We went apple picking on Labor Day and had a fun family day together.  All the boys were with us and we drove north to Blue Ridge, GA and went to Merceir Orchard.  They take you by tractor out to the middle of the orchard and turn you loose to pick whatever kind of apples that you want.  You have to buy a bag and then you fill it up with all of your apples and while your out there you can eat the apples too.  So my project today was inspired by the apples!

This week’s Create with Connie & Mary Thursday challenge is a Sketch Challenge.  I love to have a sketch to start with and I like to take a card sketch and use it for other things – and turning it is fun too.  I like to do something different – be unique.  And this time I decided to take the sketch and create a gift bag instead of a card – but it would make a cute card too.  We picked some apples on Monday for my mother-in-law and so I thought wouldn’t it be fun to put them in a cute little bag, and since I needed to create something for this weeks sketch I figured I would use that for inspiration.  One big problem though – I don’t have any current apple stamps right now – ugh!  I’m trying really hard not to buy everything in the Holiday catalog and every couple of days I think – I wish I had the Perfectly Preserved stamp set – and here we go again – it has apples in it!  I really needed it for this project.  But do you know what you can do instead?  It’s My Digital Studio to the rescue!  Yep – I did buy the Digital Download for Perfectly Preserved – yeah!  So not only did I not make a card, and I turned the sketch, but I also made a My Digital Studio Hybrid project – how do you like them apples!

This bag turned out so CUTE!  And while I gave it to my Mother-in-law it would be an awesome teacher gift too!  Or a welcome gift for a new neighbor.  This is a small paper bag and there are about 5 small apples inside of it.  I used the sketch to create the front panel.  Here is the sketch –

So I started by creating the white panel in My Digital Studio 2 – have you tried it yet?  OMG – the new feature where you can color the stamp images is so awesome!  Here is that piece –

The apple is one stamp and I used the color feature to recolor the seeds to Early Espresso.  The stem/leaf is another image and I used the recolor feature to change the stem to Early Espresso.  And the “just for you” banner was also colored – so the letters were Cherry Cobbler.  Love it!!  So I printed that out on Very Vanilla card stock and then cut it to fit my project.

I added the Ribbon Border strip – that’s Gumball Green.  Tied some Cherry Cobbler ribbon around my Early Espresso piece and then attached the apple piece over it.  I added that to a Cherry Cobbler piece and put in three little brads from the vintage trinkets.  Then glued the whole piece to the front of my bag.  Its’ really cute!  I hope it inspires you to try something different with a sketch!  Play along with us this week!  And for more fun crafting ideas the Holiday edition class is going on too.  You can see last weeks preview projects but if you want the class projects you have to join the class.  Do it today – I’m a guest designer and have a fun project planned for later this month.

Stampin’ Up! Supplies:

• Stamps:  Perfectly Preserved Digital Stamp Brush Set
  

• Ink: digital colors – Gumball Green, Cherry Cobbler, Early Espresso
  

• Card Stock: Early Espresso, Gumball Green, Cherry Cobbler,  Very Vanilla
  

• Accessories: My Digital Studio2, Cherry Cobbler Seam Binding, Vintage Trinkets, Paper piercer, Scalloped Ribbon Border punch, brown paper bag, printer

Visit Create with Connie & Mary and submit your creation for this weeks challenge – each week 3 top creations are selected.  Each challenge is open for a week.  And then a new challenge will be issued.  I hope you’ll play along with us!

To order Stampin’ Up! Supplies to make this project click here.

Monika Davis