How often have you found yourself late for a birthday party and casting around for a way to wrap your gift? We find ourselves in that position so often, we’ve begun to keep a photo archive of hasty, curiously chic gift wrapping solutions, sometimes made with only a few elements. Two recent favorites: a recycled cardboard box, a frayed-edged piece of velvet ribbon held in place invisible with double-stick tape, and heavy weight paper cut and folded…

And this startlingly-sensual beauty from artist David Carrino: a cardboard box, blue painter’s tape, and just the right, surprising post card.

This photo snapped at CB2 last winter gives an idea of materials you can easily keep on hand for gift wrapping and other practical uses: Kraft paper, colored tapes and twine.

We also love the idea of rubber stamps which can transform plain paper in an instant:

A Fed-Ex mailing envelope turned inside and out and crumpled makes for beautiful Issey Miyake-ish wrapping paper:

Occasionally, we’ve gone to town printing out images, poems etc we find on the internet to use as wrapping paper. We got kind of carried away interleaving John Cage artworks and scores to wrap around a book about his work, tied with our collection of twines.