Life's Journey To Perfection: Like The Wise Men Seek a Particular Star Christmas Gift Tag and Gift Ideas: Great for Neighbors and Ministering

Like The Wise Men Seek a Particular Star Christmas Gift Tag and Gift Ideas: Great for Neighbors and Ministering,

I was at a friends house helping put handouts together for our Stake Primary meeting. We were talking about Christmas neighbor gifts and I had told her that I had a whole bunch on my blog. She hadn't really visited it, so I showed her some of the tags on it. She had written down a quote by President Monson, that she really loved and was thinking about doing something with it.

Fast forward a couple week's later and she asked me if I would do something for her, of course I said yes! She asked if I could make a tag with President Monson's quote on it. So, I worked on it and finished it a few week's ago. I thought I would share it on here as well, I also wanted to come up with some things that could be given with the tag. So, I've been working on some fun crafts today! They are some fun ones.

So, lets first share this quote that inspired the gift tag, my crafting all day and this post...

"May we, as did the Wise Men, seek a bright, particular star to guide us in our celebration of the Savior’s birth." - President Thomas S Monson, The Real Joy of Christmas

Here is the gift tag:

There are six on a page. I printed mine out onto card stock. Click the Free Download button below:

I started thinking about all kinds of things that this tag could be attached to. Mostly stars, but they could also be attached to any treat. You could even cut out a star, poke a hole in the star and the corner of this tag and tie them on with a cute ribbon onto a treat. Here are some star ideas as well:

Paper Star Treat Holder

I was searching for some ideas and found these paper star treat containers that you can make. They have a free download that I used for the template. Here is the link to the blog post, where they have the template and a tutorial: Paper Star Template from The Craft Blog by Trimcraft I printed the template out onto card stock and did as they said, to score the lines. If I was to do it again, I would print the template right onto the back of whatever paper I was actually going to use to make the star out of. It would just be easier to just score the actual paper, then try to score it through the template. The other thing that I did a little different was I used a sandwich bag to cut the plastic for the window out of and I just taped it on in the inside. I also, hot glued my star together, all except for the side with the tab.

These were rather easy and fun to make. They make for a great treat holder. I filled mine with mini candy canes. These would be great to give to ministering sisters or to some young women or primary children.

Star chocolates, candies or cookies...

I was thinking about what kind of star treat I could make to go with the tags. I thought about making pretzels into stars. but I didn't have any of the stick pretzels. But I did have a star mold, & I had just made homemade caramels. So I decided to make white chocolate caramel candies. I choose white chocolate, because it says better at room temperature than the milk chocolate does.

So I put some white chocolate chips in a baggy and warmed it up in the microwave 30 second intervals until it was melted. Then I just one of the corner tips off of the baggy to use like a piping bag. Then I put some of the chocolate in the bottom of the mold, then placed a piece of the caramel, then put some more chocolate on top. When I was done with the whole mold I shook it side to side to settle all of the chocolate into the mold. You could scrape of and level the chocolates if you'd like. I didn't I just cut off the excess chocolate afterwards.

I placed mine in the freezer to speed up the setting process. When set I took them out of the molds. Then I drizzled some yellow melted candy melts onto the chocolates. When that had set, then I placed them in a bag and punch two holes in the top of the bag and the tag and strung some jute through it and tied a bow. This would be a fun little gift for anyone! You could also attach the tag to a plate of star cookies. Or sometimes you can find star candies at the store, you could attach it to them as well.

Wood Star

I have an amazingly talented friend. One year she gave me this wooden star for a gift. She has a blog post about how to make these stars. These would be super fun to give as a gift with the gift tag attached. Here is a link to here tutorial: Rustic Patchwork Stars

2x4 Star String Art

Another fun craft I thought of was to do star string art! This one is easy, fun and inexpensive to do. I had cut a bunch of 2x4's for a previous project. Here's how I made it:

What you will need:

- 2x4 wood block. Mine is cut to 4 1/4 inches.

-Craft paint and foam brush (I used white)

-Sandpaper if you'd like to sand it

- Nails (The one's I used were Wire Nails 17 gauge x 1 in)

- Hammer

- String (I used gold crochet thread)

- Star Pintable (Click the Free download button below)

Here's the instructions:

You'll want to begin with sanding the block of wood. Then you can paint it your desired color. I did two coats of paint. Let the paint dry and then move onto the next step.

Print out the Star template (the free download is above). Then tape it onto the block of wood with some masking tape or painters tape.

You will then hammer in the nails. I did it at all of the points and then put one in between the points. I hammered them down to where the was an 1/8 of an inch between the head of the nail and the wood.

When you are done hammering the nails on. Then you will remove the template. It comes off pretty easily.

To start the string onto the nail. You will want to make a slip not. Then you will place that over the nail an pull it tight.

Here is the picture with the slip not on the nail and pulled tight. The key to string art, is to keep you string tight, the whole time you are stringing it onto the nails. I also cut my tail of the string shorter. It pretty much is hidden by the string art, so you can't even tell it is there.

So, I started at the top point, then I went around the whole outside of the star. As you can see in the image above, from that top nail I went to the next nail and looped around it, keeping my string on the outside of the nails to form a boarder around the star.

The rest is just up to your creativity. Just start looping around random nails. I had know rhyme or reason to my pattern. I just started looping, making sure the string always stayed inside of my star boarder. When I was done stringing the inside. I decided to go around the outside again. To finish of I just knotted around the nail and cut my tail short.

You could tie the tag directly onto it. Or you could place it in a cellophane bag and tie the tag on the outside.

Some other ideas of things you could tie the tag onto are: Sugar cookie dough and a star cookie cutter, Container of frosted star pretzels, a bag of starburst or peppermint star brites candies, you could also attach it to a couple of these projects: