Make Gift Tags From Greeting Cards

I know I'm not alone. You get excited when those greeting cards come pouring in the mail, especially at Christmas. Some of you probably tear right into them. Others of you wait until there's a small collection, then savor them with your favorite cup of holiday cheer. You display all of the cards with pride on your door, mantle or card holder, taking care that the most unique or most treasured cards occupy a prominent spot. You tweak the arrangement so the photo cards aren't obscured. You never know when those family members might drop by!

What happens when the season is over, and it's time to send the decorations into hibernation once more? If you are like me, you're not quite ready to part with the cards. But after several weeks, the stack of cards you had such good intentions for becomes more of a nuisance than a source of pride. Then you're forced to filter the stack into toss-outs and treasures.

No more. Turn those toss-outs into gift tags!

You treehuggers out there will appreciate this idea. I've been talking about it for a while. Some of you have even been recipient to a few. So, anyway, here's how I make them:

1. Trim your favorite part of the card with multi-purpose scissors or personal trimmer. This could be an image, words or both.
2. Embellish the cutout with brads, eyelets, ribbon, etc. of your choice.
3. Choose one to three pieces of coordinating cardstock.
4. Trim a piece of cardstock that is slightly larger than the card cutout. Use the cardstock to charge the cutout or cut slits in the corners following steps five to nine below.
5. Using a photo corner maker, punch slits into all four corners of the cardstock.
6. Make sure the card cutout fits into the slits. If not, trim to fit.
7. Optional: Trim corners of cutout if you don't want them to appear on the other side of slits. 
8. Put tape runner on the back of the cutout and slide it into the corners.
9. Trim another piece of cardstock so that it fits into the slits on the reverse side.
10. Put tape runner on one side of the cardstock and slide it into the corners. (If you trimmed the corners of the cutout in step 6, this new color will appear on the front side in place of the corners.)

11. Using a eyelets setter, create a hole on the corner, top or bottom. You can later insert ribbon to attach it to a gift.

12. With a metallic round tip pen and your best penmanship, write To: and From: on the back side of the tag.

13. Attach to the gift package!

Scrapbook-izers Anonymous

Those faithful few of you who’ve followed my blog from the beginning know how long it takes me to complete a project. I’m deluding myself if I say I’ve got it all figured out. I make no pretense. I do have an occasional breakthrough or personal triumph, but eventually I start to question my own self-awareness. I will depart this life one day – and what will my legacy be? A pile of scrapbooks and albums with missing pages, blank pages tagged with sticky flags, haphazardly strewn stacks of embellishments and memorabilia, and a work table surrounded by the leavings of my latest temporarily abandoned project and the faint odor of adhesive. It could rival the domestic lifestyle of Walter Sickert.

How much better is this than a container- or computer-full of unorganized, unmarked pictures?

This subject came up at one of my recent crops. One of my good friends asked me point blank why I think it so hard to finish some projects. She tactfully grouped all of us into the same category, but I knew she meant me.

She’s right. At any given point, I might have four or five different projects going on at one time. Believe it or not, I don’t plan that; it’s just a symptom of a VERY short attention span. I have the memory retention of a dog. Doug from the movie UP comes to mind here: Hi, there. My name is Doug. My master made this collar so I may talk - Squirrel?! – Hi, there. My focus constantly migrates from books to movies to scrapbooking to copious miscellaneous side projects (e.g. gift tags, Valentines, paper albums, greeting cards, borders, journaling boxes, writings). I can’t even use the same shower gel for more than a few days at a time without experiencing ennui.

Have you ever started a book only to have several weeks go by without ever picking it up again? You suddenly feel disengaged from the story, forget who the characters are and wonder what brought them to the page where your book bungee has nestled itself. Then you contemplate starting over or giving up on it entirely.

Let’s just call it: I’m a scrapbook-izer with an insatiable need for variety. I like to play the field. My commitment falters because I’m tempted by the flirtations of newly purchased supplies, project ideas, or recently experienced events.

I have good intentions, but, frankly, the novelty begins to wane. Some days, after weeks of neglect, I’ll walk by my work table on the way to the kitchen and think: Ugh. Do I still have to finish that? What inevitably follows are the haunts of past projects that I never called back. I probably have enough now to warrant keeping a little black book. Oooh – a little black scrap book! Sounds like a good diversion. Anyone know where can I find a gently used genie lamp?

