Butterfly Trio. Gift Bag Tutorial

I've a Gift Bag, Tag and Greetings card to share today - they form my project for Bubbly Funk this week.  I've also added a tutorial for the gift bag which you can find further down this post.

Info
Cream (Classic Texture) Bazzill card, 12x12
Stencilled all over using 12x12 Butterfly stencil
 (Prima: Finnabair; 12x12 Butterflies)
Inks, applied with bunched-up pieces of dry baby wipe
 (various VersaCraft, and VersaMagic inks plus some stencil paints and Gold Alchemy Wax)

Starting in the centre of the 12x12 sheet and moving the whole piece around regularly seemed to work for getting good coverage of the different shades rather than a lot of one colour in one place and none of it somewhere else! I kept building up the colours and moving the sheet around until I liked the look of it all - a 12x12 sheet is a big piece to cover when you want to use a lot of different colours!

Once dry I went ahead an made the gift bag - years ago, I made one of these for the old Bubbly Funk Blog, but the page is no longer available, so I've now added the tutorial to the bottom of this post.

For the tag and card I used another piece of the cream Bazzill

The tag was decorated using the same colours, but this time I used just a small section from another 12x12 stencil (Crafter's Workshop Mod Spirals)

The butterfly is cut with scissors from the strip of stencilled card left-over after cutting what I needed for the bag.  I added a double bow of narrow purple ribbon to the top, and gold twine to tie it in place.  The butterfly body is from a die set (Memory Box)

For the card I made a background using  a light covering of the same inks (just what was left on the wipes), then I got a bit carried away with the stencilling and layered two stencils on top of each other - just to see what happened, really!

(Prima Stacked Stones and Honeycomb)

I adhered the stencilled panel to some dull gold paper, and then this panel to a 7 x 14cm cream card blank.

I decorated with more cut out butterflies, more purple ribbon, a Tiny tag with sticker sentiment and some Gold Glitter

Stencils used:

Prima: Finnabair; 12x12 Butterflies (sorry, sold out)

Stencil: Crafters Workshop - 12x12 - Mod Spirals

Stencil: Prima Stacked Stones

Stencil: Prima Finnabair; Honeycomb

Gift Bag Tutorial

This little gift bag stands about 16cms high, is 10cms across and about 4cms deep.

To make it you'll need

1 sheet of 12x12 card or good, heavy quality scrapbooking paper 

Twine/string/piping or braid in matching colour for the handles, 

Strong glue, Bone Folder, Ruler, Scissors etc 

  1.  Cut the sheet of card to 29x22cms then measure and fold on the lines as shown on the diagram (click for larger view)

2.  Now mark and cut out the sections shown in red on the diagram below

3. Your card should now look something like the photo below.  This pic is of what will be the inside, so take notice of which way the folds go and make the creases on your card go the same way. 

  4. Now turn the card over so that the right side is uppermost, and the tabbed section is on the left. 

5.  Bring the two ends of the bag round to meet, apply glue to the tab area and stick so that the tab is on the inside of the bag

* Squeeze the sides of the bag inwards, then squash flat and rub over the folds with a bone folder to really set the creases well

*Now apply glue to the inside edges of the upper folded section and tuck it into the bag - the photo shows this being done

 6. Turn the bag upside down so that the end with all the cut out triangles is on top to do the next bit.  It's a bit fiddly to get everything lined up and shaped neatly so use enough glue to keep it "wet" for long enough for you to do any tweaking that's needed!

*First, apply glue to the small end bits and stick down one of the longer flaps as shown

 

  * Now apply glue to the edges of the other longer flap and

 stick that down too.

* Try to make the corners neatly squared off: in the photo below you can see that this wasn't quite right - but as the glue was still wet I was able to "wiggle" the flaps a bit and get it right

* Once you're happy, stand the bag the right way up on your craft mat (in case any glue oozes out) and push something like a ruler, or a the handle end of a wooden spoon all over the inside base of the bag to make sure it's all firmly stuck together.

7.  Punch holes for the handles

Cut a couple of pieces of piping, ribbon or twine each measuring about 15cms, thread through the holes and make knots on the inside - take care to make them the same length!

 Now you can decorate the gift bag, make a tag to match and generally have fun prettifying it!

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Let me know if you make one, I'd love to see!  Once you've got the basic idea, it's easy to adapt the instructions to make smaller ones for teeny gifts, or you could glue two sheets of card together and adjust the measurements to make something much larger

Thank you for visiting today, I hope you'll take a minute to leave a comment :)