Wow, feels like it’s been forever since I’ve done a DIY so here one is! I’m going to show you how to make these great little gift tags, an easy way and an up-a-notch way. I shared these last week over at Celeste’s blog and now I’m sharing it here! These ones are holiday themed but it would be really easy to change some colours and stickers and use them on birthday gifts or for another occasion.

You will need – cardstock (colours and some white), stapler, paper cutter/scissors, adhesive
Optional fun goodies – ribbon, stamps, stickers, embellishments, ink or markers

Cut the coloured papers in 2 1/2 x 7 1/4 inch strips. The white papers should be 2 1/2 x 5.

Fold the white pieces in half, these will make the inside ‘pages’ of the card.

Fold the coloured paper at 2 1/2 and 5 inches. The remaining section will be slightly less than 2 1/2 inches in width. Using scissors or a punch make a cut out in the middle of the card.

Next grab one of the white scraps and decorate it in some fun way. I chose to use a snowflake stamp and my markers. I used the snowflake to create a patterned paper.

Then place adhesive around the opening for the stamped white piece to stick on. Keep the adhesive over to the one side so it doesn’t peek out later.

Then add some more adhesive on the back of the white paper and fold the last bit over to hide it all.

Place the white piece inside the card and add a staple.

Now turn the card over and add the embellishment on the outside. Voila!

Depending on the supplies you want to get your cards can get really fancypants. The holly one was made with a button and leaves from a scrapbooking punch. The snow flake one has 2 pieces of an overhead sheet with some fake snow stuff I got at the dollar store inside.

Or you can also just put some stickers or cut outs on the outside.

They launched some new products recently.

And had some really good sales.

And I didn’t even photograph the stickers!

This beautiful necklace is from Isette. I thought it was perfect, especially for a teacher.

These sticker by Hello Wars is awesome! I had a hard time choosing just one. Then I remembered I only had a spot for one on my lappy. Decision made.

I got a fun grab bag from Reuse First full of paper crafts and fun things made from scavenged papers.

I got this awesome card from Kate Funk. It was hard to decide she has quite the fun selection.

I LOVE this one too.

I also got this fun shirt for my hubby.

The banner seems huge! It’s 90.2 x 50.8 cm (sorry for being metric) and I stuck with the really simple one figuring I can add my own grommets and such. It seems really durable and would be great for indoor or outdoor use, I even got it wet on my kitchen counter and no harm done!

Just to be silly, as though I’m some sort of big rock star, I also picked up a small car magnet!  Here it is stuck on my fridge for now.  It says to stick it to a clean car . . . my van is so not clean right now! This is the small magnet and it’s about 28 cm x 21 cm.

I chose the ‘slow’ shipping option, trying to keep my costs down, which they describe as 21 days.  I placed my order on the 11th, it was shipped the 22nd and arrived on the 24th!  So not bad at all for all that fun stuff for only $10-ish.
The site is really easy to use, I found it got a bit wonky with the images I was uploading but had I paid attention to the requirements and pre-organized myself a bit better it might have gone more smoothly. You can also keep projects ready to go in a ‘portfolio’ and go back later to finish up. Once you’ve created something you’d like to order there is a bit of clicking to get through before you actually finalize. They try to upsell more things with crazy deals. But a few extra clicks and an email here and there are totally worth it, in my opinion, for the products you get! I sent one of the emails onto my hubby a few weeks ago and he came home and said, ‘why are you sending me spam?’ then today when he walked in and saw my stuff he was pretty impressed. So there you have it FREE Vista Print = a good thing!

Last year I sat down and made multiple copies of the same card and sent those out to everyone.  This year, with 2 little ones underfoot, I haven’t had time to be that creative so I resorted to digging through my stash of previously completed cards.  I did manage to sneak away to a card making workshop this year so I had 2o new ones to pick from.  These are some of my favourites.  I particularly like the little trend of choosing colours that aren’t traditionally associated with Christmas.  It’s a nice change from the usual red and green!

I don’t remember about each individual card but I know some of them are made with Stampin’Up supplies and some are make it Close to My Heart.