DIY Easy Fabric Tags for Junk Journals

Hello everyone, I'm Natasha from Treasure Books. Today we are making

easy

fabric

labels for

junk

journals

. This video is here to inspire you. It's not my typical step-by-step tutorial. I mean, here we have a guide that I'm going to follow. but what I'm trying to say is that this can go so many different ways and you can do so many different things, the possibilities are endless and what happens then is sometimes a creepy and overwhelming scene, so in this video I'm keeping things really simple We're making

fabric

labels, we're using just a select amount of things and hopefully we'll have fun.

Okay, let's start with my base. I'm going to use a cereal box and then we'll add some fabric. This is upholstery fabric. Whatever fabric you have on hand will do and then we'll add some book pages, music pages, or scrapbooking paper. You know, let your own imagination fly. The next thing we need is some type of focal point. I'm going to use my little The focal points of these booklets that I have are all from a stationary friend. If you're interested, I'll leave the links below and the code for a discount; otherwise you can use things like this.

You know, magazine images, books, paid book images, you know what you want. I can find, look how beautiful this one is, it would look beautiful on a label and it's just from a magazine. The next thing we need is some tea dyed paper and I use that to back up my labels, so I'm going to show it to you here because we want to make these labels functional in the journal. you want to be able to write whatever you're going to write there. quotes currently list what happened that day. You know what you use your labels for in a

junk

journal, so I'm hiding. that cereal box completely and lastly for the top of the ribbon this year you can use some lace you can use a ribbon I'm using this this is just some cotton fabric that I've torn into strips and dyed with tea and it looks really cool on those

tags

, so I'm going to use this, some other ideas for your tag embellishments, you can use just some punched shapes that you glue on top, you can use tabs like this that you can sew or glue, or you know . tabs like this, so instead you would have a little tab, this one is probably too small, but you know you can have something like this at the top, why not have a little sticker here or something like this?

I have it here with ruffles, so In case people are wondering, I have a tutorial on these. I'm pretty sure you know how to make them, but you know they look great on the sides of pages like this in a journal or sometimes I also use them as embellishments for my

tags

. like this, but pretty much anything that you can use as a touch, you can use a little bit of fabric, which is essentially what I'm doing here, but you don't even have to put it through a hole, you can just have a little piece of fabric like this, let's imagine that this is the top of my tag and just sew it like this or use a snap to secure it.

I mean, once again, the possibilities are endless. Let's start making that label first. I'm going to cut my cereal. and just to show you here, all my labels are different sizes, so I have some small or narrower ones and others, I have some very wide ones. I really like these, so for the wide ones I need a bigger focal point there. come on, so I'm going to cut that cereal box into various sizes, here we go, so next thing, before I do anything else, I'm immediately going to turn them into label shapes, I have some different sizes.

Would you call these templates? These are plastic cards that I have cut so I can make labels quickly. Here we go, so the back of this cereal box is nice and white, so you probably wouldn't even have to add that dyed tea. paper at the end but since I'm going to do some sewing I'm going to add the tea dye paper my next step is the fabric here we go the fabric so now I'm just going to paste the side that has pictures and writing Paste it on my fabric like this because I'm going to sew.

I'm not too worried about the glue covering the entire label. If you are not going to sew around the label, then you want to make sure you use a good glue. that's going to be, you know, stick for a while or stick well, I should say and make sure I get all the way to the edges and now I'm just going to stick that here we go and just cut so I'll leave a little bit. Fabric around. I'm going to cut it out at a later stage, but I can immediately see what that label will look like and now I'm going to repeat this process with the other three labels that I have.

As I said before, this is an upholstery fabric, so it is quite thick, no glue will leak. If you use a very thin fabric, then you want to make sure that you apply that glue very thin so that it doesn't seep through, because it can be visible on the other side here we go, these are ready to use, so I'm actually making four when I plan to make only one, so it's not very well stuck in there. You can see it's there to keep it in place when you sew the next one. The step is to sew and I'm actually going to sew from the wrong side, which is this side here, and I'm going to sew all around and try to stay very close to the edge.

Well, here is my Elna sewing machine, nothing special. I'm using a universal needle, I go through all kinds of things on the sewing machine, layers of cardstock and layers of plastic cardstock, anything you can think of, I use this sewing machine for everything and I have no problems, so I'm just going to sew in a straight line. around and try to stay as close to the edge as possible and here we go like this so I'll do the other three and I'll be back right away you can see that's the back and that's the front and although I sewed from the back , the seam on the front looks good because it's a very busy fabric so you know how the seam doesn't look as good on the other side with this fabric it works because you can't really see it and now because I already cut out the shape of my label.

