Truly, Madly, Deeply – a romantic gift/tag

I made this tag in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. I was working on submissions for couple magazine calls, one of which was for Valentine’s Day tags. Rather than doing something typically V-Day-ish (pink, red, frilly, with hearts and cupid and doilies), I wanted to try something a bit different. I had a huge tree branch down in my yard, so I broke off some twigs and got creating.

Well, sort of got creating. I first had to fight my dog Albie for the sticks a few times. I came home from work one day to find them scattered throughout the house and half chewed on. I rescued what I could and THEN got creating.

To start I hot glued the twigs together, then added some pretty patterned paper from Webster’s Pages behind the twigs as a base. Then I embellished the front with some stickers and a small tag, and added some linen thread to tie it all together.

Now, this started out as a tag, but it was a bit bulky for that and as I looked at it I like the idea of it being a keepsake instead. So I put some eyelets in at the top, dyed some twill tape green and attached it to the tag so it could be hung.

So, this didn’t get picked for the magazine, but I love this piece anyway…from the natural feel to the bright pop of color from the paper in the background.