Getting Crafty With Promo Items (BookSpeak luggage tags)

I’ve blogged recently about promo items I’ve been creating through Vistaprint.com?(note: that is an affiliate link for me–please only use this link if I’m giving you helpful information!), and I thought I’d share how I made the luggage tags that I’ll be including in the swag bag for my table mates at the Children Literature Network Books for Breakfast event this Saturday. I don’t really do crafts, but it was fun making these. They’d be too time-consuming and expensive to do for huge crowds (like I ever have huge crowds), but they work well, I think, for a little trinket.

(I’d really like to come up with some other paper-based items that are actually useful that I could figure out how to re-create as promo items. I love the luggage tag Sylvia Vardell made for me, and every time I travel and see that tag, I’m reminded of how much fun the Texas Library Association Poetry Roundup was and what a great poetry advocate she is. So how cool if you can make things for people that remind them of you and your books, right?)

I stole the idea from a luggage tag Sylvia Vardell made for me when I participated in the Poetry Roundup at TLA in 2010.
First, I bought some scrapbooking papers that used text in them or reminded me of the colors/design sensibility of BookSpeak!
I ordered biz cards with my “Book Plate” poem on them.
I cut the papers into shape, copying Sylvia’s sample:>)

16 Responses

  1. Oh, wow. Oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, wow.
    I am, by the time any book thingy comes up, a total wreck, and too much of a perfectionist to think of giving anything handmade away. And yet, I know that I would LOVE to have one of these, and would just — holy cow! — have a fit if you gave me one! I made little 40’s era stickers and postcards to take to ALA, and didn’t make NEARLY enough. I nervously gave them away, too, and people snatched them. And so: yes. Handmade. Yes: personal. Yes: readers love them, and will remember you and your work. These are really, really neat.

    1. Cool that you made stickers! I’ve made book labels before, using art bits from the book (with the illustrator’s permission, of course). Those were a big hit. It IS nerve-wracking handing out stuff you actually make. You don’t want them to just toss it in the trash, but then, what if that’s where it actually belongs? See my insecurities shining through?

      Luckily, I’m not a perfectionist. I started measuring these and trying to make the angles all match, and then it was like, Get real. I’m never going to get through even 12 of these! :>)

  2. Oh, wow. Oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, wow.
    I am, by the time any book thingy comes up, a total wreck, and too much of a perfectionist to think of giving anything handmade away. And yet, I know that I would LOVE to have one of these, and would just — holy cow! — have a fit if you gave me one! I made little 40’s era stickers and postcards to take to ALA, and didn’t make NEARLY enough. I nervously gave them away, too, and people snatched them. And so: yes. Handmade. Yes: personal. Yes: readers love them, and will remember you and your work. These are really, really neat.

    1. Cool that you made stickers! I’ve made book labels before, using art bits from the book (with the illustrator’s permission, of course). Those were a big hit. It IS nerve-wracking handing out stuff you actually make. You don’t want them to just toss it in the trash, but then, what if that’s where it actually belongs? See my insecurities shining through?

      Luckily, I’m not a perfectionist. I started measuring these and trying to make the angles all match, and then it was like, Get real. I’m never going to get through even 12 of these! :>)

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