Diaper Bag Tag « The Hybrid Chick

Diaper Bag Tag

By Nicole Seitler Friday August 7, 2009

Hello, all! I’m here with my very first project for The Hybrid Chick. Usually I’m behind the scenes, but today I wanted to share with you an extremely quick and easy project I think you’re going to love!

If you have yet to try hybrid, you gotta try this project. Most of the creative work is done in Photoshop! Seriously friends, if you haven’t tried a hybrid project yet, you have not experienced the fullness of the joys of digital scrapbooking. Nothing compares to working on something on the computer and then printing it out—the giddiness you feel as the printer starts up, the nervousness you feel as you wait to see your creation come out line by line, the bounciness you feel when you see how awesome it looks in person. It’s wonderful. But I digress…

I learned about making these adorable little diaper bag tags from other crafty ladies about three years ago (wow!) on Splitcoaststampers. I made one for my diaper bag and for a girlfriend when my son was a baby. They are easy, addictive and make fantastic little gifts for a new mom!

Here’s what you’ll need:

Digital Kit; I used Mari K’s gorgeous new baby girl kit, Sweetie Pie (ps. it’s 20% off today!)
Ruler; I used my little 6 inch quilting ruler. (I just love using this small, clear ruler for papercrafting! So handy.)
White cardstock
Paper trimmer
A vertical ID badge holder (horizontal ones are cute, too)
Glue stick
Key ring (I used this kind, but I would have preferred this kind)
Ribbons and any other embellishments

tag1

STEP 1:

Using a ruler, measure the space where your insert will go in ID badge holder. Mine was about 2 3/4 x 3 1/2. I trimmed a 1/4 inch off this measurement so that I would be sure that my printed paper would fit inside.

STEP 2:

Using the Shape Tool (U), I made two rectangles that were 2 1/2 x 3 1/4. If you don’t know how to get a shape to be a fixed size, look up at your toolbar (when using the Shape Tool; I’m using PS CS2, by the way) and you’ll see this drop down box here:

shapetool

(If it’s different in PSE, maybe our friends who use it can let us know here in the comments? That would be great!)

Set the Fixed Size to whatever you’d like it to be and simply click on your document to get your perfect rectangle.

STEP 3:

Open up the papers and embellishments from your digital kit that you want to play with and clip them to your shapes:

tag_cp

I reduced the size of my papers (to 40%) and resized my elements to fit the page. I was also worried that the drop shadows would be too black here, so I set them to be a dark green color instead.

STEP 4:

Print out your images onto cardstock and trim them out with your handy-dandy paper trimmer.

If you’d like, at this step here you could add some distressing ink to the edges of the paper. It depends on what sort of look you’re going for on your finished tag.

Also, if you wanted to add any other embellishments (like maybe a paper flower or a rhinestone?) to your tag, now is a good time to do it.

STEP 5:

Glue the two pieces of your tag together.

This is step optional, but probably helpful for the next step—which would be wiggling your cardstock into the ID badge holder.

Before you glue, be sure to check that you have your tags aligned the way you want them to be!

STEP 6:

Wiggle your tag into the badge holder. Add the key ring to the top.

For fun, add some ribbons, too! I looked through my stash and I decided to just use one big white bow for my tag.

I tied it to the key ring—but if your badge holder is like mine, you’ll also have a few holes on the badge itself. You could tie several ribbons here as well. It all depends on what you think looks good.

Here’s my finished tag:

tag