What Our Crew Would Do- Jessica

Hello Wood Co. Friends! My name is Jessica, and I am going to demonstrate a few examples of what you can do with our new line of tags. They are all made of ¼”MDF. The tags come in three different shapes; a rectangle, an oval and an ornate design. They either come with one hole drilled in the tags that lay vertically, and two holes in the tags that lay horizontally. We also now have the letters of the alphabet in a sort of “Times New Roman-ish”font.

RECTANGLES:

The first example I will show is the vertical rectangle with the one hole. I am one to be a little sentimental, and I liked this fortune and decided I should make it more of a permanent fixture by turning it into an embellished tag.

 

I traced my tag on two different sheets of cardstock for the background of the tag. I then painted the MDF tag Midnight Blue. Once dry, I glued the “college ruled lined paper” to the front, and blue dotted paper to the other side. I went around the edges of the papers with the chestnut colored Chalk Pad. I also went around the edge of the fortune itself, in order to make it stand out a little better.

Once the glue dried, I used some good old yarn to make a loop for hanging.

 

I now hang it where it has always been, but it will last so much longer this way then it will boringly pinned into a corkboard.

My next example is a horizontal rectangle with two holes. I found some of our 2011 Valentine’s paper and made a simple tag to accent to my little collection of Valentine’s Day decorations.

 

Once again, I traced the tag onto some cute scrap-booking paper, cut the rectangles out and painted the tag Fuchsia Pink. Once the paint dried and I had the front and the back papers glued onto the tag, I sanded the edges and took a foam brush with some paint around the edges to cover up proof that I sanded. Once wet paint covered the edges, I dipped the edges in Cupcake pink glitter. After the glitter dried, I spray-painted the glitter to protect it from rubbing off.

Next, my friend Kelli (aka, the designer at Wood Co.) found the drilled holes under the paper, and she strung some aluminum wire through and gave it a cute curl.

LETTERS:

For both the “N” and the “E,” I first painted the letters. The “N” I painted Fuchsia Pink and the “E” I painted Pansy.

While the first coat of paint dried, I poured the glitter into some disposable containers. Once dry, I applied one more coat of paint to each letter and dropped them into my containers of glitter and put the lids on the containers and shook gently, as you can see with my letter “E.”

Once both letters dried I sprayed them with Krylon Clear Satin Spray to protect the glitter from flaking off.

As inspired by Pinterest, I used these letters as decorative tags on presents. I tied the “N” into the knot and I used double-sided tape to attach the “E” to the wrapping paper.

The other letter I did was a “W.” Instead of making this specifically into a gift tag, I designed more to be used as a Christmas ornament.

My first step was tracing my “W” readable side down on the opposite side of the paper I wanted used as the pattern on the front of my letter. Once traced, I cut the letter out so it would be ready for me to glue when the time was right.

 

I painted my “W” Opaque Red. When it dried, I put Wood Glue on the front side of my “W” and spread it around with a foam brush. Next, I applied my paper and smoothed it down and let it dry. After it dried, I sanded the edges of the letter to remove the extra paper from tracing.

Next step, I took the bottle of wood glue and outlined the “W” very carefully. I poured my container of Christmas Red glitter into another disposable container, and stamped my “W” into the glitter.

I then glued some ribbon onto the back of my “W” to make my letter an ornament.

OVALS:

For my oval tags, the first thing I decided on was a font that fit each of the tags purposes. If you go on Pinterest and search for Free fonts, you will find a plethora of awesome fonts.

During our Christmas planning meeting, my manager Rachel mentioned she wanted to see something more “Bah Hum Bug-ish” for fun this year to throw in some variety to our cute and pretty Christmas inventory. Somehow, the “Bah Hum Bug” design was not voted in.

Don't worry Rachel, I got you covered.

I found some fonts (I couldn’t decide on just one) I felt were appropriate for a cold and less friendly tag and designed them with the intention of being applied to an oval vertical tag with one hole. I printed them on plain white cardstock and painted my tags Charcoal Gray.

Once my text was traced around the paper was cut out and the tags were dry, I glued my paper onto my tags and let them dry. After they dried, I sanded of any excess paper on the edge.

I let these be as plain and flat as I feel the phrase is. You can always embellish them with black jewels or glitter that look like coal, or warm them up with some red ribbon and a bow.

 

My next set of oval tags serve to be useful as labels for baskets in my sister’s kitchen where her five sons can leave their shoes, school stuff or toys, instead of the more common areas like the kitchen table, counter or worse, the floor.

My last oval tag is used as a Father’s Day gift tag. I fell into the whole mustache craze and made this a manly tag. I used our popular mustache paper on the back of the tag and a light patterned paper for the front. On the opposite side of one of our late summer/early fall paper lines, I found a larger mustache that I glued onto the front under the words, “Happy Father’s Day!”

I found the font on Pinterest.

I did the usual painting and paper cutting in order to decorate this tag the way I liked it. To attach it to my present (my dad loves books and composer Gustav Mahler), I turned to something I haven’t really even seen in years. I like its simplicity though. Yarn and mustaches seem to come from the same era in time anyway.

ORNATE:

I saved my favorite tags for last because I love the ornate shape

My first tag here was done on a horizontal tag with two holes. I found a nice font and printed it on our doily paper with brown ink. I painted the tag with Burnt Umber and cut out my paper for both sides.

I tied one end of a piece of ribbon in a knot and pulled it through one hole from the front of the tag, and then pulled the ribbon back through the other hole to the front and tied another knot. I cut off the excess ribbon so there is only a knot at each end. (By the way, we sell these cute towels in our Boutique.)

I love our blue and white cloud paper so I made the tag for a gift tag for a baby present. I printed the lettering in brown (it’s a favorite color of mine) and painted my tag Light Ivory to match the clouds. After the paint dried and I glued my paper on, I applied another coat of Light Ivory to the edges and covered them with our white Doodlebug glitter.

To finish it off, I stuck a puffy sticker airplane to the tag and tied some baker’s twine through the hole to turn it into a gift tag I’m pretty happy about.

My last tag is a Halloween tag using our new Halloween line of paper and our orange dotted paper. I cut out the banner flags, the rat and the skeleton from the opposite side of the green paper.

I printed “Happy Halloween” in black onto the orange paper and painted the MDF tag Leaf Green.

After gluing the paper onto the tag and sanding the edges, I applied one more coat of Leaf Green paint to the edges and dipped my tag in Michigan Moss glitter to give the tag some bling.

My final result: