Make DIY Gift Tags with NYPL Digital Collections
Looking to add a colorful, personalized touch to your gifts this year? Look no further than our Digital Collections! Spanning a wide range of historical eras, geography, and media, NYPL Digital Collections offers digitized drawings, illuminated manuscripts, maps, photographs, posters, prints, rare illustrated books, videos, audio, and more. Our collections are full of free and fabulous imagery and patterns that can be printed out to spice up your gifts.
Materials:
- Your favorite images from our Digital Collections
- Color printer
- Cardstock
- Pencil
- Gift Tag Template (we borrowed from Photojojo)
- Scissors or X-Acto knife
- Hole Punch
- String
Step 1: Print out the gift tag template on cardstock and cut it out—this will be your stencil for making the rest of the gift tags.
Step 2: Find the images you’d like to use. Here are a few good places to start your search:
- Abstract French kaleidoscope motifs (that's where we grabbed the image for the tags above)
- Plants and animals
- Vintage Christmas cards
- Bookbinding patterns
- Blue and white British algae imagery
- Engineering playing cards
Images can be downloaded by clicking on the image you’d like, then clicking the folder icon underneath the image on its information page. Select the “Standard” size image to download.
Step 3: Once you’ve selected your images, print them on cardstock. You can either opt to resize specific images in photo editing software to be the size of the template (4” x 2.25”) or find a nice pattern to print on the full sheet and cut out sections.Step 4: Using your cardstock tag template and a pencil, trace the outline of the tag on each of your images.Step 5: Cut along your traced lines to create your tags. You can use scissors if you’re a careful cutter, but for a more exact edge you can opt to use an X-Acto knife on a cutting board.Step 6: Use the hole punch to punch out the hole at the top of each tag.Step 7: Tie a length of string through the hole in each gift tag and attach to your gift. You’re done!
We’d love to see your gift tag creations and what images you decided to use from our Digital Collections. Be sure to post a photo of your finished tags on Twitter or Instagram, and tag @nypl if you do!