Tag-o-rama

I have entered my first swap. The wonderful Dacia Ray is running a gift tag swap and was wonderful enough to let me play along, even though she had closed the roles. Dacia's tags are here, Joanne of StarDustShoes's are here and Alicia P. of Posy fame are here. I am waiting my return package with great anticipation. All the tags I have seen on other blogs are all so creative, each special with different techniques.

I thought long and hard about what I was going to do for this challenge. Our family has very limited experience with gift tags. Even at Christmas, the tags are basic at best and ball point pen right on the wrapping paper is the family favorite. Santa's reindeers also give us Christmas presents. How those eight tiny reindeer manage to hold those ball point pens in their tiny little hooves, I'll never know.

So, tag-impaired, I tried to think of something inventive to do for the swap. I thought about knitting little tag cozies. That would be cool- so off I went to the stationary store to purchase blank tags. It was Sunday, they were all closed. None of the drug stores had tags either, so I grabbed poster board as an option. Then knitting with wire and beads hopped in my mind, the bead store was closed too. ( I have gotten there since and picked up supplies...maybe some silver knit cuffs are in my future?)

Back home and all I had was a sheet of poster board. I thought maybe I could do some of my mini foundation pieced flags on the tags. While searching for my paper patterns I came upon a bag of unused log cabin squares from a quilt I had made while mourning the death of a dear friend and sorority sister. The yellow centers represented hope cutting through our sorrow. There were coincidently eleven squares, the number of tags I needed. I stitched these on to the poster board, gave them fabric ties and embellished with buttons from my collection.

Handling these squares again brought a flood of memories and a bit of sadness. I am happy that they were incorporated into such a fun project, hope triumphs! I hope those who receive one of my tags in their package feel the love that pieced these squares.