fun.fun.fun.

Oh, I so wish you could have been here last night!  A group of 8 super fun ladies met at my house for a crafty social of sorts.  Cookies + Crafts + Friends = a Perfect Night! 

So, what did we do?  Fabric gift tags - an easy, instant-gratification project from Sandi Henderson's Sewing Bits and Pieces.

Following Sandi's instructions, we layered cardstock, then plastic wrap, then fabric and used a dry iron set on high to melt them together.  Once fused, simply cut into desired tag shapes, add decorative stitches and finish with a scrapbooking brad (also called an eyelet).  To use, write any message on the cardstock side of the tag.  The eyelet is for tying the tag to your gift.

Although we used 2 different types of plastic wrap, we couldn't seem to make a permanent fuse.  So, it turns out that the decorative stitching was more necessary than optional.  That's ok, it got some of our no-sew ladies a bit more friendly with the sewing machine!  Hand stitching with embroidery floss was a very nice option too.  If I were to do this project again, I'd buy a product designed to fuse, rather than using the plastic wrap.

Here are a few of mine.  I was going mostly for Christmas tags, since that seems to be a theme with me lately.  This fabric is one I received in a Holiday Scrap Pack from Sew Love Fabrics.  With all the fun graphics, it was perfect for tag-making, don't you think?

Check out these tags made by my friend Hannah!  She blew us away with her creativity and productivity.  I think she made like 20 tags!  And more than half of them were from my scraps of Anna Maria Horner's Good Folks collection.  Kindred spirits, Hannah and I.  Anyhoo, as the night wound down she broke out the colored thread and used every one of my machine's fun stitches to finish her tags with lots of personality.  I wish you could see them all.

Aaaah, good times!  Now I've got to keep my eye out for another easy project for crafty social take 2 sometime this fall.