How to Create Tags in Lightburn

Tags are such useful items for all sorts of projects. They can be used on gifts, in scrapbooking and junk journals, just to name items. And it’s nice to have a variety of shapes to choose from.

In this Lightburn tutorial I’m going to show you how to create some tags.

Watch the video below

Create Your Own Tags in Lightburn

Tag 1 – Basic Rectangle

Let’s start by selecting the rectangle tool.

Now, click and drag on the screen to draw your tag shape. You can make your tags in whatever size you like, because we all know that you need different sizes and shapes for different projects.

You can just drag your rectangle out to the size you like for your tag.

However, if you know what size tag you want you can enter a specific sizing in the width and height section.

Now our tag needs a hole to thread through our ribbon or twine, which gives the tag a nice finished look and allows us to attach the tag to the gift or project.

So we come over to the left hand menu and select the circle icon.

Hold down the shift key as you draw out the shape so that you get a perfect circle.
If you don’t hold down the shift key you may end up with an oval, eclipse or other such shape, so hold down the shift key.

Now that I have the tag with the hole I’m going to click on the Select Tool as I need both shapes selected, or I can click and drag from the right.

The reason I need everything selected is because I want to make sure that the circle is perfectly centered.

Once I have everything selected I come up to the centering tools (or the alignment tools). Click align vertical Center option and this will ensure that everything is perfectly aligned.

While everything is still selected you can do one of two things to get this all grouped together, otherwise when you move things around you might lose the alignment and the shapes will come apart.

• You can right click and select group – that’s one option to keep the circle and the rectangle together.

• You can use the Boolean tools. You have three options along the side here. You can also select Boolean subtract so that’s another another way of doing it.

So that’s our first tag done. Don’t forget you can click on it to resize it.

Tag 2 – Rectangle With Corners

For the next tag we are once again going to select the rectangle tool, click on the workspace and drag it out to draw a rectangle. Just like we did for the first tag/

For this tag we are going to make rounded corners. To make the rounded corners, select the radius tool.

When you click on the Radius Tool you can make changes to how much curve you want. In the video I show you what happens when you key in a random number, say 3 or 4. It’s dramatic.

For this tag I will key in a much lower number 0.591 so that I get a more gentle curve. But you can play around with the numbers until you get the effect you like best.

Now when you come back over to your shape you will see a cross hair on the corner.

When I click on the crosshair the corner becomes a curve.

When I click on the each of the corners and I now have a nice rounded tag shape.

I want to add the hole at the top of the tag, and to do this I select the ellipse tool and draw a circle. Adjust the size of the circle to fit your tag. You can also do when you first draw your rectangle as we did in Tag 1.

NOTE: If you hover over the select tool you will notice there is a keyboard command that you can use and this will save you time as you won’t have to keep coming back to the menu bar every time you need to press the select key. Instead you can press escape on your keyboard and that is so much faster.

• Click and drag from the right to select both the tag and circle.
• Come up to the Centering Tool and select the Alignment tools, and Center.
• Right Click and Group,

That is our second tag made.

Tag 3 – Round Tag

This is a round tag. These are always useful to have on hand for your craft projects.

Once again we are going to select the Ellipse Tool.
Remember to hold down the shift key when you draw out your shape so that you get the perfect circle.

In this instance the circle is going to be the tag.

Now that we have the large circle we need to create another smaller Circle for the hole. As we still have the ellipse tool selected, we just need to hold down the shift key and drag to create the circle.

Now once again we need to Center this so we need the select tool selected. I’m going to press the Escape key to do that, and then I’m going to click and drag from the right to select both shapes and then come up to the Align Tools to align them.

Now all we need to do is right click and group.

And that is another tag done.

Tag 4 -Tags Made Using the Polygon Tool

For this tag we start by Clicking on the Polygon Tool, and hold the shift key down while you click and drag to create your shape.

Now that creates a tag on its own so all you need to do is do the normal thing. You create your circle etc and come up and align it and then group it.

