These homemade gift tags have the job of doing one major thing:  directing your gift to the right person, naturally. But they also might add to the overall decoration of the gift; and they might add a further message to the party they’re intended for.

They can be tied to the package somehow (tricky, sometimes!), or adhered to it - they might even be self-adhesive stamps in the first place. (Or really, the same messages can just be written onto the package wrapper.)

Yes, you can buy them (or sometimes get them in magazines, or in the mail from non-profit organizations). But gosh, they’re expensive for tiny pieces of paper! (And I rarely find any that I really like.)

And if you don’t want to spend time and money shopping for ready-made gift tags? - homemade gift tags are even better...
  

• Use old greeting cards! (Clip any nice-looking portion of a picture card that doesn’t have writing on the back - the recipe that goes with a food gift can be written on one too; possibly fold over a larger picture to make a card tag; or, as one provident friend showed me, cut out the printed message from the inside of cards.)

• Use cartoons (especially good are the one-a-day calendar page type).

• Use new or vintage postcards to write on.

• Make your own from scraps of stiff paper with cutouts or rubber or potato stamps.
    
• Use the back of a recipe card (index card)... on the front of which you've written out a favorite recipe!

• Have you inherited a bunch of recipe cards you don't care to keep? - use those!
    
• Use mailing labels, or those old-fashioned pasteboard mailing tags (possibly stamped with an elegant leaf or tree?).

• Write on a piece of ribbon.

• Write on a recycled Christmas card taped or glued onto the package.

• Write on the package itself!  (You could even purposefully use all black matte paper and write/draw on it with chalk, like an old school chalkboard.)

• Glue sequins, paper-punch "holes", seeds, seed beads, or strips of ribbon to the package in the shape of the letters of the giftee’s name or initials.
   
• Use wonderful bookplates, vintage place cards, whimsical business cards.
   
• Just punch a hole near the edge of some paper coasters and write on the backs.

• Make up some gift tags that are personalized for you (similar to bookplates)... with a drawing of your house, for example; a picture of you? (Have them photocopied on hefty paper and cut them into one-off or folded-over rectangles... or triangles... or circles... or...)

• Bake plain rectangular cookies, with a hole about1/2" in from one end... And frost them with a Christmas design, perhaps, and the "To:" and "From:" lines. Or make dog biscuits?

• Cut tags from the flat sides of old plastic milk cartons! (into critter shapes? a bone for the dog?).

• Make small felt shapes (Christmas stockings, trees, globe ornaments, dog bones?, etc.) and embroider on giftees’ names (or write them in glue and sprinkle with glitter). (An assortment of these would also make a good gift for a family.)

• Use old piano keys as gift tags for musicians.
   
• How about luggage tags for travelers?
   
• Make tags from wood veneer if you’re a carpenter (or even if you’re not).
    
• Make simple tags from stiff paper and glue a pressed flower or leaf onto a corner of each one.

• Cut out large letters to spell a name...from sheet music, maps, magazine covers, kids' drawings, etc.

• Or the "recyclediest" method:  Stick new labels (or pieces thereof) over the "To: [So-and-So]" and "From:" lettering of old stickers that are "stuck" in the middle of the nice recycled wrapping paper you want to use... refreshed!
    

You didn’t think they had to be rectangular pieces of paper, did you?

And here’s how to make invisible ink gift tag messages!... Write with lemon, onion, or turnip juice, or skim milk - let it dry naturally, or dry it with a hair blow-dryer on low. ...Tell the recipient to use a hot blow-dryer on the message to read it.

Or what about mirror writing?