Making Homemade Gift Tags with Kids

This post is by regular contributor Pauline Soo of Lessons Learnt Journal.

Paintball. I can’t believe years ago, I actually did stuff like that. I think youth, boys and plain ignorance were major contributing factors. My, how things have changed in the space of a decade or so. Now when I see paintball stands set up in shopping centres they don’t even bother to approach me. I think the trolley full of kids may have something to do with it.

There’s something terribly satisfying about paint being splattered across a surface (just preferably not while travelling in some sort of hard plastic casing at a reasonably high speed and impacting any part of ones’ body).

As we made these homemade gift tags, my kids loved seeing paint being splattered across their paper. The process was most engaging and the results were amazingly pretty too.

This activity is suitable for toddlers, preschoolers and older children. It allows children to explore colour and texture. It’s a messy activity, so please choose your working space carefully. You will need an area that you won’t mind being potentially stained for a few days, as we will be working with food dye.

Materials needed for the activity:

• Paper or cardboard
• Plastic squirt/spray bottle
• Food dye/colouring
• Water
• String
• Scissors
• Newspaper to line working area

To make:

Fill your plastic squirt bottle with food dye and the most minimal amount of water required, so as to have enough liquid in the bottle to have it working. Don’t make your ‘paint’ too watery. The heavier the concentration of food dye, the better the results.

Mask your paper/cardboard with string. Use different lengths of string and create interesting patterns.

Using your plastic squirt bottle, begin spraying your food dye across your paper/cardboard.

Two things about using food dye. One, it stains, but it will wash off after awhile. Two, the wonderful thing about food dye is that it dries really quickly. So, unlike paint where you would have to wait a few hours, this project generally dries within minutes.

Once dried, remove the strings, cut your paper/cardboard into gift tags and if necessary, stick onto some stronger paper/cardboard for extra durability.

I think paint splattering will become part of our family’s Christmas tradition.

What are some of your family’s favourite Christmas traditions?