Googly Tags

This is a guest blog post for my sister's shop, Millymog (her blog is here). 

Hello! My name is Bexx and I am Emma's much younger sister (Sorry Em, couldn't resist!). I live in Southern Maryland with my husband, two little boys & cat. I occasionally help Emma out tweaking images for the Millymog website but more often you can find me sewing, knitting, crocheting or papercrafting. Emma asked me if I would share an easy craft project on her blog, so here it is!

When we were kids, our mum & dad would wrap our Christmas presents and separate them out in the living room. Our older brother Richard's presents would be on one chair, mine on another, and Emma's on the sofa. However, they would NEVER EVER have tags on them, so usually at least twice on Christmas morning, a non-plussed Emma would open up some underpants, or Richard would be stunned by a beautiful make-up set. I am now a huge fan of using gift tags, one per gift.

I'm going to share with you today how I whip up cute and easy gift tags for all occasions. They don't need a lot of fancy equipment, although there are a few things that would be helpful, if you REALLY get into making tags.

Step 1: Make or buy your tag. You can usually buy luggage labels from WHSmith, or from places like Amazon or eBay. If you've bought them, skip to step 2. However, if you want to make them super personalised, it isn't difficult. First up, find some good card. I like to use neutral colours so that when you're writing them, you don't need a fancy pen. But coloured card also looks awesome.

Next, you need to cut your card to about 10cm x 5cm, or 4in x 2in. Then, mark a spot in the middle near the top of your tag. That's where your string is going to go.

If you want to reinforce the hole, punch out two 1/2" circles and stick them over the dot. You can use any colour for this, cheerier the better!

You then need to punch your hole in the tag. A standard office hole punch works perfectly for this, or if you have a craft punch, that works too. Just make sure that, if you used reinforcement, you wait until the glue has dried. Otherwise your punch is going to mangle the whole thing up.

Next, you need to add your string. I use a lot of baker's twine - it's cheap, readily available & cheery! But you could use garden twine for a rustic look, wool if you have it lying around, anything really. You need to fold your length of string in half, poke the loop through the hole, then string the ends through the loop. You just made a Lark's Head knot, former scouts & guides!!

Step 2: Stamp your image on your tag. I used a stamp set called Fox & Friends from Stampin' Up!, but you could use anything with eyes. I also used Stampin' Up! ink as I have it on hand, but there are lots of different brands available from craft shops.

Step 3: Take your googly eyes (get them from that craft shop we mentioned, or raid your kids' art box, or sometimes you can find them in haberdasheries) and glue them on. You're all done! Easy eh?

Step 4: Run with the concept and make tags for all occasions. Here's a Hallowe'en tag using exactly the same idea, and a Christmas tag to which I added a couple of jingly bells and replaced the googly eyes with glitter glue.

I've enjoyed blogging with you today. I'd love to see your tags - check out my own blog, the Dented Spoon, if you'd like to share your tags with me, or to see more ideas.

Bexx xxxxxx

Something slightly different!

I've been preparing for my Beautiful Basics class on Thursday (only two spots left!) and I thought I'd share the little handout I put together. It's full of hints & tips, such as guidelines for cutting & scoring cardstock, colour selection, matting, a few useful links, and all the details of the supplies I'll be using on Thursday.

Beautiful Basics Handout

I've tried to keep things very simple & used just one stamp set to create a versatile birthday card, a Christmas card and a fun general purpose card. It's a great starting point for newcomers to the craft & I know that more seasoned stampers would find the class interesting too. Here's a sneak peek:

I'll share some more pictures after Thursday. Don't want to steal my own thunder! Ha!

Actual Ninjago Invitation Tutorial!

Sorry about failing to do this yesterday. Here it is for your delectation!

First up - a preview. The yellow bit slides out of the card and has all the info about the party below the eyes. I used Garden Green (for Lloyd / the Green Ninja) but of course you could use Real Red (Kai), Pacific Point (Jay), Whisper White (Zane) or Basic Black (Cole, my personal favourite Ninja!).

1. Take an 8.5" x 11" sheet of Garden Green cardstock and cut it in half lengthwise. This means cutting the sheet to measure 4.25"x11", you end up with two halves, each a long rectangle. Score the card across at 5.5" and fold to make a card. The fold should be at the bottom so that you can slide the insert in. A quick pic for visual learners:

2. Making the eye hole: Grab a small oval punch/framelit and punch an oval in the top on one side only, around an inch from the top. Then, punch two 1" circles at either end of the oval cut, to give you your eye hole.

3. Making the head piece: Take Champagne Gold glimmer paper (silver would work too) and put it into the 5 petal punch (this is retired - that's a bit tragic!) so that you get 3 petals punched:

Tip - hold the punch upside-down so that you can see what you're doing. Then take your largest circle punch (2 1/2"), and grab the 3-petal piece by the middle petal. Holding the circle punch upside-down, slide the piece into the punch so that you will get a nice curved base to the headpiece.

This is what you should end up with!

Stick this piece onto your card, having the bottom curve overhang the eyehole slightly to give that characteristic shape:

4. Making the shirt & collar: Using the Full Heart punch, cut a heart from black cardstock:

Adhere this to the card at about 1/4" up from the base fold:

Next, cut some 1/4" strips from your glimmer paper:

Use Tombow mono-multi to adhere them on, trimming once they are stuck down:

5. Making the headscarf:

Cut a rectangle of Garden Green paper 2" x 4.25". Place this into your Woodgrain embossing folder & emboss using your Big Shot.

Stick this firmly across the top of the heart, covering up the blobby bits (such a technical term!) AND the bottom of the eye hole:

6. Finishing off the "wallet" part - using your 1" punch, cut a semi-circular notch into the top of the back of the card, to allow the recipient to slide the insert out:

Then, using Snail adhesive, stick the two long-sides of the card to seal the wallet:

Ta-da! The wallet part is DONE:

7. Making the insert - cut a rectangle 3.25" x 5" from Daffodil Delight cardstock.

I then printed off the details of the party onto a 2.5" x 2.5" square of Whisper White card and adhered it to the bottom of the yellow piece. But I didn't take any pics because I don't want a million people at this blinking party! :D

8. Doing the eyes - the faffy bit! - put your Daffodil Delight card into the wallet, to ensure correct placement of the eyes:

Cut 2x 1/4" circles from Basic Black cardstock and stick in place. I used the my Xyron to do this as I had 24 of these to make:

Then, using your hand-held 1/8" circle punch, make the white specks from Whisper White cardstock and stick them on using 2-way glue:

See the spike tool with a grim-looking blob at the end? I grabbed a blob of used adhesive from my adhesive remover & stuck it to the end of the spike to help me control the placement of the white bits.

Finally, the brows. I cut some super-thin (1/16" or possibly even smaller) strips of Basic Black cardstock, ran them through the Xyron & cut them into equal-length chunks. Adhere those to the card at an angle and you're done!

Hope that helps if you are planning a similarly crazy party. Or even if you just have a Ninjago-crazed little guy in your life! Feel free to ask questions if I wasn't clear.