How to make Party Bag Name Tags with Shrink Plastic

Making Personalised Party Bag Name Tags

With Max's birthday fast approaching, this year we decided to give him his first birthday party!

So obviously I can't let that day go by without a personalised touch, so I decided on creating personalised Party Bag Name Tags. The theme - Dinosaurs.

I purchased the images from vector stock, mainly because I wanted something unique and clear for printing. Once the images were downloaded I opened up my good old version of Photoshop and added the names to each child invited to the party.

As I fitted as many dinosaurs as I could on one sheet of Shrink Plastic I made the images lighter. This is a must as the image shrinks to approximately 50% of the current size and becomes darker as it does so. I use Shrinkies Inkjet paper - and as you can see it's not exactly cheap, hence fitting as much as possible on one sheet.

I left my print outs to dry overnight (how I have no idea, I'm soooooo impatient!). Then cut around them the following day and (all but one....) then put a hole somewhere near the top for the ball chain to go through. This must be done before baking as the plastic is too hard to put a hole through afterwards - I did try and it wasn't having any of it!

Name Tags ready for baking

Once done I baked them for 2 minutes at Gas Mark 5 - I only tend to do a maximum of two at a time as I like to be able to get the whole set under my block to flatten - just in case when they curl they don't come back quite flat again.

Once solid and cold I then sprayed each dinosaur with lacquer and again left it overnight to dry through. I placed them back on baking paper and not tissue (after the first two decided to keep a bit of tissue on them!)

Cut, Baked and Lacquered Dinosaur Tags

Once completed I added a ball chain through the top of the dinosaur and there we have the personalised party bag name tags which also double up as a key ring.