Folk Art Gift Tags made from Cardboard Packaging
/Reuse your old cardboard packaging to make pretty folk art gift tags.
Today I’m joining the Do It Over Designer challenge with an idea to reuse old cardboard packaging and turn it into the prettiest folk art style gift tags. Stay tuned at the end of this tutorial to see the other ideas shared in the challenge, when I join some of my creative friends to bring you ideas to “do over” old or tired things and give them a new lease of life.
I don’t know about you but I collect quite a few of these brown kraft card packaging envelopes. They are really useful for reusing to post items that need some protection, they are also useful for all sorts of recycling and up cycling crafts.
I usually give all my friends and family handmade cards for their birthdays and special occasions but a while ago, at a craft fair I spotted a card that was just too perfect for a friend of mine so I had to buy it for her. Then when her birthday came round last week I felt a little bad that she wasn’t getting a handmade card so I decided to make her a special gift tag instead! I ended up making a few different designs so I can share them with you here today.
To decorate my folk art gift tags I used scraps of gelli prints that I’d done earlier this year (I had a gelli printing plate for a Christmas present) Gelli printing is a really fun way of mono printing beautiful papers. You don’t need gel prints to make these gift cards though, you can use any colourful paper.
How to make folk art style gift tags from cardboard packaging
What you need:
Cardboard - I used brown kraft card envelopes but you could also use cereal packets or other thin card
Pretty paper - gelli prints, wrapping paper, colourful envelopes, colourful junk mail or even scraps of scrapbook paper
Paper glue - I used Pritt Stick
Scissors
Pencil
Hole punch and twine
Start by printing out the template and cutting out the shapes.
Cut the sides of your card envelope to open it out flat. Using a pencil, draw round your chosen shape onto the card and then cut them out with your scissors.
I tried to arrange my shapes around any printing on the card envelopes but some shapes had some of the original printing on them.
Where there was print on the gift tags I covered them completely with colourful paper before proceeding with the decoration.
Cut shapes from your colourful paper and start decorating.
How to cut out simple paper flowers
To cut simple flowers draw a circle and cut it out.
Snip a tiny V shape on one side, a bit like a teeny tiny pacman!
Snip a V directly opposite.
Snip another V about 1/3 of the way from the first and again, another directly opposite.
Snip the final 2 Vs in the middle of the remaining gaps.
Save the little snipped out triangles, they might be perfect somewhere else on your gift tag design.
You can use my pictures as a guide or makeup your own designs.
I found it easiest to cut a nice pile of shapes - leaves/petals, flowers, triangles, long thin strips etc and then play around with them to make a pleasing arrangement. I used the hole punch to make some tiny circles too. When you are happy just glue them down.
Punch a hole in your gift tags for hanging and they are ready to embellish any gift.
Because the backs of the gift tags are the inside of the card envelopes they are plain and suitable for you to write your gift message.
I gave the birds an eye with a black fine liner pen.
Some of these designs look quite complex but when you look closely you can see they are just simple shapes. They really are much easier to make than they might appear at first.
Do you fancy making a cute folk art style gift tag or two? You could even adapt the idea and make a greeting card to match maybe? If you do have a go please do let me know (If you share on social media at all tag me, I love to see your creations)
Julie
Now let’s take a look at the other ideas shared in the Do It Over Designer Challenge.
