Birmingham Regional – Dog Bone Bag

And another one of my bags from the Birmingham Regional.

It’s hard to see in the photo but the bag is stamped with crumb cake ink with the bone and paw images from D is for Dog stamp set.  I used the Old Olive Polka Dot Scalloped ribbon to go around the bag and the Decorative Label is stamped with the dog image from the same stamp set.  I punched a second Decorative Label in Old Olive – cut it in half and layered it behind the white tag.

And inside the bag there are dog bones of course.  The one in the this picture has the D is for Dog tag tied around it with White Baker’s Twine.  It was punched with the 1″ circle and layered on an Old Olive 1-1/4″ Circle.

I still have a few more bags to show you.  I got all of the pictures taken today.  But I had a lazy Sunday – I got laundry done and did some more cleaning up from the My Digital Studio Retreat that we had this weekend.  We had 12 demonstrators at my house all day Saturday learning about My Digital Studio – it was so much fun!  I’ll be sharing more about that later in the week along with pictures of our projects.  My friend Cindy Schuster teamed up with me to hold this retreat – it was something we first talked about on our plane ride out to the Stampin’ Up! Convention this summer.  And it was a huge success!  Thanks to everyone that joined us we hope you had as much fun as we did.

Have a productive week!

Birmingham Regional – Smores bag

Here is another bag from my Birmingham Regional Workshop Wow presentation.

This one is a SMORES bag.  And the great thing about this one – you can use the bag to help start the fire that you need to cook the smores!  How about that for some recycling – that using it three times.

So the bag is made the same as the others.  I used the Under the Stars stamp set – the smores are stamped on the bag and again on Very vanilla card stock and cut out.  I used a Crumb Cake Stampin’ Write Marker to color the bear and the Graham Crackers (the old Creamy Carmel would have been a good color for this).  The chocolate is Chocolate Chip of course.  And the Marshmallow has just a hint of Crumb Cake sponged on to make it look toasted.

And what do you suppose is inside – what else but a chocolate bar, marshmallow and graham crackers.

What a fun little treat for a campfire.

Enjoy!

Birmingham Regional – Circus paper bag

Here is another bag project from the Birmingham Regional.  This is my circus bag or birthday bag.

For this one I added a 1″ strip of Big Top Birthday Designer Series paper around the bag before I crimped the edges.  I wanted the paper to be crimped also.

On the front is one of the scallop circle die cuts from the Perfect Pennants die.  I cut it from Real Red card stock.  In the center is a White piece that was stamped with the Clown image from Under the Big Top stamp set that was punched out with 1-3/4″ Circle punch.  The clown is colored with Stampin’ Write Markers – Real Red, Tempting Turquoise, Old Olive, Peach Parfait.  I used the White Gel Pen to add dots around the scallop circle.

And can you guess what might be inside?

Peanuts!  Since the are in the shell I just filled up the bag and stapled it shut at the top.

If you need directions on how to make the paper bag – I posted those yesterday – see my Snowflake bag project.

Have a nice day today!  Cindy and I are making final arrangements for the first ever My Digital Studio Retreat on Saturday.  We can’t wait for everyone to spend the day with us learning about My Digital Studio – we have a fun day planned.

And I’m excited today to hear from Kyle – her flew Thursday night to California and today he is interviewing for a summer internship.  His first real trip by himself – the company arranged for a limo to pick him up and take him to a hotel.  I am excited for him but does it have to be so far away!

Birmingham Regional – Paper Bags

My Workshop Wow at the Stampin’ Up! Birmingham Regional was a demonstration on how to make paper bags using the recycled paper that comes as packing material in our Stampin’ Up! orders.  Every box gets filled with paper to keep the items inside safe during shipment.  I always hate to throw out the brown paper.  Last year I used a bunch to wrap our Christmas presents, we also use it for a fire starter in the fire pit, but not too long ago I realized I could make my own little paper treat bags.  And this is how I made them.

