Spring DIY Postcard Swap

Cat at the Beach

by Kristin Corlett

This is my second postcard swap with the folks at iHannah, a blogger, crafter, positive influencer from Sweden.  I joined this swap just a week or two before the deadline, but being in the beginning stages of the lockdown from Covid-19, I was so grateful to have something creative to do.

The Spring Post Card Swap 2020 was an event by the creator of the Studio iHannah blog and this was the 10 year celebration!  She's been hosting this handmade postcard swap twice a year for 10 years.  If you want to be notified the next time the swap comes around, sign up for her newsletter at the iHannah blog. 

It looks like I have 11 cards posted here, but I only mailed out 10 for the swap.   Last time I created the postcards, I created scenes for a lot of them.  This time was a bit more scattered in thought, but circles, stripes and squares were common in the cards.

The card at the top of the post, Cat at the Beach was a striped card that somehow turned into the adorable cat looking over the fence.  It's a favorite of mine.

This one above with the CAMP sticker on it was circles and squares mostly with a few fun bits tossed in to make it more interesting.

I think this one with the sunset picture and the gift card envelope was my color blocking card.  It was one of my last cards for the swap and I really wanted to use the gift card picture.

These next two, the one above and below were put together with all of the little bits that I wanted to use, but couldn't find a place for them.  Also, I do recall that I was on the couch and most of my pictures and cut outs were in the other room, so yep, this is what I had around me at the time.  On the postcard above, I have used a Fast Jax Trivia answer slip.  No trivia shows for the near future with everything closed down, so it was nice to put one of the slips in the postcard collage.

This card was a two sided card - I think I sent this off to a person that lives in Germany, but I can't be positive  We have a mini donut place here in Jacksonville, Florida called the Mini Bar.  A bit of their advertisement on this card, plus a bowl of ice cream - chocolate, my favorite!  The striped background is a portion of a gift bag.   I am nearly positive that my cat chewed on the bag, so it couldn't be used anymore for gift giving!

The LOVE!  That's about all I wanted this one to say -- love.  I didn't want the message to be lost in the collage, so I added complementary colors on the remaining edge.

I received a message today that someone received a card with a recipe on it -- I wonder if it's this one?  This was from the little monthly cookbook that Martha Stewart used to put out.  It's a great size for the postcard project.

These two postcards with the olives are my top favorites!  One was striped and the other blocked.  I love olives, so much so that my husband and I came up with our own Olive Tapenade recipe.  I swear, it's the best thing out there.  It's here in my blog - called Olive Tapenade, our way.

Funny about this one - I put a recipe for Potatoes Au Gratin on it and I made that dish last night, but not from this recipe - I had forgotten about it already!  Mine didn't come out as awesome as I wanted, so I'll have to look at this recipe again.

The 11th card -- stripes are once again the theme.  I found this page of hand drawn people and little blurbs about what they were doing throughout the day.  I thought it was fun and quirky.  So glad I was able to get one of those into the swap postcard.


I finally dug my sewing machine out of my closet and was able to add a little bit of stitching to each card.  I love sewing paper with the sewing machine.  It's easy to do, but if you sew fabric and try to use the needle that you used for paper, you will be disappointed.  The needle will be quite dull.  So make sure you have a new needle for your fabric.

That's all for today!
I hope you are staying well.

Have a great day,
Kristin

Bread Bag Tag Lampshade

Bread Bag Tag Lampshade

by Kristin Corlett

This is my bag tag lampshade!

Bread bag tags. An obsession?  Prolly. Not really, but I do think about what I can do with them very often.  I've been a collector of bag tags for a decade or more and have recruited many family and friends to help in the collection as well.  I just recently asked my neighborhood to help me collect so I can finish the lampshade. 

What started this whole idea of a lampshade was this photo on Pinterest.  I was completely drawn in.  I needed to make it.  I had to!  I have scoured the internet and the only thing I have found is that this was from the Concordia student design show 2006.  Just this photo, no instructions on how to make it, nothing.  In fact I don't even know if it is a lampshade.  Looks like I'm going to have to do it myself.  

This is the Pinterest photo -- I found it on flickr

I think if there had been a How-To for making the lampshade I might have started this project about 4 or 5 years earlier.  Since I had to start from scratch I spent a lot of time thinking about what would work. How much time you ask?  Years.  I have been teased by many that I was never going to do anything with all those tags.  I want to do a lot of projects and never do them, so I can see why this one would also be a lost cause.

But... it wasn't!

I had several unsuccessful attempts to get holes punched through the bag tags.  The tags are strangely brittle when a hole is punched into it and they end up splitting or breaking.  I tried heating them up so that the punch might not split the plastic, but that didn't work either.  I finally decided that a wood burning tool was going to be the ticket to small holes and no breakage.  Turns out I was right!  I spent only a few days on the project seen here.  Once I got going I was on fire!

