:: pet tags

Since finding the idea for Shrinky Dink pet tags on Pinterest,

via Martha {of course } this has been on my list of things to make.

Being the owner of 7 {yes that's right} 7 pets, 3 canines & 4 felines...

buying tags can be quite expensive & we needed new ones.

{it's okay, we've accepted that we have a little animal hoarder problem}

In our defense, we only purchased two of our pets, the rest are rescues : ).

Armed with a 50% off coupon to Michael's 

{gotta love a good coupon}

I went off in search of inkjet printable Shrinky Dink plastic.

Take my word for it and ask someone to take you directly to it,

you'll save yourself lots of time looking, and looking, and looking for it.

Michael's is a madhouse right now with all of the sales & coupons going on.

When I got home I downloaded the free PDF here,

made my changes, printed them, cut them out, and baked them.

Here's how they turned out for me.

They were cute, but I didn't l.o.v.e them. {sorry Martha}

Honestly they were a little big & the numbers too small.

{ the phone numbers are only missing in the images because I don't want the world to have it }

So, back to the drawing board {my computer}.

I went into Adobe Illustrator to create my own tags.

I chose the smallest of the Martha tags as a guideline for size,

and went even smaller, approx. 2.5 inches for my largest pet tag...

then I just scaled the others down according to the size of my pets.

I didn't want them to look like Flava Flav wearing their tags.

Anyhoo, as you can also see, I chose lighter softer colors,

and I had fun picking different fonts for each of the fur babies.

I also added a couple of monogrammed tags for myself & my daughters

in order to take full advantage & not waste any of the plastic sheet.

I got 9 tags on one 8.5 x 11 sheet, compared to the 8 on two sheets per Martha.

Here are the tags side by side, though I'm missing a few in this shot

because they are already on my pets { I couldn't wait to see how they looked }.

So, let's do the math {as much as I hate it....math's hard....lol...my bestie gets this}

That's 9 tags on a sheet of Shrinky Dink paper that cost me about $1 with my coupon.

The average cost of 1 pet tag at the local pet mart would be about $10.00 for the smallest.

For me that would be about $70 plus the extra monogrammed tags I made would be $90.

Hmmm, that's about 11 cents per tag for a savings of 89 buckaroonies....not bad.

So, Thank you, Thank you, Martha { and crew } for always coming up with great ideas.

This material is so much fun to work with, I couldn't help but think of other ways to use it.

 think it will make great luggage tags, gift tags, jewelry....the possibilities are endless.

TIP : using a standard hole punch will not be big enough for a tag, I simply punched around the edges to make my hole larger { the hole shrinks too }

Happy Monday!

Only 6 more days until my KINGS birthday,

and the big man in the red suit visits to spread HIS message of giving.

{peace, love & hugs}

Carrie