I am so excited to share this project with you! If you’re anything like me, a go-to gift for a party, birthday, or other celebration, is typically a bottle of wine. And hey – I like receiving bottles of wine myself…just in case you were wondering… Anyway, I was getting bored with the typical wine bag as a wrapper. Yawn. I scoured the Internet for some inspiration, and (surprise) Martha gave me some good ideas to get me started. I took my own twist, and I am SO happy with how it turned out! I present to you – a clever way to wrap a wine bottle!

Wine Bottle Wrap

Materials needed:

• Bottle of wine/champagne
• Dish towel
• Straight pins
• Twine
• Wax paper

The instructions are pretty simple. First, lay the bottle lengthwise on the dish towel, leaving about 2 inches of slack at the bottom.

Roll the bottle up in the dish towel and secure with straight pins (I used 3).

Next, fold the bottom of the dish towel inward, like you would a present. Secure with straight pins.

Now we need to deal with the top of the bottle. Gently fold the excess towel down around the neck of the bottle, making sure not to expose the top.

Secure the bottle top with twine. Make sure to leave enough twine at the ends to secure the wax paper flower to the bottle.

I suppose you could be finished at this point, but I wanted to take it a step further. Tear off two pieces of wax paper from the roll, in roughly 12×12 inch squares. Cut the paper in half, and then in half again, leaving you with 8 6×6 inch squares.

Stack the 6×6 inch squares on top of each other, then accordion fold them in roughly 1/2 inch pleats.

Using scissors, round the corners of each end of the accordion folded paper.

Tie a piece of twine around the middle of your accordion, then unfold the ends. It should look like a bow tie! Make sure to cut a long enough piece of twine to allow you to tie the finished flower to your bottle.

While holding the twine for stability, gently pull each wax paper layer up to the center of the “bow tie.”

It’s starting to look like a fluffy peony now! Repeat the same procedure on the other half of the flower, then fluff the petals to create the desired appearance.

Tie the wax paper flower to the top of the wine bottle with the twine tails from the flower and the bottle. When secure, clip the excess twine.

Ta-da! You now have a beautifully wrapped bottle of wine! I am quite sure this is going to be my go-to wrapping method from now on: it is pretty, and (aside from the wax paper flower) a very green way to gift wrap. I mean, who doesn’t need an extra dish towel in their kitchen? I love thinking that my friend will be able to enjoy ALL of the gift that I present them with!