‘Make Christmas Simple’ and get your gifts wrapped by our volunteers.
For a gold coin donation, get your gifts wrapped by our chosen community group, The Papaioea Rose City Lions, who get all of the proceeds from your donations.
Where does your donation go?
Many in our community will benefit from the generosity of The Plaza customers donating to have their gifts wrapped this Christmas. This is all made possible because of the Papaioea Rose City Lions who volunteer on our gift wrapping booths and share out all the proceeds to different groups in our community each year. Read on to find out more about Papaioea Rose City Lions and how they intend to use your donations.
You can find our gift wrapping booths:
Outside Jay Jays and Tarocash
Thursday 9 December – Tuesday 24 December
Open 10am -Centre closing time (find The Plaza opening hours here)
Wrapping Paper
Back by popular demand we have our very own wrapping paper available at our gift wrapping booths, designed by New Zealand artist, Evie Kemp. The paper depicts a ‘Kiwi Christmas’ using iconic symbols such as Pohutukawa flowers, jandals, fish n chips, ice creams and more. See if you can name all the iconic symbols?
MEET EVIE KEMP, GIFT WRAP DESIGNER
Evie Kemp is an Auckland based artist and designer. A lot of her work is in textile or surface design; she spends her days applying her love of colour and pattern to almost anything she can get her hands on!
For our Christmas paper, Evie was given the brief to create an iconically “Christmassy” design but without the typical (and off-season) imagery of snowy scenes. Evie instead incorporated the icons of a kiwi Christmas… “because our Christmas traditions are important too, they’re just different!”
Evie’s favourite icon on the wrapping paper is the fish and chips! “My favourite!” And the cheeky Pukeko stealing a chip! Whilst Evie loves a kiwi Christmas now, it definitely wasn’t the case when she first moved to New Zealand!
“My Family moved to NZ [from England] when I was 14 and we were living up in Red Beach [on the Hibiscus Coast, Auckland]. My parent’s insisted on the “Christmas Day at the beach” thing as it was such a novel idea for them. The weather (typically) though wasn’t playing ball and it was rainy and as a very grumpy teenager I just went and sat in the car!”
Evie has since come around to enjoying and embracing the positives of having a Christmas lunch outdoors!
Evie loved creating our wrap knowing it would be beneath trees on Christmas Day! “It’s a real thrill to see everyone getting their gifts wrapped in it at the wrapping stations in the run up to Christmas. It feels like after the year we’ve had there isn’t a better time to truly celebrate the uniqueness of a kiwi Christmas!”
