The Holidays At Home – Handmade Holiday Gift Tags {sweater embellished!}

Hey y’all!!  I hope you have had a great weekend! Last year after Christmas I bought some holiday stickers and some holiday craft tape at 75% off  that I had completely forgotten about (I AM my Mother… and I am ok with that).  As I was looking at these festive items all together it made me think about creating some fun budget handmade holiday gift tags using some thrift store finds!Well, anyway it seemed like a better idea than decorating the dashboard of The Teenager’s car as a “holiday surprise”.  ;)   Bet he would just L-O-V-E that.  (N-O-T).

Does this not look like a bunch of fun just waiting to happen??

I also had a green thrift store sweater that I bought about 6 weeks ago to make some “holiday sweater trees” and never got around to making them but I was able to put it to great use with these fun gift tags!  I’ll bet you have something in your closet that you just don’t wear or like anymore  - or maybe in your kid’s closet or already sitting in a bag headed to give away  -  that you could re-purpose too!

So grab your hot glue guns, ladies & gentlemen.  Here’s how it’s done:

For starters, here’s my $1 thrift store sweater  - I know it looks kind of cute in the picture but it was actually pretty worn and a bit “nubby” so don’t fret.  It’s being put to good use.  And I only used a few inches so, believe me, I have some other ideas for this material down the road!!

Next, speaking of using things we have on hand, I do love our faux pepper berry wreath but if you have one, did you ever notice some of the pepper berries get a little wonky over the years?

Well I am going to put some of those jacked up  ”berries” to good use in a minute!

To start, I created some gift tag templates (the template is included at the end so you can print as well).  You’ll notice I added “To & From” on some and left some blank for more options.  I printed mine on an off-white card stock:

After cutting out the tags, I snagged paper hole reinforcements from the kid’s school supply stash (that’s right kids, nothing is safe from Mommy on a crafty mission).  Since I only had clear reinforcements on hand, I used a trusty Sharpie to color them red (believe me, if the world should end on 12/21 as per the Mayan calendar, I can help fix it with my glue gun, Sharpies and some duct tape):

And I am sure you can actually buy red reinforcements if you want to save 30 seconds…

Next I took the sweater and cut out some “holly leaves” using my (pink) pinking shears:

I then used some of the crafty tape and started embellishing the tags on the bottom and sides – there is no right or wrong here.  I had so much fun using the different tape patterns.   I used hot glue to place the sweater “holly leaves” and the (wayward) pepper berries, placing the damaged side down and using the red Sharpie again as needed to spruce up any white or damaged areas.  ”Pepper berry Botox”, if you will.   I also added some of my red & white baker’s twine and jute twine  for the ties.

I am so excited at how easy this was and how cute they turned out!   As for the other tag pattern, I placed some of the fun holiday stickers I had to add some holiday “bling” and also added in some green holiday ribbon and green reinforcements (thanks again to my Sharpie addiction collection) along the way.

I finished off the gift tag fun by using some red mini pom-poms I had to create a few Rudolph reindeer gift tags.  I just free-handed it, trying a couple of different things but if you really don’t want to hand-draw anything, you could always print a reindeer image or maybe have your kids do a “thumbprint” Rudolph and then just add the 3-D nose!

I packaged a few of each design in some cello-gift bags to add in with our holiday teacher gifts this year.

Overall another easy holiday craft that you could also do with your kids!  You could use different colors of card stock and whatever crafty items you have on hand.   Just some good old personalized, holiday fun!!

Here is the gift tag template – right click, download and print:

Hope you enjoy these holiday gift tags and be sure to comment and send me pics of any creative budget holiday craft ideas you come up with too!!

xoxo

Claire

Tagged as: Handmade holiday gift tags, Holiday crafts, Holiday washi tape, Holly gift tags, Rudolph gift tags