Holiday Cheer is IN THE BAG!

Or, in this case, holiday cheer is in a pair of (formerly) plain white gift bags, adorned with Eyelet Outlet Washi Tape, Glitter Tape, Bling and Brads!

On the red and green bag we have: Christmas Jolly Holly Washi, Red Stripe Foil Tape, Santa Washi, Glitter Red Tape, Ho Ho Washi, and snowflake diecuts held on with large and small red Jewel Brads. Santa and Mrs. Claus are standing by to supervise the presentation of this gift!

The blue and silver bag is embellished with: Glitter Winter Tape, multiple strips of Glitter Silver Tape, sprinkled with 2" Snowflake Bling and 1.5" Snowflake Bling and the snowflakes are attached with large and small White Pearl Brads.

For every bag, box, card or package you need to decorate this holiday season, you'll find the best choice of embellishments at Eyelet Outlet!

Lauren Bergold

loves wrapping Christmas gifts!

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BIG Initials!

One of the easiest ways that I (Lauren) have found to quickly customize a plain store-bought gift bag is with giant initials, covered in Eyelet Outlet Washi Tape of which... fortunately... I happen to have quite a bit! I've also got some fun Enamel Hearts and Stars, which I've scattered around the bags for even more texture and interest.

It seems counter-intuitive to start with the tape rather than the initial, but in fact, that's sort of what I did. I did size and print my initials on plain white cardstock first, but... I didn't cut them out. Instead, I took my 4x6" outline letters (the font is called Storybook) and stapled them to 5x7" pieces of cardstock covered in neat strips of washi. Then, I cut them out!

Between my three initials, I've used about three dozen different tape styles, and I'll name and link a bunch of those in a minute, but really... this idea will work with ANY combination of tapes you like! You can organize them by color, as I have here; or by theme, or in rainbow order, or create patterns with the tape or... well, this is quite a flexible method and thus perfect for making the initials as unique as their recipients! I adhered my finished initials to some solid cardstock to create a skinny outline, then added some of the same tapes to each bag to complete the design.

And now here's a fairly thorough list of the tapes I used, from top to bottom, for each letter!

Letter K: Flower Washi, Pink Foiled Rose, Skinny Calendar Tape, Unicorn Washi, Zigzag, Pink Checked, Macaron, more Skinny Calendar (the set has three different styles), wide Funky Bird Tape, Heart Tape from the Valentine set, Tiny Hearts, the third of the Skinny Calendar Tapes and Pink + White Dots.

Letter R: Star Tape, Owl Washi, Script Tape, Skinny XO Foil Tape, XO Washi which is sadly out of print, Foiled Silver Dots, Antique Car Tape, Tire Tracks, Road Tape, Wood Washi, Music Keyboard Tape and a repeat of XO, Script and Stars.

Letter S: Cloud Washi, Skinny Tape, Purple Zigzag, Rainbow Tape, Purple Checked, Skinny Calendar Tape, Purple Gingham Check and Purple/Green Stripe Tape have, alas, gone; Llama Washi, More Clouds, Foiled Flower Tape and finally Purple Dots and Japanese Tape are also out of print, but... You can see the entire (huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge!) selection of Eyelet Outlet Washi, just by clicking this link!

Lauren Bergold

has quiiiiiite a bit of

EO Tape!!! 

Revved Up Gift Set

It is a fact, universally acknowledged, that masculine cards and gifts are harder to make than those with a feminine theme. Or maybe I (Lauren) am the only one who used to think so? But thanks to Eyelet Outlet I'm now definitely an Equal Opportunity Embellisher. For this gift set, I combined lots of EO Gear Brads, Compasses, Anodized Stars and manly washi tapes with papers from Prima Marketing's "Craftsman" collection. I think it's a bit of a match made in heaven!

