Friday, November 19, 2010

Lasts Year's Holiday Cards are This Year's Gift Tags!



I’ll admit it, I have a hard time getting rid of stuff… I’m not a hoarder, it’s just the crafter in all of us!

It’s the idea that you can make something out of anything. You know as soon as something is thrown away you’ll undoubtedly have a brilliant idea of how to reuse it.

One thing I have a hard time getting rid of is Holiday cards. I save them, then the next year I usually end up tossing them, knowing I’m just going to get another group from the same people.

Finally I decided to do something with them. There are a lot of possibilities, but the one I went with this year was gift tags. Use them on holiday gifts, host/hostess gifts, thank you tags on favors, or even as place cards tied around a glass/bottle.


Materials:

Scissors and/or X-acto

Hole punch

Tag-shaped punch (optional)

Ribbon

Any or all of the following for decorating: pens, markers, crayons, glitter, paint, puff paint, beads, sequins, feathers, yarn, twine, raffia, tissue paper, stickers, charms, wire, twigs, acorns, pine cones, dried flowers and berries, stamps and anything else you can think of!


Steps:

(If you are using a tag-shaped punch skip steps 1-2)

1. Use the backs of a few greeting cards as stencils. Draw the shapes you want on the back of a few cards and cut them out.

2. Trace your stencils on the front of your greeting cards.

3. Cut your tags our with scissors or an X-acto knife. (Or if you are using a tag-shaped punch, just use that to punch the shapes from your cards)

4. Decorate your tags. This is the part where you really get to be creative! I stuck to glitter paint, pens and beads, then layered varying sized tags on top of each other for texture. The possibilities are endless! Go with a glam theme sticking to metallic paint and glitter, or keep it natural with twigs, dried berries and raffia.

5. Punch a hole at the top of each tag.

6. Thread ribbon through the hole and tie a knot. Add a bead if you’d like, for even more decoration.

Now your tags are ready to go, bringing a personal, handmade, eco-friendly element to every gift you give this holiday season!

2 comments:

Nicki said...

I love, love, love this idea! Also I see one of those gift tags was made with the card we sent last year! :D

Jessie Katz said...

I actually got a few good gift tags out of your card! It was hard to cut some of these up, I'd read the message inside and want to save it, but at least this way they are getting reused and not just sitting in a folder never to be seen again!