Holiday Gift Tags

Good Morning Everyone!

My grandmother, Nana Riley, "turned me on" to reading magazines. She subscribed to many "Women's" magazines: Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Woman's Day, Better Homes & Gardens, and McCalls. We'd sit side by side and read the short stories in them. Remember cutting out the Betsy McCall paper dolls from each issue of McCalls? When I was younger my grandmother cut them out for me along with "food" for the dolls to eat and "furniture" for their homes.

I had to make this centerpiece.  I think the idea
is from Martha Stewart's Living magazine.

Many years later I still enjoy flipping through magazines. I especially love the December issues which are usually filled with holiday recipes, ideas on ways to decorate your home, suggestions for last minute gifts, and photographs of clever ways to wrap your gifts and create gift tags.


In this age of technology we can receive daily newsletters from many magazine companies helping us celebrate the "25 days of Christmas", the " 12 days of Christmas", and we are e-mailed last minute holiday ideas.


Although I am not a scrapbooker I subscribe to Scrapbooks, ETC. magazine. Each issue is always packed with ideas that I use as a cardmaker and a papercrafter.  The December issue was especially exciting because it had lots of ideas for creating amazing gift tags. Their web site had even more ideas and none of them were duplicates from the magazine. I especially loved this snowman tag (click here to see it) and knew I had to make some of them.


When MaryBeth and I were shopping at Absolutely Everything in Topsfield, MA yesterday I bought a "To...From..." rubber stamp that is made by Great Impressions. I own several different Sizzix tag dies and use especially one of them a lot. Although I could easily just cut the tags that I want more often than not I cover the entire die with paper and cut out all 3 sizes of tags.  I often use the small and medium tags on my cards.  That leaves me with a huge stack of large tags. 


Last night I went through the large tags and picked out ones I could use to make some Christmas gift tags. I used my tuxedo black Memory box dye ink stamp to quickly stamp "to...from..." on each tag.

First I made some snowmen tags. I "copied" the idea from the Scrapbooks, ETC. web site, but added a scarf to each of my snowmen.

Then I dove into my stash of Christmas goodies. I used my reindeer and Christmas tree paper punches to create some tags.

I used some dimensional and puffy epoxy stickers to create other tags.

I put some felt embellishments on other tags.

In just a couple of hours I had a nice collection of handmade tags to put on the gifts and homemade cookies we will be giving to our neighbors, friends and family.


I wish I could just sit here and create, but I have been a little "too creative" lately and now I have some major cleaning to do today.
 
Hope you have a great day.
Carol