I know exactly where to cut and I'm only going to cut off the excess fabric and not cut all the way to the label. I'm leaving a little bit of fabric because that fabric is It's going to fray, here we go, so I just want to show you that it will fray, but it will stop spraying into the seam. If I had cut all the way to my label, the fraying could start to expose the cereal box from the bottom and that's why. I like to leave excess fabric and so I also like to sew as close to the edge as possible to minimize the risk of the cereal box coming out wrong.

We are ready for the next step, so the next step is to book. pages and I guess you can say this step is optional, but all of these steps are optional, so the reason I like to add the book pages is because it just adds another dimension and layer to a label, so let's say, For example, I want to show you a difference that is with the book page and what will be without the book page. It kind of brings that focal point to the foreground. I guess a little more. Here's a closer look. See what I mean.

The book page adds much more beauty. so the book page is basically I just want to cut or tear an uneven edge like this, ink that edge a little bit and I'm going to determine roughly where I want it, let's say maybe something like this is pretty good so just make that fold and I'm going to cut this extra here, but not all the way, so I want the page of the book to fold towards the bottom so that when this label goes in and out of pockets or in a journal, that bottom is protected, it's nice and sealed and now I'm going to go back to my sewing machine and I'm just going to sew around the page of the book, so as you've seen, I didn't actually glue any of this together, I'm just holding it in place like this, fold it , just holding it in place and I'm going to go through it and I can feel where the tag ends so I know where to stop to sew, here we go and now I'm just Let's go turn it over and trim the excess sides of the threads also come off and sure you can do this without a sewing machine, you just use glue to stick things together, but you want to make sure you get all the way to the edges. see, that's the back so you can see what all the sewing is going to look like on the back of my cereal box and that's why I'm going to cover everything as my last step with that tea dam paper and that's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to do the same with the other labels now and voila, they look great as is, so the next step is to add the focal point some kind of image, like I said before, image of the digital book page, if you have digital. It's helpful to have cute little things like this that you can add without thinking too much so I'll leave a link below if you want some of these, look how pretty this one is, I mean I don't even know if they have them anymore I didn't find them last time, these little guys sold out real quick, look, but the links will be there anyway so you can take a look.

I really like this one, I think I might do it one day, so now before I continue I'm going to ink. the edges, especially this one here, because it blends in, so inking those edges will make a pop, here we go, it makes a big difference and now my next step is to take this to the sewing machine one more time or you know, you can paste it once. Again you don't have to sew anything, but I'm going to ink all the edges first, so how was your day? I'm just kidding, don't tell me I can't hear you, I guess you could write it in the comments, okay, sewing machine time, I didn't glue anything, I'm just going to hold it in place and sew around that image.

I'll do the same with all the others and then show them up close. here we go the focal points are on I'm going to trim so I've double stitched so I'm just going to trim them out and then I'm going to ink these edges because it's these little details that are important and that make it all finished. maybe that's a little brilliant, I can go over it like this, I always say it's the little details that are important, so if you sold, let's say a pack of these or if they're in a newspaper, people like to pick them up. up, let's inspect you know what you are like you like to pick up things you like to take a close look at everything so you can see it here you might think why you didn't add the book page, add that on top and then take it to the sewing machine, why do it in all these different steps?

And I sell my things. I want them perfect and yes, handmade things have imperfections. Imperfections are fine to the point that I'll show you a blemish here. I don't really see it, this paper is curling a little bit here because I didn't hold it tight enough while I was sewing here. You can see a small imperfection and that's acceptable, but you don't want things to fall apart. I want like I don't know what I'm trying to say: attention to detail is important, so when someone takes this label and looks at it up close like this, you can see, for example, what the seams are like. here how it doesn't cross the focal point so you can see that the stitching was done before adding this, it's those little things that I think you know when, especially when you're charging money for your stuff, you can have a whole. a bunch of these as a small pack that you sell in your etsy store.

I don't know five tags group something like that. I won't sell them like that. I'll have them in my

journals

, but you know what I mean. You're doing that, you want perfection, not total perfection, but you want that attention to detail. I hope you understand what I mean because sometimes people tell me why you didn't do it this way. That's why I do things this way. I make things, let's move on, the next step is tiai paper, so you can see the back here. I mean, you can use this as a label, since it's in a journal, it can still be written in, it can still serve the purpose, but I think so.

