Mom’s Brag Tag Book

This week we’re featuring great projects for Mother’s Day- gifts for the special women in your life.

I’m so excited for my gal Cassie- this is her first Mother’s Day as a mommy! To celebrate, I made her a special Tag Brag book to carry in her purse so she can show off her gorgeous baby. Know what? It was simple to make and you can whip one of these up and give as a gift for Mother’s Day in about 2 hours.

You’ll need:

• cereal-box cardboard (raid the recycled bin)
• dry adhesive like the Glue Glider Pro
• 2 pieces of patterned scrapbook paper (I used K & Company)
• 4 pieces of coordinating cardstock (I used Core’Dinations)
• Scraps of ribbon or the Darice Ribbon Accents pack

Tools:

• Paper Trimmer
• Martha Stewart Score Board (optional, but darn handy)
• Scissors
• Cuttlebug and Nestabilities labels dies (optional, but it makes it super- cute!)
• hole punch

Put pictures on the pages and fit more on the tags you tuck in to the folds!

Start with making the two covers. Cut two pieces of cardboard and scrapbook paper 3.5 inches X 5.5inches. Cut two more pieces of patterned paper 4 X 6 inches. (You’ll use the larger pieces to cover the cardboard.

Apply adhesive to  the cardboard and center it on the wrong side of the patterned paper. Clip the corners of the paper, and wrap around the cardboard, using more adhesive. Do this for both the front and back covers.

To make the back cover, center a 12 inch piece of ribbon in the center of the cover. Add more adhesive, then cover with the piece of patterned paper that is the same size as the cardboard.

Do the same for the front cover, omitting the ribbon.  Now let’s make the inside. It’s basically a piece cardstock folded up so that when you accordion-pleat it, you’ve got little pockets in which to tuck little tags.

Start by cutting two lengths of paper (the long way, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s 11 1/2 or 12 inches) so that it’s 8 inches high. Then fold the bottom edge up 2.75 inches. Then score vertically (through the fold) every 3.25 inches inches. It’ll look like this:

Join the two pieces of together by cutting the last section to about an inch, and then trimming the part that folds up. Apply glue and press to the BOTTOM of the next section of page-folds:

Now fold that bottom flap up, accordion fold it back up, and glue into your covers.

Now, my friend had a ga-jillion pictures and we put some pictures on the pages. But for the rest, we made cute little tags using the Nestabilities labels dies. We also fussy-cut the pictures, too. We glued it all down, and then added some ribbons to the tops of the tags.

Cut Tags...

Cut the photos the next size smaller. Use some painter's tape to make sure the die doens't shift during cutting.

Slip your tags into the book, tie it up with a bow, and it’s ready to give. These are also great to give blank, and let the recipient fill it up with their own photos. OR, write inspirational messages on the tags. There are so many ways to adapt it!

Enjoy!

Jenny

Jenny is the editor-in-chief and craft concierge for Craft Test Dummies. She can be contacted at crafttherapy at gmail dot com.

Visit her craft blog at www.CraftTestDummies.com!