How To: Crafty Scrap Gift Tags

If you like crafting, chances are you'll have a big stash of paper, card, or fabric scraps left over from other projects... plus all sorts of oddments like sequins and bows and buttons and beads.

Here's an idea for using your teeny scraps and other crafty leftovers to make pretty gift tags for Christmas, birthdays or any other special occasion.

You can let the colours of your crafty scraps guide you to create random colour combos, or carefully select crafty bits which match your chosen colour palette - e.g. if you're making tags to match specific gift wrap, or if you're wrapping all your Christmas gifts in the same colours and want the tags to match the theme.

1) Cut out some pieces of scrap card to form your tags, and punch a hole in each one at one end. Some of my tags were made with coloured craft card (white on the reverse side) and a couple were made with brown corrugated card. You can make them any size you fancy, and almost any bit of card you can write on the back & punch a hole through will do.

 

(You could alternatively skip step 1 and just use plain ready-made tags or luggage labels from the stationery store.)

2) Select an embellishment for your each tag - a button, a fancy sequin, a trio of small beads, etc.

3) Then cut a few square and rectangular bits of felt or decorative paper to "frame" the embellishment you've chosen. I used bits of denim for a couple of my tags - I quite like how the denim has frayed, but if you were making larger tags you could cut pieces of fabric with pinking shears to help prevent them from fraying.

 

4) Now you need to assemble all the pieces of your gift tag "topper"... I just used felt & fabric scraps for mine, so I stitched the felt layers together with a few stitches and then added the sequin/beads/bows in place with a couple more stitches. If you're using paper, or a mix of felt and paper, use craft glue to stick all the bits together and leave them to dry.

5) Finally, use craft glue or double-sided tape to stick your completed "topper" onto your tag, and then leave it to dry if necessary.

 

You can also cut a length of ribbon / yarn / twine / etc to make a string for attaching your tag to your gift. I usually leave this step until I'm ready to use the tags, and then make the string from a short length of whatever I'm using to tie around the gift so the tag matches perfectly.

 

Please feel free to borrow one or two photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial on your site. Thanks!

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