If you've ever wanted a daily creative practice that actually produces something tangible — something you can hold, flip through, and put on a shelf — this tag journal flipthrough shows what 27 days of 15-minute tag-making can look like. I set myself a simple brief: make one tag a day, keep it to around 15 minutes, and let the book fill up. What I ended up with is a tag book where all the tags stick out of the spine, and it's one of the things on my shelf that I just keep looking at.
What we cover
This is a flipthrough of my completed tag journal — a junk journal made from a Cheaply Chic kit journal, with 27 handmade tags tucked into sewn pockets throughout. I walk through every tag, talk about what went into each one (materials, the creative mood I was in that day, the ideas behind the embellishments), and share what I'd do differently. I also point toward several companion videos for the techniques shown — pressed flowers, cutting words from books, cereal bag pouches, and the original journal prep.
What you'll learn
How a daily tag practice builds into something lasting — each tag here took around 15 minutes, sometimes less, sometimes a bit more. Doing one a day means the book fills up before creative fatigue sets in, and the variety across 27 tags is part of what makes flipping through it interesting.
How to build pockets and journaling space into embellished tags, including:
- Folding a longer glassine bag up to create a small pocket for smaller tags inside
- Cutting around an image and gluing only the edges to create a little door or window with a hidden tag behind it
- Sewing a design element onto one face of a tag only, so the reverse stays clean for writing
Why leaving journaling space matters even on heavily decorated tags — it's a question I get asked a lot: what do you actually do with tags? My answer is that they're embellishments with function. There's always a spot to write a quote, a date, a few words. They can live in journals, go on gifts instead of a card, or sit as a focal point on a cover.
How to use kit packaging as part of the project — the tissue paper my kit arrived wrapped in became a cover layer on one tag. Wallpaper included as padding became a journaling strip. Nothing from Lynette's kit went to waste, and some of those incidental materials ended up being my favourites.
How to create a laminated pressed flower tag — pressed flowers from my mum's collection, laminated and trimmed, make simple, beautiful bookmarks or pocket tags. They don't retain their scent after pressing and laminating (I get asked this a lot), but they hold their colour and shape beautifully.
How cereal bags become little tag pouches — two cereal bags sewn together create a pocket that's surprisingly effective in a junk journal. I have a full video on this technique, but you can see the result here: a small stamped tag tucked inside, the whole thing sewn onto the journal page.
How garment tags and found tags become starting points — one of the tags in this book started life as a clothing tag. Covered in book pages, with a cut sentence from a Reader's Digest pressed onto it, it becomes something completely different. The structure was already there; I just had to respond to it.
How to work through a low-creativity day without wrecking the book — some of these tags were made on days when I didn't have much in me. You can tell which ones. But even a simple Reader's Digest page glued flat with a few gold beads is better than a blank tag, and it keeps the daily habit intact.
Tips & gotchas
Even when a tag is heavily embellished, leave at least a small patch of open space somewhere. It doesn't have to be much — room for a line of writing, a date, a quote. That space is what makes the tag useful rather than just decorative, and it's what lets someone actually use it in a journal or on a gift without feeling like they're covering up your work.
The packaging that comes with craft kits is worth keeping. Tissue paper, cardboard inserts, small printed cards — all of it can become material. I used the tissue paper from my Cheaply Chic kit to wrap a cardstock tag, and the wallpaper padding became a note strip. It's worth pausing before you throw any of it away.
On pressed flowers: they do not smell after pressing and laminating. I've had this question more than once, so I'll say it plainly — the scent goes during the pressing process. What you keep is the shape and the colour, and that's more than enough for what we're doing here.
That's one of the things a daily practice like this gives you: not just a finished object, but a series of finished objects that start to speak to each other. I'd love to do another one of these, maybe with a looser theme or a different colour story. The format itself — one tag, 15 minutes, every day — turned out to be exactly the right container for the kind of making I needed at the time.
