How to Make Luggage Tags from Recycled Folders

My daughter tends to lose things. Since she only goes to her "homeschool-school" two days a week, and since it is out of the way, I don't want to have to schlep over there to pick up items she left behind. Putting luggage tags on her bags and other other items has helped her things to find their way back to her by the end of the day. I was able to make enough luggage tags to also put them on her luggage for travel.

I almost went online and purchased a dozen luggage tags for her various needs. There's the book bag, the dance bag, sometimes the garment bag for choir clothes, and the lunch bag too. I got very close to laying out $30 or so on luggage tags when I realized that I could make them with the items that I had within arm's reach of my desk. Here is how I recycled a folder to make luggage tags for my daughters items.

Materials needed:

• Character or colorful folder
• Scissors or paper cutter
• Half page or full page printer stickers
• Printer
• Box tape or lamination machine
• Hole punch
• Rubber bands or cord

The idea of a folder just popped in my head. Knowing I had purchased several dozen folders at various back to school sales, I knew I had everything I needed for this project. Before I grabbed a new folder though, I decided to look through some old school work of my daughter's to see if there were any old folders I could recycle.

As luck would have it, I quickly came upon a Hello Kitty folder that had trashed binder holes and that had been scribbled on on the inside. This left it unusable for another semester, but very useful for my project. I examined the outside of the folder and decided that I could salvage a half-dozen card sized rectangles from this otherwise trashed folder. I did just that. I used an old playing card to trace a rectangle and cut the first one. Then I cut as many as I could that would be flawless.

Next, I pulled out my printable label sheets. I ended up with a ton of these from years ago when I ran an eBay business. Each label is a half sheet size. One each label, I printed my child's name in large letters, plus my phone number and address in tiny letters.

Then I applied the stickers to the white side of the cards I had cut out and trimmed away the extra label material.

As I was worried about the ink running, I grabbed some wide box tape and used two strips per card to cover the printed side, thereby laminating it cheaply.

Finally, I used a hole punch to make hole in each card, and utilized rubber bands to attach the cards to her bags.

She loves it. Did I mention it was an old Hello Kitty folder, which she is a complete nut for? This project can be done for any child or teen using their favorite character folder. Even if you need to use a brand new folder, it will only cost you $2.00 for the folder. Most computer savvy people will have the other items laying around the house.