The little bits and pieces left over

Here is how I made my bread bag tag lampshade, which by the way, most of those tags are from friends and family that have helped me collect them.  It gives me so much JOY to know that people collect these for me.  If only that they think of me as they toss that tag into the drawer or ziploc bag.  Thank you to all who have contributed to my very long term project. 

Sourcing the Tags

Tags can be sourced in a few ways - friends and family can save the tags for you and send them to you every so often.  You can find some being sold on Etsy and right at this moment there are a few rolls of blue tags for sale on eBay.  I have been told that if you ask some restaurants that use a lot of bread or veggies that come with those tags, they might save them for you.  (Think diner/breakfast places)  I had a friend in a restaurant that would gather them when she worked, but she only gave me white tags.  You may have other ways to gather the tags and I welcome your suggestions in the comments.

Finding a Lampshade

The Pinterest photo that I was using as my inspiration, had the bag tags definitely attached to white lampshade.  You couldn't see through to the other side of the shade, so it had to be laying against something.   I also realized that the shade had to be the same dimensions at the top and bottom if I wanted to do a pattern.  I also wanted the shade to be round or oval so that the tags would easily go around, instead of trying to conform to a hard edge, like a 90 degree angle.  So I found a 9" round linen shade and it turned out to be perfect.

Assembling the Tags

I had several misses when it came to punching holes in the tags, but my success came from a wood burning tool.  The tags splintered when I tried punching holes in them so I knew I needed something hot.  A basic woodburning tool had a long thin attachment that I thought would be perfect and it was.  Thankfully the tags I used for this project were big enough for my fingers to hold the tag and put holes into the sides without burning my hands and fingers.  The plastic cooled fast enough that when I flipped the tag around to do the other side, it wasn't hot anymore.

I purchased jump rings from Amazon and used those to attach the tags to one another.  

In order to keep my fingers and hands from being all cut up and sore, I used two different tools to open and close the jump rings.  I already had a pair of needle nose pliers so I used those and I purchased a pair of pliers that had a hollowed out area for the rings to fit into and make it easy to clamp them shut.   Sometimes I pushed too hard and closed the rings into a tiny spiral, but after a few tries, I found the perfect pressure to use to get them to just touch together.

Finding a Pattern

I followed the pattern that was the Pinterest inspiration, but not the colors, as I didn't have all those colors.  I used the colors that I had the most of and then tried not to repeat the same color way again as I went around.

My lampshade is 2 of the same color with a one tag shift as it proceeds down the lampshade.  It creates a nice diagonal line.  I thought about doing mostly white (since that's the color I have the most of) with the colored pieces randomly placed in the design, but I really wanted this first one to be as precise as possible.  I think my next project will be mostly white, so I can continue to play with the bread bag tags and not have to worry about running out of the colors I need.



Order of Operation

1. Separate the tags into colors. Further separate to size and shape, although I didn't do that.  It would be helpful though to know exactly how many of the shape/color you have available for your shade.

2. Start!

Decide how you want your tags to line up.  There are tabs that protrude out and corresponding places that go in to accommodate those tabs.  I discovered when looking through my tags that most had writing on a specific side, so I chose to have the writing be on the backside.  There were enough pieces that had the writing on the front side to make the shade look interesting.  So that's how I decided which way to face the tags.


3. Heat up burning tool and make it just hot enough to go through the tag but not smoke. Carefully push the heated element through the tag in six different areas.  Two at the top, two in the middle and two at the bottom.  I did one side first, then flipped it around and did the other.  I poked the wood burning tool through the backside of the tag so that the front facing side would be without scratches or blemishes from the tool or from scraping the wax off.
I used the pliers with the rounded shape to take the plastic off of the tags after the burner went through it.  The little plastic bits popped right off.  I usually did three or four tags at a time.

4. Attaching the tags together was fairly easy once I got the hang of it.  I opened up the jump ring by holding one side and using the flat pliers to force the ring open.  Then I put the tag on and attached to the next tag and closed the ring.  I held on to the left side of the jump ring with the needle nose pliers and held the right side with the flat pliers.  Then I used the flat pliers to gently squeeze together the ring.  Sometimes I had to squeeze on two different sides to get it to come together perfectly.

5.  Continue.  

For my 9" diameter lampshade I ended up with 28 tags across by 6 rows in length.  I haven't done the last several rows on my lampshade as I ran out of a couple of colors, but if I do end up completing the shade, I figure it will end up being 9 rows.

6. The holes on the very top row will be the only ones that are actually secured to the lampshade.  They are secured by pushing through an open jump ring (as open as you can) through the shade right underneath the top wire of the lampshade.  Secure one of the tags and push the jump ring closed with pliers.  Continue all the way around the lampshade.

7.   I had to change out a couple of rows to make the diagonal pattern I had come together perfectly.  Since I purchased the lampshade after I had the tags together, I really didn't know how many I needed.  Now I'd get the lampshade first so I would not have to redo a bunch.  However, the two ends came together perfectly and there is no hitch in the pattern or colors.  It looks like one continuous pattern.

8.  Put shade on lamp, plug it in and behold your own bread bag tag lamp shade!