Tomorrow I’m hosting an event where I’ll be speaking to a group of women who love to entertain, just like me! Sometimes, entertaining, if you do it a lot, can feel stale. One of the easiest and best ways to spice up your tablescape for any dinner party is with unique seating cards. Seating cards are such a great way to add color, the wow and fun to your table.

To come up with seating cards ideas, I am recapping a few of my favorites here but I can also give you some tips. Holidays make it easy. One of the examples I’m listing below is my absolute favorite - for Halloween one year we found mini, wood coffins at a craft store, painted them with chalkboard paint and wrote each guest’s name on the top. Truly unreal. When I get excited about something I often say: I’m DEAD so I thought these were so incredibly fitting on my Halloween themed dinner table.

Then of course you can use the season as a guide. In the summer I love using fruits and veggies as seating cards. I take a gold marker and write my guest’s names directly on a vegetable and it ends up looking stunning and becomes a talking point during the meal.

Here is a round up of my favorite seating cards to date. Use these examples as a cheat sheet next time you’re stuck and want to add something special to your table.

Keychains:
I personally have a thing for keychains. They can be useful or just a cute take home. I have found some really adorable ones on Etsy and I have also made them! Featured here, we cut leather pieces, created tassels for each and wrote our guest’s names in gold. So chic and a great addition to your purse or car!

Gold Spray Paint:
I’m a firm believer that anything can look better, different or more fun with a coating of gold spray paint. We once had a client who was throwing an engagement party for her brother and he had a thing for cows! We found mini cow figurines and we sprayed the gold, created small hangtags to attach to each with the guest’s names on them and voila! Super cute seating card!

Agate stones:
I LOVE the look of agate stones. There’s something magical about them. I used them for seating cards a while back and now I can’t stop. They are such a beautiful take home for your guests to display in their office, on their desk or bedroom. You can find inexpensive options on Etsy. If you spend a bit more you can have the Etsy creator write the names on for you or of course, hit each with a gold marker yourself.

New York City or hometown specific:
We are a NY based company so naturally we do a lot of New York City events. We once had a client who’s event was inspired by New York so we found mini taxi cabs and created a name card to glue to each. HOW CUTE?!

Photos:
I just love the idea of using photos instead of names to find your place at the table. We work with Artifact Uprising to print photos. The quality is amazing and they also sell wood blocks that you can use to put each photo in. You can have some fun with these photos and print baby shots of each guest if you have them…perfect for a family dinner!

Ceramic pieces:
These are so easy to find and to make things even easier for you, we linked to them here! These are GREAT because they are reusable! With a wipeable marker, you can write your guest’s name on each of these ceramic place cards and then wipe them off when you are done…and then use them again next time!

Wine Corks:
These take a little bit of crafting magic, but if you’re like me and you save your wine corks, you can use them for seating cards! We found black card stock at the craft shop, wrote our guest’s name on each and then put a slit into the wine cork and stuck it in.

Lip Gloss:
We love Galentine’s Day and every year I host a ladies lunch to celebrate my favorite gals. Last year, my theme was KISSES! So for the place cards, we found lip glosses in different colors and tied a heart hangtag to each. It It was a really fun take home for our guests on the holiday of love!

Keep it simple:
Place cards can be crafted in the most simplest of ways. Take a pretty card stock and layer on top with a white piece of card stock, write your guest’s name in a marker that is a color that vibes with your palette.

Vegetables:
Like I mentioned above, I love using seasonal veggies that are abundant in the market at the time of my dinner party. Using a gold marker (or white!) you can write your guest’s name on each piece of fruit or vegetable that you choose.

Mini Jar of Honey:
HOW CUTE is this idea for Rosh Hashanah?! We celebrate the Jewish new year by dipping apples in honey to signify a sweet new year ahead. I found mini honey jars and used some old fabric scraps that I had on hand to add to the top of each, tie with pretty ribbon and even added a mini honey dipper! I made my own name cards to go in front of each but you could also tie them to the jars. Either way, so festive and nice for your guests to take home.