Homemade All-occasion Gift Tags

 For some reason, I have a hard time throwing away greeting cards that we receive from family and friends.  I know that each card was chosen with love, and time was spent to compose and deliver the special message.  So after years of collecting holiday, birthday, Mother’s Day and thank you cards, I have a huge bag full.  This year I've decided to put them to good use.

 

First, I went through the cards and saved the extra memorable ones. I’m not sure what I’ll do with those yet, but I can’t bear to part with them yet. The remaining cards are being repurposed into gift tags. 

Some of the cards that were chosen to be transformed into gift tags.

 

My best tool for this project was definitely my Fiskars sliding paper cutter. I don’t know what I would do without it! I suppose it could be accomplished with scissors or a ruler and craft knife, but I would certainly not choose to do it that way. Other supplies that came in handy were a hole punch, corner rounding punch (not necessary, but improves the look of the tag), to/from stamp and ink pad, other various stamps, stickers and skinny ribbon or cord.

 

My handy paper cutter in action

Various additional supplies

 

All you need to do is start cutting the cards into reasonable size squares or rectangles. I tried to capture the best parts of the images on the card while at the same time getting as many gift tags from each card as possible. I also needed to make each card big enough for the stamp to fit on the back and be sure there wasn’t any writing on the back. I even cut out plain solid cards, and used stickers and stamps to embellish the front. I ended up with all different sizes and occasions but mostly holiday images.

 

Those 5 cards in the earlier photo made over 20 gift tags!

I got 5 cute ones out of this one card!

The finishing touches involved punching a hole in the top, rounding the top corners, stamping the to/from image on the back and tying a ribbon through the hole. 

A back and front of 2 tags

I plan to use many of the gift tags myself but I thought I could package them up for simple, yet useful, gifts. I used some cello bags, repurposed from other craft supplies, and a folded index card on top. I’m probably going to print some labels to customize the package top if I can get my printer to cooperate. My daughter helped so much with the cutting, stamping and punching. She’s excited to give some of these packages to her teachers as holiday gifts.

 

I’m also working on an idea for using some of the beautiful messages from greeting cards to display in a frame, either with or without pictures. Here’s a preview of what I have in mind. Maybe it gives you some inspiration as well. Please share your ideas for repurposing greeting cards. I’d love to hear about them!

I have this collage frame I've never opened.

I could put some scrapbook paper behind the messages to add a punch of color.



I like the idea of having all similar themed sayings in one collage but would also be good to have some photos mixed in.  It would make a nice gift...think Anniversary!