Oooh, look at this completely unnecessary skill I learned this weekend!

     Bonus points: not only is it totally unnecessary, it's hysterically time-consuming! Like, twenty minute chunks of my life, ske-plosh, down the drain. Don't get me wrong, the end results are super pretty and impressive. It's just that in hindsight I realize there are probably more exciting ways I could have spent my Friday afternoon. Oh well, now I can whip this out at parties to impress people with my papercraft wizardry. Check it! I present to you: wrapping paper sea-urchin-type pointy spike bows!

     They're so, so pretty in person. Way more of a statement than any old squashed little bow you dug out of your attic five minutes before the party. I used this tutorial here, so I won't go into detail on how I made them, since that blog does a really good job of explaining it. The only thing I did differently was use hot glue instead of Elmer's, because I do not have the patience to hold eight hundred little cones of paper together while they dry. Once I'd gotten the hang of it and switched to hot glue, they took about twenty minutes each from start to finish. So I wouldn't recommend planning your whole wrapping scheme around one of these on every present (unless you're just feeling like a few hours of something crazy tedious would mellow you out -- no judgment, you do you), but if you need a real show-stopper for one present, then yeah, definitely give it a shot. They're not hard to assemble once you get into a groove. So hey, why not?