I made the bag first. I added a nice thick band alternating layers of torn paper and Brick Tape, Circuit Tape, Map Tape, Road Tape, and Wheels Tape; but really ANY combination of tapes which work well together would be equally good. I adorned the picture wheel with tiny 1/16" Round Brads in gold, and added some old-school Brushed Brass Eyelets to the corners of the label shape. Finally I added the fabulous vintage car (snipped from an old falling apart book I got at a garage sale) and a few Anodized Stars. The extra eagle-eyed will notice that in with the gears I've slipped a few Film Cans from our Movie Brads and Faucet Valves from the Pipe Brad Set; because they both look like they belong, and you don't always have to just use things the way they were originally intended! ;)

When it came to making the card, I basically made a pared down version of the same design, but I added a sentiment. It's a combination of small foam letter stickers and my own larger diecut alphas, made from cardstock covered with Map Tape! The background again uses the Map Tape, Brick Tape and Circuit Tape and I've thrown in another Compass and some Anodized Stars.

When it comes to creative embellishing, Eyelet Outlet *always* has your back!

Lauren Bergold

has never been a "less is more" 

kinda gal!

Washi + Flowers + Bling!

Hi folks, it's Lauren here again. Everyone knows how much I love to wrap presents, especially for my nieces and nephews. So when my niece Lindsay Marie turned fifteen (15!!!) last week, I wanted to go big, which meant I needed ALL my favorite Eyelet Outlet embellishment categories: washi, flowers and bling!

I've mentioned before that I'm kind of... well... cheap, lol. So if I can buy plain giftbags inexpensively --or better yet-- if I can re-use a shopping bag, I'm a happy camper. In this case I started with a very pretty oversized bag from the New York Botanical Garden. It was exactly the right size and had that neat fern detail on the front and back. Unfortunately, it had the logo, too; in really large print. I tried putting ordinary washi over top, but the black typeface still showed through. Luckily, I had some glitter tape, which is very sparkly but not at all see-through. It also lets me avoid the wrath of Lindsay's father (my brother, Bill) who has declared glitter giftwrap and ribbon OFF LIMITS in his home, since he's only just now finally gotten all the carpets clean after last xmas' giftwrapping excesses.

I love to personalize presents. It is my belief that *everyone* secretly hopes the fanciest gift is for them, and that most of us totally get a kick from our name being on it! I recently found these beautiful, oversized, silver chipboard letters, and they looked good on top of the glitter tape, but my motto is: NEVER give up a chance to embellish!!! So I added a strip of Zigzag Purple tape and a fun Skinny Foil tape to each letter before adding them to the bag.

Lindsay's favorite color is purple (in case you hadn't guessed, lol!) so I finished off with some Purple Paper Flowers with purple Flower Jewels at their centers. I cut some older green flowers apart to serve as leaves, and finally added most of a package of clear Swirl Bling... cut apart and slightly re-arranged, in order to fit the space better. 

Don't forget to drop by again for designer inspiration, every day! ♥

Lauren Bergold

has rarely met a Sparkly Thing

she didn't love!

Giftwrapping, In the Bag!

Here's a shocking true confession: I (Lauren) hate buying gift bags! They're so expensive, and often not very good quality. The good news is, I have Eyelet Outlet washi tape and embellies, so instead of buying pre-made gift bags, I buy inexpensive plain bags in bulk and personalize them! 

This bag was made for my sister, Amie's, birthday gift. And I confess it was made a bit last minute, so I needed a few Ninja tricks to speed up the process. Trick #1: Washi tape covers a lot of ground quickly. Standard sized (5/8") tape is great, but at almost 1.25" our many beautiful EO Wide Washi Tapes are even better, and the Wide Lines Washi I've paired my butterlies with is 1.75". The latter has so many colors and patterns, it matches nearly every tape in my collection! Trick #2: Use a shoebox to hold the gift bag open. This will make it much easier to apply the tape, since the empty bag will want to keep folding up on you. You really needn't cover the entire bag; a few strips around the top of the bag add loads of interest. You don't have to take the tape 360 degrees, either, but the nice thing about tape is, it's one lonnnnnnnng piece that already has adhesive! So if you decide you do want to go all the way around the bag, it's easy! However much or little tape you decide to use, you'll want to start and end in the "folds" at the side of the bag, so you never see the ends of the tape. Apply one strip at a time, and if you're not confident enough to "eyeball" a straight line, a tiny pencil mark at each edge will keep you on track!

