Birthday Bag and Card using Tags, Bags, Boxes and Give a Hoot

Today I have a simple, quick and easy card and gift bag. 

The Wonderkid has been invited to a birthday party tomorrow so I needed to pull together a card and gift bag.  Given that the birthday girl is only 4, I didn't want anything too elaborate or time consuming.  I'm picturing the little princess dumping out the gift and unceremoniously dropping the card and bag on the ground or the heap with all the other cards and gifts.  I thought about just buying a bag and card but I couldn't bring myself to shell out $4 for a bag and another $2 for the card.  I knew I could make them for a fraction of that cost.

So, here is what I created.

Using Give a Hoot I made the world cut, continents cut and ribbon.  I then chose the shadow feature (one of my favorite things about carts like this one), copied the shadow, rotated 180 degrees and moved it so it would "connect" at the ribbon.  This cut has the best little notch on it for the ribbon which makes it SOOO easy to weld together.  I checked the weld button, check on preview that it was actually welded and I was ready to cut.

 I decided to do the shadow in white because I wanted to be able to print directly onto the card.  This is the front of the card. 

Here is the card opened up.  I like to print my sentiments directly onto the card.  I think it looks more professional.  I guesstimated where it should be on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper.  Then I printed onto regular paper.  I then used my Tombow repositionable adhesive to affix the card to the piece of paper I had already printed.  I made certain my cut was centered over the printed part.  Then I put the paper with the cut into my laser jet and printed it again.  This time the sentiment was on the cut cardstock, not the 8 1/2 x 11.  

The sentiment says, "Here's wishing you the best birthday in the whole world".

Then I turned my attention to the bag.  I knew I needed to make it as large as possible so I pulled out a piece of 12 x 24 cardstock.  This stuff isn't easy to find.  Often times Oh My Crafts will have it at the bottom of this page.  Or you can buy it from Cricut but theirs is fairly pricey unless you find it on sale.  One of the nice things about Oh My Crafts is that they ship internationally.  I know a number of folks that have had issues with them but they have been very good for me.  They also tend to have some pretty good prices on cartridges.  I'm still kicking myself for not buying Rock Princess when they had it on sale for $23.95.  

But I digress...

I used Tags, Bags, Boxes and More to create a matching bag.  I sized this bag as large as possible on my    12 x 24 piece of cardstock.  I then cut the same world cut in the middle of one side.  If I had been thinking better, I would have used the shadow feature to make this cut, but oh well, this is what I did.  

The bag measures 8 x 2 x 6 (without the handles).  I then cut the world again so I could decorate the huge hole I put in the side of the bag.  I laminated the world which gave me a way to adhere the world to the bag.  I used my Martha Stewart score board to score all of the sides.  I don't like the little tick marks so I hid all of them using my design studio.  Normally the seams are easy to find and very logical.  Luckily that was true on this bag.  Then, out came my ATG gun, I applied tape with it and voila.  A bag. 

Just a reminder, Tags Bags Boxes and More is on the list of retired carts.  If you don't have it, I highly recommend this cart.  I love it and use it often.  This is the same cart I used for many of the tags in my suitcase paperbag mini album.  I also love a couple of the boxes on this cart.  Some of the retired carts don't worry me because I can find similar things in other places, that isn't true of this cart.  

I hope you liked my quick and simple card and bag.  I'll see you tomorrow with more fun (I haven't figure out what it is going to be yet but I'll come up with some fun).