Hi everyone, Nat here with a fun project for the festive season to store all of our Christmas tags in.
Fristly, I grabbed some packaging I had laying around and cut it into eight pieces that were 4'5 x 7 inches in size. I covered the front and back of these using festive decorative papers which I adhered to the packaging with the 450 Quick Dry Adhesive. These will be the covers and pages for our book.
Using my die-cutter and pocket dies, I cut fourteen pocket shapes for my pages from both the packaging and the decorative papers. I have measured my pages to fit the width of the pockets. If you don't have pocket dies like me, you can easily make your pockets by cutting rectangle shapes out of your packaging and your decorative papers, leaving extra on both sides and the bottom to create the flaps required to make room for your tags to fit. I cut the flaps off of the packaging die-cut pockets (these are just to reinforce my pocket) as these would create too much bulk if left on, then adhered the decorative paper piece to the card. I used the 450 adhesive for this whilst making sure my holes lined up.
I sewed around my pages and pockets with a straight-stitch and red thread.
Next I applied the Tacky glue via my fine-tip applicator bottle to the three flaps and stuck my pocket to the bottom of my page, again making sure my holes were aligned. With my six inside pages I attached a pocket to both sides. The remaining two pages are the covers and I put pockets on only the inside of the page.
The edges of my pages and embellishment pieces were inked around using 'Black Soot' Distress ink
To bind my book I was initially going to use two three-ring binders, however I quickly realised the ones I have would be too small for all of my pages with their tags inserted and I was determined to keep all of my pages! I rifled through my stash and found a pile of gold thread and tried it out. It worked fine just threading it through two of the holes and tying a double knot
For the cover I used the 450 glue to stick down a piece of fabric, then set about applying my decorative pieces. To decorate my cover and pages I used pieces from the December Daily digital kit. I backed my cover pictures with cardstock to make them sturdy and add some height. The poinsettias were adhered just at the base so I could slip my little tags in the top of them – one of them I stamped the words 'Festive Tags' onto. I used a bundle of cotton thread scraps under my word embellishment and added a sparkling star embellishment to the tree top.
Brown Distress Ink was used to edge all of the decorative elements on the inside pages and back cover, then they were stuck down using the Tacky glue. Since I don't wrap presents anymore but have a stack of wrapping paper I cannot bear to part with, I challenged myself to use a pieces of this on all of the pages too.
With all of my pages together it was now time to flip through my book and add all of my unembellished tags.
When finished adding my tags, two charms were added to the binding cords as finishing touches.
I love how my tag book turned out and hope you do too, such a handy project as now I can flip through to see all my tags easily and decide which one to decorate and use in future projects.
For a closer look at my process, here is a video on the making of this project:
I hope you all have a safe, wonderful and crafty festive season and I look forward to crafting with you again in the year ahead!
xx Nat
PRODUCTS USED:
Helmar
Tacky Craft Glue
450 Quick Dry Adhesive
Other
December Daily 2023 Digital Kit (Tracie Fox Creative)
Distress Inks – Black Soot & Ground Expresso
Packaging Card
Wrapping Paper
Gold Cord
Festive Charms
Fabric and Ribbon
Pocket Dies (Globleland)
