I have never made Magic Reindeer Food before, but, as I have seen it sneaking its way into the shops this year, so I thought I would have a go ….. trying to make it as simple and as economical as I could.
I decided that I would use some very old brown envelopes for the packaging, I have had them forever, but they had lost all their stick, but they were strong and would cost me nothing.
I then turned the said envelopes into bagalopes, there are lots of tutorials on the net on how to make them, the one I have linked to is really easy to follow.:-
http://craftyjournal.com/basic-bagalope/. I didn’t do any fancy measuring, I just used my Coppernob score board, using the same line to score all the way round the envelope, after cutting off the flap and defuncked sticky stuff and cutting the edge with pinking shears.
For the food, I used mixture of “All Season” bird food (I kilo bag from Poundland), mixed with a few Jane Asher sugar stars and edible glitter also from Poundland (2 for £1), bagging it up in cello bags.
Then, I went back to the making some tags, which I decided to use “create” using Paint to “draw” a reindeer face, minus eyes and nose. I copied and pasted the design onto a tag, along with a poem that I also found on the net, but altered everso slightly to suit my needs.
From there, I made a PDF sheet of 10 tags on Dropbox that you are welcome to download and use
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ften8bqz5cwaqxx/Magic%20Reindeer%20Food.pdf?dl=0
And now, you can see why I chose to miss out the nose and eyes, I knew googly eyes would give the reindeer character, as has his nose, which is a punched circle with a little white gel pen highlighting (like on the antlers). A scattering of small hologram stars and a few doodled dots here and there complete the tags. By leaving the tags relatively plain you can create lots of different reindeer characters and add other embellishments without too much hassle.
With my original packing I used a green ribbon, but although I have miles of it (leftover from Tom and The Lovely Laura’s Rainbow Wedding), it did seem a tad extravagant, so decided to exchange it for a doubled up length of green gardening string ….. which somehow made it more rustic, natural reindeery feel , if you know what I mean.
The tag also lacked a little something, so I mat and layered it onto scraps of red card, which not only made it stronger, but made the tag “pop”
Anyway, if you do download and use the basic tag, please, please, please send me photos of what you do with them, then I can write another post where we can all share our ideas if not for this but future Christmas’s.
The design for the packet insert is almost the same as the one I made in 2010 using digi kit, which sadly now seems to have been retired. The font I used is 2peas Typo.
All I have done is print of the design and then mat and layer it on some PaperCellar snow design card to fit my cello bags, that I found in Home Bargains for a bargain 89p for 50 bags.
In the bags I have put a packet of hot chocolate, a candy cane and a marshmallow Christmas pole. I used to make my own little packets of mini marshmallows to sprinkle on the top of the hot chocolate, but I think using pre-packed marshmallows is more hygienic, leaving the recipient to either dip or break up the marshmallow as they choose. However at the last minute I decided to add a mini gingerbread man from a pack from M & S (99p for 12), which I sealed in a small cello bag with my vacuum sealer and a couple of starlight mints, again left over from other projects …. but all with a couple of months on the sell by/use by dates 
Anyway ........ it was a very new venture and a steep learning curve, but it was also such a great thrill to be spotted and asked ...... and there's another tutorial to come on 16th December!
