Day 9 already!! We are flying through these days so fast, Christmas will be here before we know it! Have you wrapped presents yet? If not, I have some adorable free printable gift tags for you today! These simple hand embroidered gift tags are super easy to make and significantly up the cuteness factor of your gifts!
You can find the tutorial below, and at the bottom of the post check out all the other pretty Christmas gift wrapping ideas from the many talented bloggers we have joining us for this blog hop.
If you want to see what I have posted for the other days, follow these links:
- Day 1 – Finger Knitted Christmas Wreath
- Day 2 – 30 Homemade Christmas Gift Ideas
- Day 3 – Rustic Christmas Advent Calendar
- Day 4 – Paper Christmas Cookies Kid’s Craft
- Day 5 – Cream Cheese Christmas Tree with Crackers and Pepper Jelly
- Day 6 – DIY Wooden Bead Feather Ornament
- Day 7 – White Village Christmas Mantel
- Day 8 – Christmas Morning Muffins in a Jar
- Day 10 – Blush and Rose Gold Christmas Tree
- Day 11 – Homemade Snickers Bars
- Day 12 – Knitted Christmas Stockings
Welcome to Day 9 of the Fourth Annual 12 Days of Christmas Series!
We have teamed up with 50 plus bloggers to bring you a oodles of DIY ideas and recipes to make your holiday season merrier. There are 12 different posts in the series and we have spread them out over a four week period with three posts per week. Now is the time to subscribe!
GO HERE for the complete list of Dates and Topics plus a collection of the most popular holiday ideas including ornaments, games, recipes and more from all 50 plus talented bloggers!
The great thing about these gift tags are that they are customizable. You can use any colored embroidery thread to embellish them with and there are endless colors out there to choose from! So no matter what your tree colors are, I am sure you can find thread to match it.
I chose my colors to coordinate with the colors of my Christmas tree and wrapping paper. I love this color combination! It is blush, light pink and a couple different dark green colors. One of the greens look almost black in the pictures, but I promise it is green. 🙂
*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself. Thank you for supporting my blog!
For this project you will need:
- Embroidery thread colors of your choice & needle
- Free printable gift tags
- White card stock
- Scissors
- Floral foam
- 1/8″ Hole punch
- Twine or gold cording
The first thing you will have to do is print off the gift tags on a piece of white card stock. You can find the printable gift tags HERE.
As you can see in the pictures, the outlines and designs of the tags are printed in a very light gray color. This way the color won’t show through the embroidery thread. If you think it will be too light to see for you to embroider, you can always trace the designs with a pencil. I cut out the tags on the inside of the gray outline.
Because of the thickness of the card stock, you will want to poke the holes for the embroidery thread to pass through ahead of time. Put a small block of floral foam or Styrofoam underneath your tag to poke your holes into. This will help to decrease the chance of your tags bending and creasing as you poke holes.
Poke holes in the designs wherever there is a corner or where your thread will have to go a different direction. You can tell by the pictures where I poked my holes in the different designs. The wreath was a little tricky to poke holes. I first poked the holes of the circle. Then I poked holes on alternating sides of the circle spacing them in between the holes of the circle. Sometimes things lined up perfectly and sometimes not as seen below on the right side of the pattern.
But no worries, it still will look fine when you add the embroidery thread. 🙂
I love the font on the tags too! It reminds me of all the popular Rae Dunn mugs that you see out there. I am just going to be writing the names of the recipients on the back of my tags. Obviously the back of the tag won’t look as pretty as the front, but I am not worried about that and I don’t think the recipient of the gift will care either. 😉
What do you think? Aren’t they cute? I know you can tackle this project, don’t let the hand embroidery title scare you off. It was easy to do while watching some TV too. Gotta love multitasking! I used a 1/8″ hole punch to make a hole in the corner then added some twine or gold cording to the tags to attach them to some gifts.
You can pair them with other fun accessories on the gifts such as ribbon, greenery, mini ornaments, Christmas light bulbs etc.
They look so pretty on all of our gifts!
I will back Monday to finally share our Christmas tree with you! Have a great weekend!
Hello! I am so glad you came to visit my site today. I hope you can take something from here to inspire you or just make you smile.
what elegant gift tags! I love how the simple embroidery adds gorgeous texture.
Thanks Nikki! Have a great weekend! 🙂
I love these so much, Kimberly and the embroidery stitches are not difficult so they’d be easy to make!
Thanks Marie! That is the nice thing, you really don’t need any embroidery experience for them, anyone could do it! 🙂
Any chance you can make the pattern all in black? My printer doesn’t show the designs well.
Hi Sarah! I purposely designed the pictures to print lighter so they would not show through the embroidery floss. I would suggest tracing over the lines to make them show up darker for the actual embroidering. Hope this helps!
I totally get that. I will try another printer as I can’t see anything to trace.
Wow these are absolutely beautiful. I had looked to find some simple embroidery patterns for Christmas ornaments and look at you show me how. These are fantastic, I absolutely LOVE them.
Awwww, thanks so much Leanna! Glad to help. 😉
These are absolutely gorgeous Kimberly, they look so festive and are so unique too!
Thanks Katrin!
I absolutely love these tags! They are so unique and the stitching adds that personal touch the will mean so much to those who receive them. I would never be able to throw them away and may even frame it if I got one.
Awwww, that is so nice! Thanks so much Dru! 🙂
Oh Kimberly… those are gorgeous! I love to embroider so these are perfect for me to make to add to packages and for the tree.
Thanks Susan! Perfect! I love embroidering too, these were a cinch to make too. 🙂
Oh wow these are so clever and elegant Kimberly!
Thanks Amanda! 🙂
I love these cute tags and thought it would be fun to do these with my granddaughters. However, the designs just barely show up after printing. The words are fine, but I will not be able to see the design clearly enough to use.
Thank you Roberta! I purposely designed the pictures to print lighter so they would not show through the embroidery floss. I would suggest tracing over the lines to make them show up darker for the actual embroidering. Hope this helps!
Wow! Lovely idea! Thanks so much for sharing the stencil! I want to make these 😊😊
Thank you Kristina! You are welcome! You totally should make them! 🙂
So cute! I feel like they are a throw back to a simpler time.
Thanks Stephanie!!
Hi there!
Love these! I would really love to know the exact colours you used here. Would you let me know?
Thank you!
Susan
Thank you Susan! Unfortunately I don’t know the exact colors as I made these up several years ago now and do not have the labels for them. I will try to include that in the future, the nice thing is you can use whatever colors you want! 🙂
Hi,
New to embroidery, but I want to tackle this!!
Is this done with a backstitch?
Hi Julie! These tags are very simple to make, no experience needed. There is not even a specific stitch you need to know. Just follow the holes, you will end up using the same holes multiple times on the snowflake and wreath tags so similar to a backstitch. Good luck!
Such a wonderful idea and was so excited to try it……Unfortunately the middle design won’t print on my HP. and the cardstock makes it too thick to even hold up to a light source and trace. I’ve tried everything, even coping the original picture to use a template but can’t get the sizing to work. Any suggestions please? I only have one printer!
Thanks!
Hi Gwyn! Darn, sorry to hear that! I intentionally made the designs lighter gray so they would not show under the embroidery thread. Maybe you can adjust your color settings on your printer? Or try printing them on a friend’s printer or send it to a local printer. Not sure what else you can do. Good luck though!