It's going to be nice to hide all of this and that's why my next step is to add some teddy paper or any scrapbook paper whatever just to hide everything and the srt dyed some pages that had some writing on them but it's well, you can see it. a little bit, I don't really care for that look, but since I was talking about perfection just before, let me take a light paper, here's one with something that will look good, so now I'm just going to add a little bit of glue stick a again, if I wasn't sewing, which I will be, I would use a proper glue, not a glue stick, and just put it down like this, that will be the back and now one last trip to the sewing machine.

I can see that I left a little bit left over here that's going to be cut off and now I'm going to sew all the way around, but from this side, if I turn it this way I can't see where my label ends, so I'm actually just going to sew right next to the stitching that I already did all over and here we go, it's all sewn and now I'm just going to trim off all that excess paper, here we go to finish it off. Before I add the ribbon I'm just going to ink those edges and now all I have to do is do the exact same thing on my other labels and I also wanted to show you so I don't seem too pedantic when I'm talking about being perfect and what not last night I made these labels and I was just sticking things like they weren't, you know, it's notnothing, uh, particularly special, I may have something here, a sticker or something, but you know what I mean.

Not everything always has to be that way, so it's good to do whatever you feel like doing at the moment, but when I want to do a bunch of the same thing, let's call it a collection. I don't normally use that term, a collection of tags. I'm making a collection of something and they all have to be the same, similar, the same, you know, so things have to be right, I'm going to finish this and then we'll be done with this tutorial rant without a tutorial, I guess I'm not ranting. I'm just explaining why I do things the way I do, so our next step is a ribbon for the top of the label.

You can leave it as is. You can add something on top, which is what I'm going to do. because this is quite thick I can't use one of these, I tried, it won't go through all the layers including the fabric, so at this point use whatever you have if you have cut out the dial grille. I have this silent setter that I have. that on eBay and I'm going to use this to make a hole in my tag. If you don't have something that goes through all those layers, then you can just do something like this, put it on top and take it. to a sewing machine and just sew it on this here has a little intruder this was resting against my ink pad and now I need to find a way to cover that because just look, it's not acceptable, I'm just going to use a little bit of something to cover that real quick, here we go, make it look like it was supposed to be there the whole time.

I've found that it's through the mistakes I make that I always come up with something new and interesting that looks pretty good all the way around. right now I'm going to use my silent scent fixative and I'm going to make those holes happen on all of my labels. It takes a little work. It would be easier if I had a crocodile, but here we go, here we go. All done, so I just found the rough middle. I didn't measure anything, obviously I'm not completely crazy and now I just need a little piece of this, maybe a little more than I need and then I can easily cut it out.

First I want to show you this one. You can see that this is not a perfect hole. You know you may have some frayed fabric in there. It's okay because once it passes, it keeps everything in its place and nothing can go anywhere. This fabric dyed with tea. It has such a nice vintage feel to it, I think here we go, that's it, I'll repeat the process here and just in case if you have trouble with this part once it goes through because this fabric is quite bulky going through that little hole here and yes I try to pull it but it doesn't really work so I pull it from here to make the loop nice and tight and then I pick it up and move them to the side just like that and I like the labels once I pick them up So. this one here when I pick it up I don't want this fabric to move down I want it to stay up which means they just need to be a little bit shorter here let's see what I mean it doesn't move down this a pro this is good , this one is fluttering down a little bit, maybe I'm crazy and now when I look back this one with the error looks better than this one here, I really like that extra little bit I added there and there.

Come on, let's take a closer look at all of them. I think these papers that I added stains to look really cool with this vintage feel, so I really like that you can see a little bit of writing here. I actually really like that look, I don't know why I like those pretty spots, I'll show you that the fronts are more important than the back, this one is really beautiful, that's the back, this one, I love this one, butterfly , and then these are the ones we just made today, I love them, I hope you like them too and I have a lot of them now and to be honest, filming this video took me longer than making all the other labels I had already made, so I hope The process didn't seem too complicated to me because you have to do this and then sew the machine on this, then sew the machine to me it seemed complicated because I'm filming it, so I had to move the camera, bring my machine sew here, you know everything. of that, but when I was making them it was a process, I just cut everything, laid out the fabric and prepared the pages of the book, that kind of thing, I did it all as a kind of production line, but it's not really production and it sounds bored. but it really isn't when you're in the flow of the zone so I hope you enjoyed this video I hope you feel inspired I hope maybe you learned something new I have some new ideas it's probably nothing you haven't seen before or already I did before, but in any case I hope this has been useful to you.

Thank you very much for watching and see you in my next video, bye.