Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Cable Tie Cup Tags




Here is a fun project to do at parties... make you own cup name tags. Here are the ones that we made at the open house last Friday night with our Vegas theme, but you customize these for any theme or color you want!
Here is how to make your own.
1. Cut your shrink plastic into any shape that you want. I used white shrink plastic and used a die cut machine to die cut the plastic into a scalloped square. I think the square was about 3" to start with. Use a regular ol' hole punch from the office supply store to punch a hole in the top.
2. Then you can stamp on your plastic and I recommend that you use StazOn permanent ink or VersaMagic inks. (These are my favorites but you can use any permanent or pigment inks).
3. Use a permanent (Sharpie) pen to write you name on the plastic.
4. Now you are ready to shrink. This is the fun part! I like to use my toaster oven, but you can use a regular oven or even a heat tool. I placed my non-stick craft sheet on the bed of the toaster oven (no they will not melt!) and then placed my stamped shrink plastic on that (so that it will not stick to the pan) and then crank the oven up to about 350 degrees. You plastic will curl up and then lay down flat. If it does not lay down flat, just wait it will I promise! When it is flat, take it out of the oven and place an acrylic mount on top of it to flatten out all the way. Let cool.
5. Now punch a hole in the plastic cup... you want a smaller hole than a regular sized hole punch, so I used my Crop-A-Dile smaller punch setting. Then thread your cable tie through your name tag and then the hole in the cup. Leave a little wiggle room so it can move around a bit, then trim off the end of the cable tie.
6. Whala you are done! You can even remove these tags when you are done with the cup and reuse it another time. All you have to do is cut the cable tie and keep the tag. I have a photo of cable ties above so you could see what they look like. I used clear ones in my project and I think I got them at the dollar store.
This is a lot more fun than using a Sharpie to label your plastic cup at your next party don't you think?!


2 comments:

Dot said...

Great idea Melissa! We are going to a 50th surprise party next weekend and I'm going to make a bunch of those to have ready!

Have a wonderful day!
Dot

Melissa Baldwin said...

I am glad you liked the idea Dot and are going to make some!

If you remember, take a photo and I will post it to the blog.