The extra bits are sometimes the most fun... Tie or glue or tape something pretty or fascinating or silly to a package, and it becomes - well, prettier, or more fascinating, or sillier! See what you think about these unusual gift wrapping ideas...
  

• Recycled bows of yesteryear

• Use pinking shears to cut many narrow strips of newspaper and/or colorful magazine pages and tie them into a "bow" to add to a package

• Glue wood shaving curls on into bow shapes (a wood plane can make great, long shavings from a piece of scrap, even if you don’t have a woodworking project going)

• Cut-out pictures (like my dog calendar photos, cut around with little pinking shears - to one of which I added angel wings... which idea then became Christmas ornament gifts another year!)

• Christmas card or calendar photos glued onto the top of a flat package

• Wrapped candies; sticks of gum arrayed in a star

• Little Christmas ornaments
   
• Two cellophane-wrapped candy canes "facing each other", to form a heart - glued to the front of a box

• Burnt-out Christmas light bulbs (with or without light reflectors or "subduers")

• Pieces of jewelry (a great way to use up those single earrings!)

• Hair bows and barrettes, shoe clips

• Balloons (un-blown-up - tied on... to add to the festivities on opening day!)

• Charms, buttons
    
• Old postcards or photographs, silly photographs

• Flowers - dried, or beaded, or made of paper, wire ribbon, or Orange Rind Flowers (see Instructions); and/or leaves (real leaves - perhaps sprayed gold?, or leaves made of paper)

• Fir cones or little pine or spruce cones

• Popcorn! - glue popcorn puffs onto the surface of a flat package in triangles to represent Christmas trees... "trim" with sequins, edible silver cake-decorating "BBs", and what-have-you

• Designs or random decorations made with glued-on sequins, glitter, stickers, confetti, etc.

• Jigsaw puzzle pieces, each glued on a wire - use a bunch together in a spray

• Origami shapes (you can use old phone book pages or magazine photos when you run out of perfect colored paper!)

• Pipe cleaners in various shapes (stars come immediately to mind) - look for the metallic versions

• And to go with that plumber’s tape ribbon... a decorative bow! - made from 4 equal pieces of plumber’s tape, held together via holes in the centers (with a flat nut?), notched at the ends, crimped artistically?; and perhaps with wire curlicues as ornamentation?