Keeping Christmas {Merry and Bright}

"I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year long" ~Charles Dickens

Hello and welcome to July's installment of my Keeping Christmas series! Today I am sharing ways of putting the "gift" in gift tags! I thought it would be fun to show some fun and unique ways of creating gift tags that incorporate a "gift" as well. I have quite a few examples to share today and even more in my head that wouldn't quite work until seasonal candy and things start to hit the stores. So...in the meantime, I hope you will find some inspiration from the things I am sharing today!

 To begin, I decided to revisit the mittens that I made last year which you can see HERE. All of my projects that I am sharing today use the same sentiment and colors along with the "Merry and Bright" theme. I still wanted to keep things bright and summery here and what better way than to incorporate some of these fun vintage Christmas color combinations! 

Last year I just gave the mittens as a stand alone gift, but this year I thought I could make them as a tag, and gift holder, as well as the option to use it as an ornament later! They are just too cute to be thrown away. 

 To begin, I diecut quite a few mittens out of felt using the Mitten Die in an assortment of bright colors. They all look so cute together! I created the wristband embellishment using the eyelet lace die. I glued them down using some liquid glue and then sewed along the entire perimeter using my sewing machine. The snowflakes, that are  part of the Fancy Flakes Die collection, and leaves were die cut as well and the "berries" were left overs that came from the cut out circle portion from the wrist treatment. I love using up all of the scraps!

 I added some jingle bells to the centers of the snowflakes and added the tags. The tags were stamped and embossed with a sentiment from the O'Tannenbaum stamp set that I just LOVE! I used it on a few more projects which you will see today as well. 

I am planning on stuffing them with these fabulous hand creams from Bath and Body Works, but I will wait until they release their Holiday line. Last year I put lip gloss in them, so you could do that as well. 

 I used my crop-a-dile to punch a hole in the back of the mittens so that I can thread them with ribbon to attach to the gifts as well as a place to add an ornament hanger if the recipient would like to use it for that! I know I definitely would! LOL!

 My second project features the adorable Clever Barrette Dies as well as some more images from O'Tannenbaum! I can't wait to add these tags to my gifts this Christmas! These will look perfect under the tree in my formal living room!

 You can see that I used more of the berries on the barrettes as well. 

 I also was able to use the felt stars that were part of the center of the snowflakes on the mittens! It was awesome to have them already ready to go! I added some clear Nuvo drops to the ornaments on the tree for some dimension and shine.

 The next project was super quick and easy! I used the die cut that I got in the mail the other day that was part of the Post and Parcel Make it market kit. I decided to use the coordinating stamps as well. 

 I got the lipgloss from the Dollar Tree and I absolutely LOVE it. I have been using some for the last few months and it is as good as anything that you can get somewhere more expensive!

 I simply added them to the gift tags with glue dots so that they can be easily removed!

 The next project incorporates a sweet, simple gift that is easily added to a tag. I did some watercoloring using my ever favorite pearl watercolors. After I watercolored a piece of paper, I just ran the die cuts from the Vintage Ornaments II set. I also used the Vintage Ornaments II stamp set to add the embossed outline. Originally, I created a pocket to stick the chocolate down inside, but I made the tag BEFORE I bought the chocolate and it was just barely too big to fit. I just decided to add the chocolate to the outside with glue dots since the foil packaging matched so nicely!

 The final project for today is a simple gift card holder that doubles as a tag. I plan on doing an entire series devoted to gift card holders so today's design is very simple. 

 It uses the same details and stamps as some of the other projects to keep things cohesive. I actually went to the dollar store and bought (5) $5 gift cards to tuck inside. The dollar store actually has some great stuff and of course, this would be in addition to the gift that it will be attached to.

Here is a picture of all of the projects together! These actually took quite a bit of time, so I am glad that I was able to make them in July! I don't think I would have been able to devote this much time to creating gift tags during the holiday season. It was fun to think of different "gifts" to add to my gift tags. I still have lots more ideas that will be easy to execute once Christmas merchandise is actually in the stores! LOL! I hope you found this installment inspiring! I hope you get a chance to play! Use the hashtag #keeping christmas2017 on Instagram. You can find me there @kellylunceford. Thanks for fluttering by!