HOW TO: Eco-Friendly Label Making!

As a new member of The {NewNew} York Street Team, I decided to offer up a quick and fun little tutorial on one way of making eco-friendly tags or business promotional pieces, all from scrap materials... What follows is my tutorial:

What You'll Need:
•Scissors or an X-acto Knife
•Scrap paper (with a blank area for writing)
•An old magazine or other reading material that might contain interesting designs and be easy to cut out and use.
•Something to trace with (This should be the size and shape that you'd like your tag to be...Look for something around your house that you could use)
•A pen/pencil for tracing and writing
•Scrap string
•A staple-less stapler or appropriate adhesive

What You Need to Do With All That Stuff I Just Listed:
1.) Take the old magazine or other scrap reading material you've found and find an interesting design/drawing/background in it that could make for a cool looking tag. For me, I thumbed through an old Wired that my fiancée gave me the go-ahead to use (the last thing you want to do is cheese someone off by cutting up something they have no intentions of getting rid of). I found an interesting design inside, grabbed my tracing object and pencil, and traced around exactly what I wanted contained on my tag. In this case, I chose a genetically modified bell pepper because he looks pretty badass.











2.) Grab that scrap paper now, and trace on a blank portion of it with the same tracing object you chose to use in #1, and then cut everything out!


3.) Here's where staple-less stapler fun is to be had... Simply line up your design cut-out with your scrap paper cut-out (make sure the blank portion of the scrap paper is showing on one side, and your cut-out design is showing on the other), and slap em together with the wonderous staple-less stapler. If you don't have a staple-less stapler, you might opt to use an appropriate adhesive here instead.
4.) Grab a pen or pencil now, and write whatever the heck you desire on the blank side of your tag. For mine, because I don't have official "business cards" for my eco-friendly shop, I simply wrote out my message and shop address with the best penmanship I could muster up, and will use it as both a tag and business promotional material.

5.) Scrap string will come in handy now, to slip through one or both holes you've created with the stapler. I used scrap yarn from old knitting/crochet projects that I save. A crochet hook comes in handy for grabbing the string through the hole of the label and pulling it through, if you have one of an appropriate size lying around.

That's pretty much it!!!








If you want a more professional look you might opt out of the staple-less stapler and go for some adhesive or tape to hold the two pieces together. You might also have a stamp made that you can use to stamp these promo materials with your url, shop name, etc. Also for smoother edges, use an X-acto knife, by all means, when cutting these suckers out.

Here's my finished result. Frankenstein Bell Pepper looks a little worse for wear, but he's wearing it well.



-Kate
EcoKate.etsy.com