In part, it’s what we in the scrapbooking world reluctantly admit as scrapper’s block. That really happens to some people. But, for me, it’s just more of a doctor’s note excusing me to put personal projects off indefinitely. After about the 30th page or so, I’m suddenly spent – fresh out of ideas or embellishments or motivation.

Do any of you belong in this camp or am I the self-proclaimed leader and sole member of the club? Is there any cure for it?

To alleviate myself from the commitment, maybe I’ll put it to vote and let my two or three readers decide which project I should complete (list below).

Comment or message me to vote. My future generations are depending on you.

1. 2001/2002 Years in Review
2. Biltmore Estate girls’ weekend
3. Hawaii Revisited
4. 2009 Walls Yearbook
5. Blank, tagged pages from so-called completed albums
6. Project I can’t remember still in progress

My Hands - My Perceived Weakness

[written Sunday, August 2, 2009]

Last day of staycation. Went on a bike ride along C&O Canal yesterday stopping at Dickerson Recreation Center along the Potomac River. Dirt splattered onto our legs with each pedal and bugs smacked against our heads, announcing their arrival with a buzz. But we were in the heart of nature, near where the Confederate Army crossed the Potomac River during the Civil War. The terrain is flat flanked by the canal on one side and the river on the other. We picnicked at Dickerson Recreation Center and watched White's Ferry make its routine crossing a few times before biking back to our car.

From there, melancholy crept in. The thought of returning to work is almost unbearable. Soon autumn will be upon us again and with it the rush of back-to-school activities and holidays and, ugh, winter. By the time you read this, that dreaded season may well be over.

This may be the last page of the Biltmore scrapbook I complete for a while, but I'm happy with my progress this week.

I've got most of this page worked out already. I selected a couple of 6 x 6 background papers that resemble Victorian wallpaper to arrange in checker formation behind my pictures. I also know I want to use a "Rest & Relaxation" rub-on in the center of the page.

For the journaling, I plan to cut strips of beige cardstock to flank the pictures. But right now, I adhere everything with tape runner. As I'm trying to line up the papers with the edge of the page and with each other in the center, I silently curse because my very unsteady hand won't cooperate. When I'm old and decrepit, I'll have tremors. You heard it here first.

Wiggly, wobbly hands is my chief weakness from my vantage point. They contribute to camera shake and many an error when handling delicate embellishments like alphabet stickers and tiny wands with stars. Fortunately, the digital age has been my saving grace. Gladly, the shake doesn't negatively contribute to vigorously moving a popsicle stick back and forth over a rub-on, which I proceed to do now onto a piece of beige cardstock. I add this to the center.

Ink color is the only real decision I'm faced with before completing this page. I consider three shades of pink before reasoning that black would coordinate with the R & R title. I lay beige cardstock under the first picture I'm going to caption, then mark with a pencil where I"m planning to cut. The mark is a guide for me when I write so I don't scrawl beyond the cutting point.

I set the captions on the page where I plan to adhere them. I don't adhere immediately because of my commitment-phobic tendencies. Read how I conquered this. Sometimes this works to my advantage, like today. I initially write vertically for the top right and bottom left photos but don't like it, so I rewrite captions on smaller squares, then adhere with tape runner right on photos. Since all my paper, adhesive and ink is acid- and lignin-free, this is safe for my photos. The result is a smidge more whimsical.



The next page is very easy. I mimic the layout and color scheme from page five posted under Biltmore Rewind. I trim the background paper to fit, which consists of drawings of caddy, overdressed women gossiping over afternoon tea - perfect for this page of us eating breakfast on the Biltmore Inn patio. Using a few purple and green photo mats from the Everyday Storybox, I charge three of the pictures. I crop the picture of our waitress, and trim a section off a green photo mat for the background. I cut a strip of purple to charge a vellum accent, which reads: "Friends are the sunshine of life." I write about the pictures on a purple journaling box using a lime-green colored fine-tip pen. I adhere all with tape runner and frosted splits, which are for the vellum.

Next episode: Bike ride on Biltmore Estate