Hello Everyone

Well a very warm welcome to all our new blog readers. We very much hope you enjoy our varied and hopefully sometimes informative blogs. Today I thought I would start with a simple and easy to make Christmas gift tag. Yes I know its only August and I also hate people banging on about Christmas for months on end but the reason behind this is so that when you are out and about in various coffee houses you can collect one of the components.

Ok, so you need the magic coffee/tea stirrers. These vary slightly in size depending on where you drink your daily latte from but that doesn't matter.

Next you will need some luggage labels which can be purchased from most stationers and also some post offices stock them. some ribbon of your choice, I've used red and dark green gingham but you could buy ribbon that matched your wrapping paper. An oddment of card, this could be the back of an old birthday card, or a cereal packet to make the pot and a little glue, I used pva as that is what was to hand but a glue stick would work fine.
Cut the wooden stick in half, it will measure somewhere between 7-8cm now, tie lengths of ribbon on to the stick, the rounded end of the stick at the top. The shortest ribbon at the top and longest at the bottom. Don't at this stage cut the ribbon to the exact shape. Next draw a flower pot on the scrap of card and cut out. I used a jelly roll pen but you could use whatever you have a glitter pen or a silver or gold pen. ( raid the kids pencil case)

Now its time to assemble: glue the stick with the ribbons onto the tag and then glue the pot on top of the cut end of the stick to cover any raw edge. Once the glue has set cut the ribbons to shape, you might find that you need a touch of glue under the ends of ribbon to keep them in place. ( I had to glue the red ones but the green were fine, I have no idea why!!) Then if you fancy adding the fake stitching around the edge its just small dashes but don't use a ruler as it looks much better if they are not all straight.

So there you have it, a christmas tag which you can customise that won't brake the bank and you don't need a huge stash of crafty goodies to produce.
TTFN
Jane x