Annette Joseph: Hi! I am Annette Joseph, and I am a food and prop stylist. Now I am going to show you how to create a holiday party on a budget. Here I am going to show you how to wrap gift boxes to display your napkins and your flatware here on your buffet table. What you will need is a gift box just a plain white gift box. You will need a vase, it can be a round or it can be a square. A square is easier to cut, we are going to cut later. So I would suggest you get a square vase, scissors, an X-Acto blade, scotch tape, wrapping paper, and a pen.

This is a really, really cute way to display your napkins and your flatware. The idea of course is that this is a wrapped box and things are popping out of the top of it, these little napkins, they are napkins rolls, they are actually very simple, but they look a lot like a bow on the top of your box. So that was sort of the idea of thinking behind. I always like to share the thinking behind my crazy ideas. I am going to wrap up this box here and then comes the really fun part, the crafting part of the project. So wrap your box first. So now we have our box all wrapped up nice and neat and what we are going to do is we are going to take our square vase and we are going to use it as a template. So we are going to put it on the top of the box, like that, and take our trusty pen. We are going to outline it, this is the important part to try to get it square in the middle, and then you use a X-Acto blade and you cut down into the box through the wrapping paper slowly. Take your time. Cutting through both the wrapping paper and the box, and remember this is the top of the box, not the bottom of the box, because sometimes the boxes, they come and they folded on the bottom, and that's not going to make for a really sturdy surface for you to cut into. So it's going to make it super, super difficult. This is the hard part, the fourth quarter, I would like to put my finger in there, and I hold on to it, so it's got something firm to kind of brace against and you hold that last part as you cut through it. And again, if you rip your paper, I just rip the paper, it's fine. Don't stress about it. Cut the paper, and cut the box top, it's all good, and then usually I just kind of smooth it out. If you have a little bit of a rip, it's kind of a lay spot, that's fine. And then I take my vase and I press it into the opening. So you're going to take your flatware, your knives and you're going to take your forks, kind of like making a bow on the top. And the reason of course, you have your vase there, is because that is what you are setting your utensils in and that kind of keep it's all sort of sturdy.

For the napkins, I am going to show you how to roll them up and put them together just like I did, in our wonderful little box display. When I measure all of my ribbons I usually cut them all at the same time and I measure them right out on the napkin. So I take a piece of ribbon and I run it one inch over the end of my napkin and one inch over the other end, cut it. And then I consistently can do that with all my other ribbons so that way you have got all of your ribbons precut so that you can role them up quickly. Another thing I really like to do is I like to mix up napkins because I have a lot of napkins and I am sure you have a lot of napkins. I like to take colors that go together, roll them all up, maybe pick two different colors of ribbon and wrap them together and put them all combined in my little box display. And that way it's an economical way to use what you already have and shake it up a little bit.

Alright, on to rolling. So we've got this square napkin, I would like to fold it in-half, and then I would like to roll it away from myself just like you would a cigar. Then you take your precut ribbon, remember you have got all these precut, wrap it around. And I wrap it, when I wrap it I tie it actually up a little bit higher because when you put it into this box, you want the bows to show. Now if you put them down on the middle, they are going to kind of rest into your box and they are not going to look as festive and as fun. And that's it.

I usually don't do a bow, I usually do something really simple because it's really easy to pull off, plus it looks really cute. And then we just sort of stick it in with the rest of its little brother and sisters, and it looks really, really cute. There you go, quick and easy and pretty. Next, we are going to show you how to make a very quick, easy, and beautiful display with your flowers for your buffet table.