Napkin rings & placecards...

Hm. I am stumped over napkin rings and place tags. I'd like them all to match: construct the napkin ring out of something also used to have names on for table location, and then the peson's actual table placecard.

I like the idea of a small piece of wood, stained walnut. Then that can hang on the wall with someone's name on it and table. They'd go to that table number, and find their name on the placecard, which, will also match the wall one in size and color (the placecards will be on the giftbags, btw). Then the napkin ring will have the same thing, and will stay on the napkin by a ribbon tied through holes drilled through it.

I hope that's an ok visual image.

The thing is, that's 300ish little pieces of wood, each of which will need to be cut, sanded, stained, glued (name), and maybe drilled. UGH. I'm up for it, but other things are more important, you know?

So I'm left wondering wondering. What will work? Is there an easier way?

I thought of scrabble tiles, and I thought it'd be adorable: 3 tiles glued across with one's name on it (the scrabble letters on the back), and then the table number could go underneath as a glued-on 4th tile. But that gets expensive quickly.

Yea, I could go with plain paper. That will work. But I love how stained wood looks, and this is one of my only opportunities to play around with it in our decor.

Grumble. I even thought of biscuit joinders, size #20. Those would work! But they won't hold the stain well and they have no wood grain.

Boo. hiss. I think I need to google image more placecards.