A little bling for my friends...

Special friends deserve special treats - presented in a lovely way.  You don't have to do a lot of work to make these cute little purse gift bags - just choose great paper and some bling from Creative Charms!  I have been on the Creative Charms Design Team for a while now and today I posted these bags on the Creative Charms blog.  The Design Team regularly posts all sort of great projects and it is definitely worth taking the time to go to the blog to see what's new - here is a LINK.

The basic bag is from the Tags, Bags, Boxes and More cartridge.  This cartridge is on the retired list but you may still be able to find it.  It had been on the Cricut Rewards site but shows "out of stock" right now.

You can cut two bags at 5 1/2 inches on the 12 x 12 mat.  I used "hide selected contour" to eliminate the small circles.  I also checked "weld" for each bag to eliminate the "tick marks" for scoring the bag.  I do not care for the tiny cuts that show the score lines because they often make the edges of a card or project look a bit messy.  By using Design Studio or the Gypsy to cut the bags I can solve my "neat freak" issue!  In Design Studio, detail lines or "webbing" lines will not cut when a shape is welded.  (I did figure out a way to work around this to get the faces back on my animal cuts quite a while ago - here is a LINK to my first post about this and here is a LINK to a follow up post for the times when you do want the details to cut).

Usually the score lines are pretty simple to create with out the tick marks to help.  Sometimes, when I want to be sure about the designer's placement of the scores and folds, I cut a practice item with the score marks and use this as a reference to help me score my clean cut.

Once the bags are scored and folded, I add strong adhesive tape to the flaps and tabs which need to be sealed to form the bag.  I use Scor-tape which is very strong and neat to work with and relatively inexpensive.  In the photo above you can see where to place the lengths of tape.  The final piece goes on the inside of the bottom flap.

It is easiest to add the decorations to the bags before assembling.  I used gradient gem stickers on handles - all three sizes.  Every pack of gradient gems has a row of clear gems so I had plenty to decorate the handles.

I wanted to personalize the bags so I created a welded image of each name using the Cursive 101 font.  This font welds beautifully and is very adaptable.  When I cut the names I used multi cut 2 to insure that the cuts would be clean.  The Core'dinations gemstone cardstock I chose for this project also cuts beautifully in the Cricut.

The featured embellishment on each purse is a radiant sequin flower.  These are currently one of my favorite items for adding bling to a project.  The pink and blue coordinate perfectly with the turquoise and garnet shades of the Core'dinations gemstone cardstock.  I used the larger flowers and adhered them to the bags using a few small glue dots.

I added the names before folding and adhering the bags.  The assembly of these bags is simple.

First, peel off the tape backer from the side tab and line up the sides and top of the bag while adhering the tab to the bag side.

The next step is to remove the protective backing from the tape on the two side flaps.  This tape is close to the center and will adhere to both of the larger flaps that form the bottom of the bag.

Finally, the tape on the larger bottom flap must be exposed and this flap folded and adhered to form the base of the bag.

The finished bag should look something like this at the bottom.

With the names and bling added these bags are perfect for a small gift or some candy.

They would look very sweet as favors at each place for a luncheon.  When I misplaced the dot for the "i" in "Jennifer" I just added one more tiny gem from the gem sticker pack.

 I still need to make a few more of these - then I'll be prepared for the next festive "walking goddess" event...

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