But what you can also do with polygons is create different shapes from them.
If I click on the side here and come over to this option you see Shape Properties and this is where you can make changes to the shape.

Now if you don’t see that option go up to Window in the top menu bar and select Shape Properties here. Make sure it’s ticked and then you come over to Shape Properties and you’ll see an option called Sides.

At the moment it’s got six sides to the shape so you can bring that up and you notice I’ve got a different tag shape now, and again more sides creates a totally different tag shape.

You can go all the way up to I think it’s 16. The shape keeps changing until you’ve pretty much got a circle, and you can come back all the way down the other way and start creating different shapes.
Once you start using this option you can make a square, a triangle and a host of other shapes that make it really easy to create different looking tags.

Then finish it off by adding the circle before.

Tag 5 – Using the Convert to Path Option

For this tag we select the Rectangle Tool and draw a tag shape. So just click and drag to draw a tag.

Once we have the rectangle on the screen we are going to make some changes to the shape.

In order to do that we need to Convert it to a Path by selecting that option under the Edit Tab.

So now that it’s converted to a path we can use the Node Tools that are sitting in this menu option.

Notice when you hover over it you get lots of different options but we are only going to be working with the Insert Node Point option which is the letter I on your keyboard, so click on this option.

Now run your mouse along the top line of the rectangle. You will notice that an arrow appears but as you keep going along the line and you get to the center, it suddenly changes to a circle. Then as you continue on along the line the arrow appears again. So you want to be at that center point where you see the Circle, and when you get there just press I on your keyboard and it will add a node.

Click and drag upwards and you can see that you have now changed the straight line to a point.

Make sure to hold down the Shift Key on your computer keyboard so that the point is perfectly centred.

Press the Shift Key on your keyboard to it lock the point into place.

Finish the tag off with a hole as before any you have another completed tag.

Just always remember to hold the shift key while you’re doing that and you can add your little tag hole here and you now have another tag.

Variation for Tag 5

You can also make a variation on this by coming down to the bottom of the tag.

However, you can also repeat the process on the bottom line and you have a tag that looks like the one below. Decide where you want the hole, let go and that’s done.

Tag 6 – Another Rectangle Tag Variation

Select the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle shape.

Once again we want to convert this to a path so remember to do that we come up to edit and select the Convert to Path option.

Now we are going to be adding some more nodes.

• Select the Node Tool
• Run the Mouse along the line until you find the center
• When the circle appears, press the letter I on your computer keyboard.

Now we want to add two more nodes.

• Run you mouse along the line between the first node and the centre node.
• Remember it’s trying to find the middle between two nodes, so you’re going to get a circle appear between these two nodes.
• Once the circle is showing, press I on my keyboard
• Repeat for the other side of the tag.
• Find the centre between the two nodes and press I.

Okay so we have three nodes and I want to select all of these 3 nodes in the one go.

Note that if I click on one node it turns red and when I click on the next node, it turns red but the first node is no longer showing red, and I need all three selected.

So in order to do that you can do one of two things.

Select one node, hold the shift key and click on the first node you want to highlight, then click on each node until all three are selected, or you can just click and drag to highlight all three nodes.

Once all three are selected, hover your mouse over the middle one and then click and drag upward. Hold the shift key down while you do this so that the centre nod is locked in the center.

Now Click and Drag the centre node up. Remember you can make whatever shape you want for your tag by dragging it up or down.

That’s pretty much it your tag done. and you can do the usual thing by just adding the tag hole there and coming up and aligning it as we did for the previous tags.

Tags 7 – 13

The tags below all have full instructions in the video.

Tag with cut away corners.

Oval Tag

Circle Tag with Scalloped Edge

Tag With Lacy Outline

Tag With Embellished Edge

Oval Tag With Embellished Outline

And there you have it. A number of different tag designs that I am sure you will find useful in your crafting projects. And they are quick and easy to make with your laser cutting and engraving machine.