DIY Scandinavian Wooden Gift Tags

I really look forward to wrapping up all the Christmas gifts for my friends and family. Buying and wrapping the presents is one of my favorite things to do during the festive season, to me there's something so relaxing about choosing the papers and wrapping up the gifts.

Every year I try out new ideas to create even more thoughtful and pretty wrapping than the year before, can you tell I'm competitive? This year I found some gorgeous wrapping paper in John Lewis and the theme I've opted for is navy blue and gold. To match the metallic wood effect paper I thought I'd try my hand at making some handpainted wooden gift tags. I was inspired by Scandinavian dala horses and folk art for the design but you could paint whatever pattern you like.


The paint I used is Chalk Paint by Annie Sloan. I have various pots of Annie's paint at home, I wanted to use them as chalk paint can be applied to any surface and can also be blended to create custom colours. I mixed the Graphite colour with Greek Blue to get a dark navy paint.

If you've read my blog for a while you'll know how much I love using chalk paint. Read about the Annie Sloan furniture painting workshop here and my DIY chalk paint recipe here.

I bought the wooden letters from my local craft shop for 80p each, so this is a very inexpensive yet impressive looking project. I also tried my hand at painting onto some brown craft paper which worked beautifully too. If you had the time you could purchase a roll of inexpensive plain paper and paint on your own design for all the gifts you need to wrap. I think that would be such a lovely personalised gift in itself!

What You'll Need

Chalk Paint in various colours
Wooden Gift Tags
Paint Brushes
A Pencil
Scissors
Tape
Ribbon


So the first thing you need to do is plan out your design. I opted for letter shapes to add a personal touch but you could choose any shaped tag you like, stars, hearts, circles or something a little more festive. Using a medium pencil sketch out your design lightly on the letters. I love dala horses so the patterns seen in Scandinavian christmas ornaments and embroidery was my inspiration.


Once you've drawn out the design on your tags it's time for the fun part. Get your paints ready and begin filling in the design, make sure to choose very fine brushes if you have a detailed design like mine. Personally I found it very relaxing to focus on the painting, if you enjoy adult colouring books I think you'll also find this a mindful creative exercise!


I continued filling in the pencil lines with paint until I was completely happy with the result. Please be aware that if your paint is too runny it may bleed into the grain of the wood. Also, if you're using white like I did you may need two coats of paint to fully cover the pencil lines of the design. I then added a few sprigs of leafy branches to the brown paper ready to wrap my gifts in!


To continue with the painting fun I also tried out a much more abstract and messy design on the brown paper, you could also apply this sort of technique to the gift tags too. A looser design would work best on less delicate tags, though, so avoid letters if you can. If you like this abstract look I would choose circular or star shaped tags so you have more surface area to paint onto.


I hope you enjoyed this DIY tutorial and if you would like to learn how to wrap the perfect gift I have a blog post for that too! I covered each step in detail so you can wrap presents neatly and stress free this Christmas. Read that post right here.