With 4th of July and Labor Day celebrations coming up soon, it’s time to get festive with some free patriotic printable sparkler tags and food flags!

Freebie 1
Party in the USA Patriotic Food Flags

If your BBQ needs a little patriotic flair this year, these Party in the USA food flags will do the trick. If you have printable sticker paper sheets, just print, cut, fold and stick to toothpicks. But you can also use cardstock or regular printer paper and tape or glue too.

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Supplies Needed for Patriotic Food Flags

• Printer
• Sticker paper or copy paper
• Scissors or a cutting machine
• Glue or tape (unless using sticker paper)
• Toothpicks

Instructions

Download and print Party in the USA food flags. Cut two squares in a row together for one flag and fold down the middle to create a double sided flag. Place toothpick in the centerfold and stick, tape or glue to toothpick. Repeat process for all 12 toothpicks and print more if needed.

Freebie 2
Fun & Fireworks Sparkler Tag Holders

Sparklers are a great addition to patriotic holiday parties and these tags will dress them up with fun! Easily print these on 8 1/2 x 11” white cardstock. Each sparkler tag holder measures 3×3”.

Supplies Needed for Patriotic Fun & Fireworks Sparkler Tag Holders

• Printer
• Letter 8 1/2 x 11” cardstock
• Scissors, paper cutter or cutting machine (Cricut or Cameo, etc)
• Standard hole punch or scissors
• Sparklers

Instructions

Download and print Sparkler Tags on white cardstock. Cut each tag as a 3×3” square. Then cut a small slit with scissors or an x-acto knife at the top and bottom of each tag for the sparkler to fit (see photo above for slit placement). If you’re using bigger sparklers or want to put more than one sparkler in each holder, a hole puncher can be used.

I hope you enjoy these Free Patriotic Printable Sparkler Tags and Food Flags and enjoy your 4th of July and Labor Day festivities. Be sure to sign up below for more freebies coming soon!

Supplies Needed to Create a Photo Booth for your party List:

All celebrations should have lots of photos to create lasting memories. Why not add an affordable DIY photo booth to your party this year? Check out this post on how to do it

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‘Tis the season for giving, so I’m giving away these Gift Card Holder SVG designs for free! It’s also the season to be crafty – and your Cricut, Cameo or Scan-n-Cut machines are perfect for some holiday creativity!

I suggest heavy weight paper of 65 lb or more for this project. (Check your printer settings for the heaviest weight it will accept). If you prefer not to have the ribbon holes, simply ungroup the design and delete them before your cut. I also added an extra square cut on the unused portion of my sheet and glued the pattern behind the window cut. And, if you want to add ribbon, as seen in the photo it will hold ribbon up to a half inch in width.

This download includes the reindeer, snowflake and Christmas tree Gift Card Holder SVG designs. In addition, each one fits on an 8.5 x 11 sheet so you can use the print and cut feature to print messages on the inside or outside of the card if you want to personalize them. Your friends and family will love receiving a little cash or a gift card to their favorite place in these cute holders with your personal stamp of love on each one. Happy Holidays and happy cutting!! (Have a project in mind? Send me an email at lisaslifetips@gmail.com and I will choose one project each month to design and give away to all my readers, including you!)

Looking for inspiration for Christmas Treats this year? This Cajun Christmas Cracker Recipe is DELISH and, it also comes with a free SVG for labels!

It’s hard to imagine that not long ago, save the dates weren’t a thing. You sent out invitations and RSVPs before the wedding, and your guests responded. Perhaps they marked their calendar from word of mouth.  But today, save the dates are extremely popular for all weddings and even more so for destination weddings! They are a great idea to give your guests a reminder to set aside time for your upcoming event.

It gives your guests time to plan ahead for your big day – book hotel rooms, make flight arrangements and take off of work, if necessary . It also gives you an opportunity to share your engagement photos in a unique way and creates excitement around your upcoming event . And there are so many different designs to choose from online, and so much fun to look through all of them!

