Coordinating Gift Tags

Whenever I buy wrapping paper, I love to create matching gift tags. I've made wrapping paper on a couple of occasions, but it takes a lot longer.

The tags I recently made matched my retro style Christmas paper. The colors are really hard to represent online but here they are. There were three coordinating rolls.

The inks I chose to coordinate with these were:
VersaColor Olive
Brilliance Rocket Red
Brilliance Platinum

I cut my tags out of white card stock. The particular kind I buy has little silver flecks in it. The tags are 1 1/2" x 2 3/4". You can get 21 tags from an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet.


Since the shapes in my wrapping paper were mostly symmetrical geometric shapes, I used tracing paper to trace a small, medium and large version of each shape (circle, star, asterisk). I transfered the tracings directly to my rubber by simply laying the tracing paper, graphite side down, on the rubber and burnishing with the opposite end of my x-acto knife.

Before using my carving tools, I first cut a clean line in the rubber at a 45 degree angle (away from the image) all the way around the image. I go back again and cut at a 45 degree angle outside of the first cut (towards the image this time) which results in cutting a "v" shaped valley all around the image. Now I take my carving tools and finish the carving job.


For the white tags, I rubbed the edges with either olive or red ink, leaving the middle of the tag mostly white. Then I stamped a large and small asterisk on each tag (see tags below for colors). After inking the medium sized asterisk, I stamped it first on scrap paper and then stamped the tag (bottom left) to get the faint color. Finally, I stamped a large, medium and small silver circle.


I wanted some solid green and red tags like my paper but I knew I couldn't get colored card stock to match. Instead, I used the inks I had chosen and rubbed the entire tag. My experience is that you will always have better luck matching ink colors than paper colors.

On the green and red star tags, I wanted the large star to be white which meant, before rubbing the entire tag with ink, I needed to put down a resist of some kind. I also wanted the color of the small star in the upper left to be a pretty red or green. If I stamped the red star on a green background or a green star on a red background, I knew the red and green ink would mingle and produce a duller color (see the stars in the bottom left of the tags). So, in addition, I needed to create a resist for the small star so I would have a white spot to stamp into.

Here's how I created the resists.

1. I wanted the large and small star to be white so I stamped each of these once on a scrap piece of paper.


2. Since these stamps are relatively small (2" or less), I do not mount them on blocks. That means when I stamp them, I can't see what I'm stamping. I do two things to help position a stamp. First, I trim as much rubber as possible from around the shape so that I can get a relative impression of the shape from the back. Second, if the shape is symmetrical, I will place a mark on the back of the stamp and use this as a guide. Usually, it means I will always use the stamp with the mark at twelve o'clock.
   
   
   For this resist, I will also mark the image I have just stamped on the scrap paper to indicate what position I stamped, matching the mark on the stamp itself.
   


3. Cut out the stamped image. See the marks on the cutout that indicate the position it was stamped.
   


4. Cover the back of the cutout image with removable adhesive.


5. Stick the scrap image on the tag where you want it to remain white.


6. Repeat for all the resist images.

Now you can carefully rub the entire stamp with either the green or red ink. Remove the resist papers and finish stamping your images. Remember what position you laid down the small resist image in the upper left of the tag. Stamp inside of the white space with the stamp in the same position. This is not an exact process, by any means, but I like the poor registration look it gives.

To finish up, I used a Japanese screw punch to punch small holes in the tag and then threaded them with twine (nothing fancy). Silver would have been nicer but I didn't have it on hand.

I can also use these same stamps to create matching greeting cards, postcards, etc.