Gift Tags 2011

I was wrapping presents yesterday when I discovered I had no gift tags. I had grand delusions of making some lovely tags with my daughter, but with all the things that have needed done around the house, they just didn’t happen. The wrapped (and unlabelled) gifts started piling up under the tree and I really needed to do something about it before I forgot which gift was which.

Being Sunday, a day when most shops aren’t open and the bus service is less than useful, I had to make them with what I had on hand. I looked through my rubber stamps in search of ideas, preferably simple due to time restricitions. I found a lovely holly-esque stamp (Hero Arts) that I though would be perfect. I grabbed some kraft coloured cardstock, a Merry Christmas stamp (Anita’s, I think), brown Archival Ink, a green water-based marker, my corner rounder, paper trimmer, hole punch, acrylic blocks, Peeled Paint Distress Ink (Tim Holtz/Ranger), a gold paint pen, and red, gold and clear Sakura glitter pens.

I cut my tags to a size I thought appropriate, in this case 1.5 by 4.5 inches, and used the green marker to colour the stamp before stamping the image of the holly on each tag. If I had a red marker, I would have coloured in the berries, too. I didn’t.

Instead, I used the red glitter pen to draw the berries on by hand.

And since I love using my corner rounder, I pull it out and clipped the corners of my tags.

I then coloured over the green stems with the gold glitter pen, and over the tops of the berries in the clear (silver) pen. I felt it gave the image a bit more life. To give added dimension to the tag itself, I used a scrap of felt lying around on my desk to blend the Distress Ink onto the edges of the tag. Ranger/Tim Holtz actually make a tool for doing this. I don’t have one, though I keep meaning to buy one. Instead I used what I had on hand.

For the back, I used the Archival Ink and I stamped the ‘Merry Christmas’ sentiment so it was off-centred (leaving room for the recipient’s name). I then outlined the tag using the gold paint pen to finish it off.

Presto! 18 gift tags without having to take a trip to the shops. A better view of the front and back of the tags:

And how they look on the pressies: