Meet the professional gift wrapper who knows exactly how to wrap anything and everything – and even uses an air fryer as one of her tools of the trade.
Rachael Wood, 33, trained professionally to gift wrap while she studied visual merchandising at college.
But her career only kicked off when she wrapped an entire client’s Christmas haul two years ago, helping them save time before a trip abroad.
Now she wraps hundreds of presents and charges between £6 and £9.50 a gift, providing a door-to-door service. One of the biggest gifts she’s had to wrap is a car.
Rachael is environmentally conscious and makes sure to re-use and recycle materials as much as possible.
Her top tips include using a hairdryer to remove stickers from bags and boxes, so you can reuse them, and drying citrus fruits in the air fryer to create natural embellishments.
When it’s not Christmas time she makes props for weddings and theatres and even made floats for the Common Wealth games earlier this year.
Rachael said: ‘My favourite thing about wrapping is seeing the joy that people get, and they say their gifts look amazing and beautiful.
‘I make sure I know exactly what the recipient would like to personalise their package.’
Rachael, who calls her business Polywood Studios, wrapped two entire hotels in Solihull Birmingham in giant 2m by 2m bows in November 2019.
‘It was certainly a challenge,’ she said.
‘Everyone had to help, and we were up on ladders to perfect the bow.’
As well as bows, Rachael uses feathers, bows and dried flowers on the gifts she wraps.
She said: ‘I’m really pedantic – the patterns on the paper have to line up perfectly.
‘I’m an absolute perfectionist.
‘I love wrapping unusual gifts and I try to conceal the identity of the present for a surprise.
‘For example, if it’s a book, I will put it in a box so it’s not so obvious.
‘It takes me around ten minutes to wrap each present.’
Rachael also does ‘fushoriki’ – traditional Japanese wrapping – which involves packing presents in fabric which can be used again.
Then there’s ‘packing paper’- bulk paper which is usually thrown away after deliveries – which she reuses and and spruces up with vibrant decorations.
‘You don’t have to break the bank to make your presents look expensive – you can wash and reuse old ribbon,’ added Rachael.
Despite being a pro-packer, even Rachael makes mistakes.
She laughed: ‘Oh I’ve made so many mistakes and had so many disasters.
‘I’m forever ripping paper but luckily, I’ve gotten pretty good at repairing it.
‘Once I wrapped something up and then forget who it’s for so I had to open it up to see and wrap it back up again.’
Rachael’s top tips for wrapping
- Dry citrus slices on low in the air fryer or oven to use as wrapping accessories
- Don’t throw away old Christmas cards- reuse them to stick on packing paper for gorgeous gift wrap
- Use Christmassy pot pourri and stick onto gifts with a glue gun – it looks and smells amazing, cinnamon sticks also work well
- Instead of buying gift tags, buy a lovely pen or set of ink stamps and put the name directly on the gift
- Wrap small objects in seeded paper which can be planted in the garden after
- If you’ve got a bit of patterned wrapping paper left but not enough for a whole gift, wrap your gift in plain paper (scrunched packing paper works well) then use the patterned paper like a band around the middle
- Blast a hairdryer on an old label to remove it and re-use a box
- Wash and straighten out old ribbon with hair straighteners
- Hang old bouquets upside down to dry out and use the dried flowers for embellishment
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