Scandinavian Christmas, Day 8

Today's guest blogger is Rachel from Nest Full of Eggs. Rachel's blog is full of crafty ideas for decorating your house, she has pretty awesome Christmas decor too! She also has quite a few Scandinavian posts about St. Lucia (including an adorable homemade banner) and other Swedish traditions. She enjoys sewing, knitting, photography and paper crafting. She also contributed to the craft book, "Craft Challenge: Dozens of Ways to Repurpose Scarves," which comes out next Spring!

Rachel is 50% Swedish and knows how to throw a good Swedish Christmas smorgasbord. Today she will share how to give your Christmas gifts some Scandinavian flare!

Nordic Crosses Gift Wrap

A very easy way to add a Scandinavian touch to your gift giving this Christmas season is by wrapping your gifts with Nordic crosses also known as Scandinavian crosses. The cross symbolizes Christianity and although all the Scandinavian flags share this, they have their own histories & symbolism.

For this project gather your gifts to be wrapped, rectangular gifts & rectangular shaped boxes work best since they are more flag shaped. I had this puzzle of Sweden to wrap & thought what better way to wrap it then as a Swedish flag? Also a quick tip: cereal boxes (which are rectangular shaped) make great shirt boxes.

What you need:

Wrapping paper: red, white, 2 different shades of blue: one more like a royal blue & one more like a navy blue

For the crosses: yellow, red, white, navy blue

For the crosses you could use: fabric ribbons, gift wrapping ribbons, colored masking tapes, or Japanese colored masking tapes.

If using ribbon, you will also need double sided tape (instead of tying the ribbon I taped the ribbon ends down with double sided tape).

Denmark: did you know that Denmark was the first flag? It is red with a white Scandinavian cross.

Sweden: blue with a yellow Scandinavian cross, the colors are from king Magnus Birgersson's royal coat of arms (maybe the colors could also be for blue eyes and blond hair?)

Norway: did you know that Norway was the first to use 3 colors? It is red with an indigo blue Scandinavian cross outlined in white. For this gift wrapping you will need a wider white, so you can see the white on both sides of the blue, also, do the white cross first, then the blue cross.

Finland: a blue Scandinavian cross on a white background. The blue coloring is said to represent the country's thousands of lakes and the sky, with white for the snow that covers the land in winter.

Iceland: blue with a red cross outlined in white. The colors stand for 3 of the elements that make up the island: blue is the color of the Icelandic mountains, white represents the snow and ice covering the island most of the year, and red the volcanoes on the Island. For this gift wrapping you will need a wide white, so you can see the white on both sides of the red, also, do the white cross first, then the red cross.

Enjoy ! Have a Merry Scandinavian Christmas !

Thank you Rachel! Be sure to pop over to Nest Full of Eggs and say hello!