

ROCKIN’ AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE…

Sick and tired of the traditional Christmas tree? Make it one by yourself. Handmade gives us a lot of possibilities to make our customized Christmas tree.

We’ll give you some ideas to decorate and make your Christmas tree.

Is everything ready? let’s go then…

We chose cardboard to decorate it, cheap and easy to get. And we drew a star on it, to put up on top of the Christmas tree. Stars, angels, Santa’s silhouette… what is the most important for you?

Colour sprays will make the rest for you. We didn’t want to take risks and we chose the white one. But we added a touch of magic glitter on it. Translation: metallic paint.

Let’s match it with our snowy Christmas tree. We know, it’s in brown colour, don’t panic, let’s make it nicer. Grab your single hole punch and start making holes following the shape of the tree.

We decided to take advantage of the colour spray in white which has been already used.

And do you guess what’s the purpose of the holes that we did before? We accept bets.

Our suggestion? Pass wool threat through the holes. We picked the white one, we want to make our Christmas tree as white as possible. Maybe it’s because we are not very used to seeing snowing in our country. At least, let’s pretend to have a snowy Christmas tree.

And that's the result!!

If you’re a busy person, which means less time to make or buy your Christmas decorations, we have another alternative for you.

Gold laces and jingle pendants, that’s all you need!

But if you are the contrary case, you like spending lot of time making your Christmas decorations, everybody here has his/her Christmas tree.

Paper prints are very useful in this case. Take the paper prints and paste a different one on every Christmas tree layer. Match them however you want, strips and dots, same or different colours, cut some stars, a snowy background… You notice that one of our favourite colours is blue, don’t you?

And you know the song, once we have your Christmas tree… Later we’ll have some pumpkin pie and we’ll do some carolling.