Wedding Favor Tags in Plum, Green & Ivory

The sub-title to this post would be Simple DIY Project, Painful DIY Experience. Something that should've been so simple, became difficult on every level for a constantly unraveling stream of weird situations.

I've been working on a little project for a dear friend's wedding the past couple of weeks and it's one of my favorite kinds -- Tags. They went into the mail just a few days ago. I love mixing and layering papers to give a wrapped gift just the right punch. Tags are also a great way to make use of all those little scraps of pretty paper you have left from bigger projects.

So when my friend said she could use some help with favor tags for her wedding I was pulling an Arnold Horshack (how about a little Welcome Back, Kotter reference for ya!), hand in the air, yelling "Me! Me! Me! Me!" offering my help.

The first step was to plan out what the tags would look like. I came up with a scheme that would layer three sheets of paper. The tags would measure 3" wide x 4" long. Then the next layer would be 2.5" x 3" and the top layer would be about 2" by 2". On this sheet would be the little printed favor message from the bride and groom.

Next I was off to the stores to shop for pretty papers where I learned a helpful lesson. Most stores don't have stock of more than about 20-30 sheets of any one specialty paper pattern. Since we needed over 200 tags, finding enough paper to make all the tags required choosing different green patterns and then trips to three different stores to find enough sheets of plum card stock. If you have more time, you can pre-order paper in any quantity you need and avoid the big search. Lucky for me I am in an area where I can hit several craft and paper stores within a mile or two of each other.

Once I had paper in hand I could make final decisions about how they would look together and how I would layer them. Then I sat down at the computer and designed a little message and figured out the right size to get as many on one sheet of printed paper as possible. I used two different fonts to give it some character and chose a dark purple font color to contrast nicely with the cream.

Then I put the file on a thumb drive and took the file to the office supply store to have it printed on heavy ivory paper. The trick was that I had to go to three different office supply stores because two were too busy to print 18 sheets of paper for me. Crazy.

My next mistake was heading to the copy shop with my document saved in Word format. Once I found someone who could print it for me, they opened the file and the layout was totally wonky due to the font I chose that they didn't have. I learned this last summer and I'm not sure why I forgot but you should save your file into a PDF file so that nothing is distorted. Lesson learned, again.

Once back at yet another copy shop, as I was reviewing the budget for this project I bagged the purple ink idea. Color copies would be almost $11 and black and white would be only a couple dollars. Since I was already going to be over budget, I dejectedly went with the black and white.

Although the woman at this copy shop was so wonderful, hours later when I got the papers all cut up and was at home glueing them I realized she'd copied the text onto the flat back of the more expensive paper I'd requested. So I paid extra for the pretty textured paper surface to be glued down and the printed surface to look like normal, plain ivory paper. What a drag...

While I glued the three layers together, I would've liked to use foam squares to give them more dimension. When I thought about the fact that these tags would be mailed to the bride stacked together and probably smooshed along the way it seemed like they would be more damaged if they were dimensional than if they were flat. When I considered the additional cost and time for foam squares, that further convinced me to keep it simple.

Unfortunately I think I erased the photo of the final product. The photo above is just the papers sitting on top of each other before anything was glued. I did glue them centered one on top of the other layer. Although that makes perfect sense, based on the photo above you might think I did some weird abstract glueing thing.

One could do a lot of different ribbon options with these tags. The bride is using beautiful purple raffia. Another great option would be a silver metallic ribbon. A beautiful little silver metallic flower with pearl center would be a fun addition too.

So while I took great joy in this project for my beloved friend, I can't believe how many weird things happened in the course of this project. It was bizarre. I'm most happy that I finally was able to get them done and in the mail to her. I'm wishing the happy couple the most amazing wedding weekend and future life together!

Here are some links to other tag projects:

Sassy Gift Tags
Holiday Gift Tags
Pretty Tags From Etsy
From The Kitchen Of Tags

photo credit kalanicut