For a housewarming party, my friend wanted to create a special dessert as a thank you favour for each guest. She asked me to create little tags for each dessert. This tutorial will show you how to create your own thank you tags from scratch using Photoshop. This tutorial assumes that you have basic knowledge of Photoshop.


What you will need:

  • Computer with Photoshop or equivalent software
  • Printer and ink
  • Plain cardstock paper, white or light-coloured (8.5×11 or 12×12, depending on what size your printer prints).
  • Paper cutter or scissors
  • Fiskars Square-A-Licious squeeze punch, 1.5″ size

Creating a Printable Sheet of Your Tag’s Design using Photoshop

  1. Open Photoshop and create a new document that is 1.25″x1.25″, 300 pixels per inch (ppi). Use the paint bucket tool from the toolbox to fill the canvas with a white background.
  2. Using the text tool, write a heart-felt message for your guests. I used Georgia font in grey for the main font, writing, “How beautiful a day can be when kindness touches it.” I highlighted key words in the phrase and changed them to punchy colours and changed their font weight from Regular to Italic and Bold respectively. In Courier New, I typed, “Thank you for coming. Love Kash & Fem.”
  3. Once you are happy with your tag’s design, let’s increase the canvas size. Go to Image > Canvas Size on the main menu bar and choose 1.7″ for both the width and height, 300 ppi. This will cover the 1.5″ size of our paper squeeze punch, plus give us a little wiggle room on each side. If the expanded background area isn’t white, use the paint bucket tool on the background layer to fill it up with white.
  4. Select the entire canvas by clicking Select > All or pressing CTRL+A (Windows). Click on Edit > Define Pattern and give this tag any name you would like.
  5. From the main menu, go to Image > Canvas Size. Increase the canvas size to the size of paper you are using (8.5″ wide to 11″ tall, or 12″ wide and 12″ tall, 300 ppi).
  6. Go to Layer > New > New Layer (SHIFT+CTRL+N) to create a new layer.
  7. Select the paint bucket tool from the toolbox. On the sub menu bar below the main menu at the top, select Pattern from the drop-down list. Click on the little arrow next to the pattern thumbnail and select the thumbnail for your tag’s design.
  8. Click anywhere on the canvas to fill the canvas with your design as a repeat. Your design will not fit into the canvas perfectly, so using the selection tool from the toolbox, create a selection box over the repeats that do not fit and press delete to clear the selection. Deselect the selection and use the Move tool from the toolbox to shift everything into the center of your canvas.

  9. Now you are ready to print the design onto cardstock. Print as many sheets as you require.

Cutting Out the Tags

  1. After printing out the tags, use a paper cutter to cut the sheets into vertical columns, making sure to keep your cuts evenly centered between the designs.
  2. Centre the design inside the squeeze punch’s viewfinder window, and when you are aligned properly, squeeze! Repeat, repeat, repeat, until you amass a gorgeous, satisfying pile of tags to say thank you to your guests.

How to Use the Tags

You can use these tags in many ways. You can attach a toothpick to the backside and plunk it into a delicious dessert. You can punch a tiny hole in the top and attach it to a favour box with ribbon. You can lean the little cardstock tag up against a miniature gift. Don’t be shy about sharing your own ideas of how to use these tags in the comments.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>