If you are planning to DIY parts of your wedding, I highly suggest investing in a cutting machine like a Cricut or Silhouette Cameo. If you aren’t familiar with these machines, there are plenty of tutorials out there on YouTube and around the web but here’s one to get you started .

I fell in love with the airline boarding ticket design and decided to create one from scratch. Our Save the Dates were created using a Silhouette Cameo cutting machine and included a jacket to hold the ticket, a custom luggage tag and a magnet that I designed and bought from Vistaprint. (If you want to create this design, you can get the file at my Etsy shop here. It includes SVGs for cutting the ticket, the jacket and a #10 envelope).

Since we were having a destination wedding, I wanted to give my guests plenty of time to plan ahead if they wanted to attend. I decided to send out my save the dates nine months ahead of the wedding date, although many planners suggest one year in advance for a destination wedding. Keep in mind, you may need to know many of your wedding details before creating your save the date and will have to figure that into your timeline for sending.

You’ll want to have the details of the event, your theme, guest list and address list pretty much finalized before you start to create your save the dates. I decided to also place a map of the area, showing places to stay within a two-mile radius from the wedding and reception to make it easier on guests to book accommodations.

Find a map of the area online, take a screenshot of the map and add text and directional arrows in a free photo editing app (I used Font Candy), email the final photo to yourself – then print them to send with the save the dates. You could also make them into postcards and there are some reasonably prices ones at Vistaprint.

We also decided we wanted a magnet for our guests to place on their fridge as a reminder, and I came up with the below design to incorporate the magnet on the ticket. I bought the magnets for a reasonable price at Vistaprint ($16 for 50 magnets with a coupon) and I was able to highlight our favorite photo from our engagement shoot.

If you want to create this design, you can get it at my Etsy shop here. There are also great design ideas on Etsy, Zazzle, Vistaprint, Minted, Shutterfly and all over the internet. Just remember to have fun with it and create a wonderful memory!

How I DIY’ed My Destination Beach Wedding (Series)

One of the most important aspects of your wedding is the invitation. It sets the tone and style for the wedding. And it can also be one of the most expensive aspects of the wedding.

After researching many different variations of wedding invitations, I decided the tri-fold, pocket invitation style would work best for our destination wedding. Like most destination weddings, this was going to be a four-day affair and I needed the extra space in the invitation to include lots of details about the weekend.

During my online searching, Pinterest pinning and Etsy browsing, I quickly realized that I could save a ton of money by doing these myself! My best friend had a Silhouette Cameo and gave me an overview of how it works. I was so impressed, I decided to buy one for myself, and began the process of learning how to use the cutting machine and software. I ended up purchasing this one and I had the best time going to Hobby Lobby and Michael’s to pick out the paper I was going to use, learning the software and pouring through designs online until I found one I liked the most. If you’re new to designing invitations, as I was, some great resources were FontBundles.net, TheHungryJPEG.com and DesignBundles.net. They have freebies that are given out each week and I didn’t have to pay a dime for the fonts I used in my invitations or save-the-dates. And there are some great designs for inspiration too!

I then spent HOURS creating the perfect cutting design for my invitation. I searched online and just couldn’t find one that suited what I was looking for, so I created my own. I enjoyed the process and didn’t get too frustrated creating it (ok, maybe just a little) but it was well worth the time and effort to get to the end result. I do understand that most people will not want to create their own file from scratch and I do sell the digital files I created, for a discount here. I also sell them on Etsy at this link. One word of caution – doing your own invitations does take time! However, it is so rewarding to see your design come to life and to have the memory of doing it yourself, not to mention the money you’ll save! Here’s a YouTube video of me cutting the file for the wedding invitation jacket:

The inserts and invitation you see in the photo at the top of this page started out as blank rectangle cuts that I then designed and did a print and cut. Those files can be purchased at my Etsy shop as well. If you’d like me to do a video on how I did that, please comment below. Next week….the Save the Dates..