Coach (or Teacher) Gifts and Easy Recycled Tags

We wanted to do something nice for the boy's swim coaches and this was a huge hit. All the parents kept asking if it was someone's birthday and the coaches were thrilled! Yay!

 While it's a little bit expensive, we were giving one gift from two kids and really wanted them to know how much we appreciated their role in Avery and Brayden's life.

First we chose towels in colors that we thought suited them

as well as magazines based on their interests.

 

We also added some Twizzlers and sunscreen, both things will come in handy when lessons switch to the outdoor pools or when they're just hanging out enjoying the summer sun.

It was really fun personalizing each gift and taking a moment to think about each coach.

For ribbon I chose polka dots for girls and plain black for boys. Keeping it simple is always the better choice.

What we didn't have time for though was fancy crafting for the tags. So I went to my go-to technique of recycling packaging. If you don't have any packaging on hand, old calendar pages or scrapbook paper work just as well.

When I opened my Dina Wakely Stamps I remember thinking, " she did all the work for me" when I saw the awesome collaged insert. I kept them for later use. 

First you need to trim the packaging down to the part you want to keep. In this case, I let the focal image determine the size of the tag.

Ink the edges and attach to manilla tags.

Add the recipients name with a label maker.

Easy!

These seemed a little too simple but since we were running out the door, I wanted to add something but it had to be dry: no paint, no glue, no glitter... and unisex. What to do?

Free-motion stitching. I added a few looks in black thread and chain pieced them so I didn't even have to start and stop sewing. See - they're all connected.

Trim the threads and attach to your gifts.

Thanks to Rachel Berry for the idea - via Pinterest.