Brown paper from the Stampin' Up! boxes

 

I take the brown paper out of my Stampin’ Up! boxes and I smooth it out flat and then fold it on the perforated lines like an accordion so I can store it.  To make four bags tear off one of the perforated sections.  Fold it in half  matching up the short ends.  Then fold it in half again matching up the short ends one more time.

fold in half twice

 

Now fold in half in the opposite direction and then place the folded stack on your Clear Scallop Square Die so that the fold is inside one edge of the die and doesn’t get cut.

fold in half in the opposite direction

 

position on the die so that the fold is inside the edge and doesn't get cut

Now run through the Big Shot Die Cutting machine with a cutting pad on the bottom and on the top.  When you cut through you will end up with four folded bag pieces.

cut with the Big Shot

To make each bag add glue to either side – leaving the top with the scallops open and the fold is at the bottom of the bag.  I also took each edge and ran it through the Crimper a little bit and then back out.

glue sides of bag

 

Crimp edges of bag

 

So that makes the little bag and then its time to decorate.  I had lots of fun creating all different themed bags.  The one I showed at the Birmingham Regional was this one –

For this bag I pulled the edges through a Whisper White Craft ink pad.  I stamped snowflakes (from Season of Friendship stamp set) in Whisper White Craft ink.  In the top corner I added the phrase from Sweet Season stamp set in Early Espresso.  I pulled a piece of Bashful Blue Satin Ribbon around the bottom of the bag – tie a piece of White Baker’s Twine around the ends.  I cut snowflakes from the Northern Frost Sizzlet Strip Die.  I added the snowflake with Stampin’ Dimensionals and then added a pearl to the center.

And what do you think is inside?  Something sweet of course….

A snowflake cookie – made with the new Sweet Pressed Cookie Stamps.  I made a whole batch of cookies – actually two using two different recipes.  I wrapped them in plastic wrap and put one in each bag.  These were my swaps at the regional too.

Sweet Pressed Cookie Stamp cookies

The cookies on the back portion of the tray are the made using the Sugar Cookie recipe that comes with the Sweet Pressed Cookie Stamps.  The cookies on the front portion are made using a Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie recipe that I found on Stampin’ Connection (a site for demonstrators).  For both recipes I had to add more flour than the recipe called for – I’m not sure if that is because I live in the south and it is humid so the dough was too sticky with the regular recipe.  Anyway the cookies them selves are very good.  If you got a swap from me at regional you had the Cream Cheese cookie recipe.

I’ll be back later this week to show you the rest of the ideas that I came up with for these little bags.  I had a whole bunch.

Thanks for stopping by!

I did it! I did it!

I did it!  I got up on stage at the Stampin’ Up! Birmingham Regional Conference and did a Workshop Wow presentation!  And I didn’t even mess up – I almost forgot to show the cookies in my little treat bag but I remembered at the end.  My friends took some pictures of me and I am working on getting pictures of everything I showed so that I can post it here and on Stampin’ Connection for everyone to see all the little projects.

Setting up my presentation

 

Our table at the regional

 

Here I am on stage doing my presentation.

 

I had the cameraman over my shoulder so I had to remember to hold everything towards him instead of holding it up towards the audience in front of me.  Shannon gave me a tip on shaking hands – she said to hold my arms against the table instead of up in the air – so that is what I tried to do the whole time.  I was so glad I got through it and hopefully what I said made sense to everyone.  They clapped – more than once – so I think it was good!  I will be sharing all the instructions for my projects and up close pictures of each one here on my blog – so if you were at the regional and didn’t get a picture you will be able to see everything here.

at the end of the day with Shannon and Donna from Stampin' Up!

My group had a great time and I hope everyone else did too.  We all received a card keeper box to decorate, an art journal and kit to decorate, and an extra mini scrapbook project plus our two make ‘n takes.

Have a great day!