Trick #3: An oversized monogram is a really fast way to personalize your bag. My giant letter A is almost 5 x 8" and I printed it as an outline, on plain white cardstock, using a free font called "Storybook". I applied the same tapes I used on the bag, but you could use a coordinating-- or even a contrasting-- design to get different looks. Trick #4: Since most washi tape is translucent, you don't need to pre-cut-out a monogram to use as template! In this case, I just applied the tape right over the outline, and as you can see, it was still perfectly visible for me to trim up afterward. I use an Xacto knife for interior cuts (like the triangle at the top of the A) and regular scissors for the rest.

 

Trick #5: A coordinating mat makes your monogram stand out even more. Having said that, the "ghost effect" of the un-matted dimensional letter gives a totally different, but equally cool look. In this case, though, I did use a mat, which I chose to go with the Solid Color Paper Flowers I added for a little more color and interest. Since they come in nine colors, it's not hard to find a shade that will match perfectly! Trick #6: Green flowers are an awesome addition to your collection, because you can snip the petals apart and make them into leaves, as well, like I've done here. 

Again, this is hard to beat for speed and ease: I attached the flowers to the monogram with some beautiful oversized Pearl Brads and affixed the monogram to the bag with a few strips of foam tape, for extra dimension. Finally, I applied a strip of extra tape to a scrap of cardstock and fussycut a few extra butterflies to perch on the flowers.

With hundreds of varieties of washi tape in the Eyelet Outlet Store, I'm confident you can find LOTS of designs you'll love... and lots of ways to use them! ♥

Lauren Bergold

really, reallllllly loves

wrapping presents!

Gift Wrapping Is My Bag, Baby!

I (Lauren) may have mentioned that before. But I never get tired of making extra-fancy presents for my friends and family. Especially (...but not limited to...) the kiddos. It's amazing how quick and easy it is to make a plain boring giftbag from the big box store into something infinitely more colorful and fun... with Eyelet Outlet Washi Tape!

You've seen me make washi tape into patterned paper before, just by applying tape in neat strips on plain white cardstock. And that's what I did this time to make the star bag, but instead of choosing one pattern of tape, I made a washi rainbow! I used a homemade star template from my computer to trace the star and cut it out with scissors. Then I matted the whole thing onto a scrap of glossy black cardstock and cut it out again. For the heart bag I used a store-bought stencil for the shape, and this time I applied the tape in a sort of plaid pattern, alternating between placing the tapes horizontally and vertically, so it would be more interesting. I matted that one on a coordinating shade of purple. I machine-stitched around the edges of both shapes to add a little extra texture.

I affixed both shapes to their bags using a few pieces of foam tape. But first I wanted to add a little more color to the bags. The nice thing about washi tape is that it comes in lonnnnnnnnnnng rolls... so you never have to worry about how wide or tall your project is. I marked an even point on the right and left sides of the front and back of each bag. Then I applied my tapes carefully, one at a time, in long strips that went alllllllllllllllll the way around the bag! By starting inside the fold at the side of each bag (and working neatly) I was able to hide the place where each strip of tape overlaps at the end of its run. I love how it looks seamless, and I can tell you that when non-papercrafters see something like this, they have NO IDEA how you've done it! (So when you make your own version, if you want to tell them it was *MAGIC* your secret will be safe with me!) ;)

On the star bag, I used: Red Dot Tape, Blue Stars and a couple of Skinny Print Tapes for variety; the star itself has: Heart Washi, Orange Stars, Crayon Tape, Blue Stars, Purple Checked, Skinny Yellow Dots, Skinny Green Stripes and Confetti Tape.

On the heart I added a stack of Paper Flowers with an Enamel Dot center, and these tapes: Pink Checked, Purple Zigzag, Pink Dots, Skinny Pink Dots and Skinny Pink Checks plus Heart Tape; with Wide Star Washi and Skinny Glitter Tape on the bag. But really... both of these designs would work with literally ANY combination you'd like to use! You could work in a specific color group--either the recipient's favorite combination, or to commemorate a school or team. Or use the entire rainbow--either randomly or in the ROYGBIV spectrum. You could even combine tapes thematically, for an occasion like a birthday or holiday. The only limit to the variation is your own imagination!

Need even more great ideas for using Eyelet Outlet Washi Tape, Brads or Bling? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to see all the latest makes from our amazing design team! ♥

Lauren Bergold's favorite color 

is RAINBOW!!!

♥♥♥