Merry [home] Making Series: Christmas Gift Tags

It's the last day of my Merry [home] Making Series!  My guest blogger for today is Jenny of Notes from the Plumb Tree.  I came upon Jenny's blog pretty randomly over a year ago when I fell in love with her shoes.  Jenny creates the most beautiful little shoes I've ever seen, and sells them in her shop on Etsy.  Since then, I've come to love not only her shoes, but also the sweet little family she shares about on her blog.  Seriously, Hunter, Ainsley, and Tessa are some of the most adorable kids.  On the planet.  And I really appreciate how she is raising them in a Christ-minded way.  It makes me excited to be able to share things with Kayleigh, someday!  I hope you enjoy her post, and please go send some love over at Notes from the Plumb Tree!

Christmas Gift Tags

Thank you so much, Bethany, for having me as a guest blogger.  Bethany has become a bloggy friend of mine and we have been blogging back and forth for over a year now and I am honored to be posting here.  I am a crafting Momma of three littles so that means blog posts are quick and full of the ramblings that go with mothering three crazy monkeys who are constantly up to something while I am in the middle of creating.

This week I enlisted their help in making Christmas gift tags.  Every year I save the Christmas cards that come in the mail in a ziplock bag.  The next year I break them out and make them into gift tags.

I hate throwing such pretty cards away, so they get repurposed and the pretty pictures on the front are cut out.  One card can often make several tags as each pretty piece is cut out separately and glued onto squares of cardstock.  Then I punch a hole in the corner and put some pretty curly ribbon through.  Sometimes I glue on buttons as well.  The kids were recruited this year. (You can read this as the tags are going to look a lot more "homemade" this year and we skipped the buttons, haha!). They helped chop up cards and glue the pictures down on cardstock.  I punched holes and put on the ribbon.  Hunter wrote "To" and "From" on many of them.

As you can see, we craft very neatly don't we?  Anyhow, it was also fun to read who sent us cards last year and think about them again.  One especially poignant  moment was when I found the card my grandpa sent last year.  He passed away in February.

Because I enlisted the help of my children, I thought I also might want some more "grown up" tags for prettier gifts that I may be giving away outside the family.  These next few are my "big girl" tags.  They are made of cardstock and paper doilies you find in packs at the Dollar store along with some twine.  I thought they would be cute with brown paper wrapping.  It's sort of a vintage theme.

I fortunately have a sizzix machine that cuts out tags, but you could use regular tags bought at the store. Also, I needed to craft with my gingerbread tea in a holiday mug and Christmas candles.  Don't forget that.  It's part of the crafting ambiance.  Yes, I'm sure the kids are creating chaos somewhere, but in my little crafting bubble of tea and gingerbread candles, peace reigns supreme.  Yes, I like my tea strong and leave the tea bag in and also put a good dosing of holiday coffee creamer.  Pure crafting bliss. Anyhow...Here I am mid-craft gluing on doily edges to the bottom half of the tags.

And Ta-Da!  You have some cute little vintage looking tags for some brown paper packages.  It reminds of "brown paper packages tied up with string".  Anyhow, they are simple, neutral, and vintage.

Thanks so much for hosting me, Bethany!  Merry Christmas from our chaotic crafting house to yours!