It has been a pretty massive 10 days in the Planning With Kids household. I am certainly not complaining as on the whole it has been super exciting as well. It has just meant that my regular posting schedule sort of went out the window! But I am back on track now and normalcy should return to my posting schedules.
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This week as part of my Christmas preparation for 2010, I have jumped ahead slightly to Christmas Tags and Wrapping. More specifically I have a super simple tutorial showing you how you can make your own handmade Christmas Gift Tags.
Back in July I wrote about Christmas Themes and how I had decided to go for a natural theme this year. The great thing about choosing a theme early means that you can be on the look out for the essentials that match your theme, even when you haven’t really hit Christmas mode.
So when I saw this large roll of very cute birdie kraft wrapping paper online, I knew I had found my wrapping paper for this year. Although this wrapping paper is non traditional Christmas wrapping, it is perfect for our family. The colours meet the theme and we use a bird image like a family logo.
I purchased it from Wrapco when I was buying items for the school card group. I also purchased the lovely thick twine (shown in photos further down) from here as well. Wrapco have such a gorgeous range of papers. The only catch is that the minimum order is $50. Last year for Christmas, I sent the link around to my sisters and we all bought our Christmas paper and ribbons from here, so the $50 minimum wasn’t a problem.
So with the wrapping paper sorted, now I needed tags to match!
Christmas Tags – Material and Tools Needed
I have made my own tags for the last couple of years. I have also made tags with the school card group as part of a fundraiser. You can see the school ones in red, green, and silver gold combinations from 2009 here and this year’s natural themed ones here.
I am not a naturally crafty person, but I do love a good crafty tool and the one I used to make the Christmas Tags is one of the best! It makes the job of creating Christmas Tags so easy and almost fun! Although once I had done 900 of them (for school) my love for this tool did wane slightly.
I purchased my tag maker from the lovely Paula at Creative Memories. It cost $41 and is completely worth the money. Three other friends have gone on to purchase one themselves after having a play with mine.
For the card stock, I bought a $5 bag of left over remnants from Pedigree Paper. They are located in Preston, near Northland. They also stock a fantastic range of A4 size card stock which you can pick and mix until you fill a box. Prices vary depending on the card you select, but start at $30 a box from memory. How many sheets you fit into a box depends on the gsm of the card you choose. I have had over 150 sheets of 260gsm in a box before which works out to be about $0.20 a sheet.
How To Make Christmas Tags
While I love the natural themed ones we have made for fundraising at school this year, they don’t quite go with my paper. Being pushed for time a bit at the moment, I wanted a super simple design – I need to make 40 of them. I chose white card stock as the recycled brown card I had, just blended in with the paper. You just slip the card into the tag maker and press down to cut out the tag shape.
With your freshly cut tag, you simply slide it into the top slot of the tag maker, press down and it cuts the hole for the string.
To decorate the tag, I decided to use the actual wrapping paper. But because the wrapping paper is relatively thin, my shape cutters wouldn’t cut cleanly. To get around this, I placed some scrap paper in the shape cutter with the wrapping paper and it then cut beautifully.
I then used some double sided squares to stick the heart on and threaded through some natural twine and they were finished!
If you make your own tags I would love to hear what designs and /or tools you use. If you have blogged about them, be sure to leave a link so myself and others can check them out!