Gift Wrap and Gift Sets

So it turns out that picking out gift wrapping for bath and body products is hard. Who knew?! Seriously though, if you don't have those handy plastic molds that will help your product(s) fit into a nice box, gift wrapping becomes a process. And googling spa gift wrapping or bath and body gift wrapping or any similar searches will just bring you basic homemade gift tags and tissue paper in a gift bag. Not the kind of thing I want when I need to mail most of my products out to people.

This meant I had to experiment. For shipping purposes I mostly use white boxes and red tissue paper since they go with my Scarlet Moon Creations image though sometimes I will use black or white tissue paper as well. I also include a handwritten note on specialty paper and my business card. Of course I include either bubble wrap or packing peanuts to keep each order safe in the box. I thought about gift wrapping the boxes but was told that ribbons or wrapping paper can get caught in the sorting machines so that's a no go. Gift bags were still on the table but stuffing them into a shipping box seems unprofessional.

What's funny is that back in September when I was first starting to think about this a friend, and former co-worker, asked me for a custom order which including mailing a gift wrapped 4oz bath soak to a separate address. So I got to try one experiment which was a gift box in the shipping box. It worked really well but so far I've only found inexpensive gift boxes up to a certain size. Which is to say that none are big enough for more than one product, like a gift set.

Gift sets are the other product line I've been working towards offering more of this year. They may one day become the focal point of my business, but more on that another day. I have more than enough products now and quite a few with similar scents that can be easily offered as a set. So, I looked around to see what other Etsy businesses were doing as far as packaging gift sets, but it looks like they all just send the set in the shipping box arranged nicely. No gift wrapping at all. Now, this is fine for those who order for themselves or for someone else and plan to then gift wrap the item themselves and bring it to the person. But what if they want the gift/gift set sent directly to the recipient like my friend did?

 For him, I added the gift wrap price to the order then put the jar of bath soak into a white gift box and tied it with a red and white ribbon and a white tag with a personalized message. The recipient loved it. So that is what I will do for individual orders of 4oz or bigger. For the oils and sample sized gifts, I decided that wrapping them in red or white tissue paper enclosed with matching washi tape and a red or white organza bag works beautifully. These can be used as stocking stuffers too. The tissue paper keeps the item a surprise and the organza bag keeps the tissue paper from easily tearing.

To be honest, I still don't know how to work in gift wrapping for a larger gift set. For a sample set I can wrap them the same as I would individually and just display them nicely in the shipping box. But the bigger jars are just too much for the tissue paper so I think this year I will forgo gift wrapping for larger gift sets and just add a special message card option.

If anyone out there has any suggestions let me know. Tata for now

~Lashette
Scarlet Moon Creations