Carol Hartery's Creations: Gift bags Day One

Hi Everyone!

I've been giving my sisters, Paula and Pam, card sets as gifts for years. Most of the time those gifts have arrived after their birthday or after a holiday. Well, this year I changed things up big time. I set a goal and I achieved it. I am guessing that as I type this e-mail Paula's gift is arriving in Washington and Pam's is arriving in California.

This year I didn't send them cards. I am sure they both have a lifetime stash of them by now. This year I made them gift bags with coordinating tags. They can put gifts for their friends inside the bags.

I posted a question on Facebook asking if people decorated one side or both sides of a gift bag. Some people responded that they decorated just one side, while many others responded that they decorated both sides. I decided to decorate just one side of all of the bags.

I pulled out my 12" x 12" paper pads, some Martha Stewart Christmas borders, twine, and border punches and got to work. My plan was to "dress up" the papers that I had. My goal was to use supplies that were already in my stash. I put a 2 to 2.5 inch header across the top of most of the bags and added a strip of a Martha Stewart border to those headers.

This was a paper from last year's Recollection's Christmas paper pad. I added some tiny pompoms for the reindeer noses, wiggly eyes with tiny "pupils" for their eyes, bows that are from a roll of bows ribbon, and some sparkly stars that I bought at the Dollar Store years ago. There are trees near the reindeer so I decided to add a Martha Stewart border that had trains delivering Christmas trees. Note that the gift tag has a scrap of that train border on it.

Next up a bag with a piece of holly patterned paper on it.

Note the holly border that coordinates with the patterned paper. I used a Sizzix die to cut out the holly for the embellishment in the center of the bag. The red scalloped circles and the white standard circles were cut using Nestability dies. I used a Swiss dots embossing folder to emboss the white circles. The holly is attached to the white circle with foam tape and the entire circle is adhered to the bag with foam tape. The holly berries are buttons. The holly sprig on the gift tag is a dimensional sticker.