That little gift bag & then some, FF@F'ish!

G'day everyone,

I hope you've all had a great week so far.  Earlier this week, on Wednesday, I watch a live Facebook event with a lovely Stampin Up demonstator, Kylie Bertucci.  It was about 'Love it, Chop it" that is, when you get your gorgeous Designer Series Patterned papers, USE THEM! Chop them up straight away!  I recon this goes for any papers you may buy.

How many of us have horded gorgeous papers because we are afraid to chop it?  Remember that TV ad here in Australia for some lollies "Don't chop the dinosaur Daddy!  Chop it"   Yes, we've all been guilty of hording gorgeous papers but Kylie's right, not much point sitting in it's plastic bag. in a cupboard or on a shelf. You could potentially end up with so much you have no idea what to do with it.  New designs come out all the time and we know when Stampin Up release a new annual catalogue, patterned papers never carry over right? Right!   Last year I had to start moving a lot of my crafting supplies up to the office we have behind our garage.  Unbeknown to me, the roof was leaking.  I'd ask my husband to make sure none of my craft supplies were near the walls or the centre of the room.  Not 'til it had been up there about 6 months and I needed something, did I discover probably $700+ worth of patterned papers and many stamp sets had become water damaged.  Hubby had fixed the roof but by then it was too late and also too late to put in an insurance claim either.   He had given me nearly $1,000 a few years ago to go crazy in a scrapbooking and paper crafts warehouse down in Adelaide.

Needless to say, I didn't just buy one or two sheets of the gorgeous papers I loved, I bought about 6 of each.  Can you say 'Paper Mache"?   Yes, one of my tubs, with no lid on it had about a 15inch/38cm thick pile of paper mache. None of it salvageable.  Think Basic Grey, Urban Lily, 7Gypsys, Stampin Up, BoBunny, Prima, Kaiser and many other brands.  Yes, I did cry.  I also lost a lot of wood mounted stamps too because their wood mounts were waterlogged.  I managed to salvage a few and turn them into unmounted/clear mount stamps but there were some that the smell just couldn't be gotten rid off and I had to throw them away as they were a health hazard for sure.



So what did I learn from all this and confirm by watching Kylie on Wednesday?  Yes, that's right, Chop It!!  Use it up, don't hoard it. Like Kyle mentioned back when she was a kid (and it happened in my generation too) there was always one room we were not allowed to go in, especially after Mum had cleaned it. It was the 'good room'.  What a waste of a room! And those gorgeous crystal glasses and bowls etc we all have, not much point gathering dust inside a 'display cabinet'  Use them.   I've been de-cluttering for well over a year now and I've only skimmed the surface of 18yrs of being in this shoebox of a house.  It's just as well my son moved out a few years ago because I don't know how the 3 of us here managed til then to be honest.



Sooooooooo what have I done with some of my patterened papers?  Well firstly, as in that photo above, last year I chopped down many packets into 6"x4" (15cm x 10cm) card front sized pieces.  I bagged them up and have slowly been gifting them to customers or using them up. That photo is about half of what I'd bagged up.  I also have quite a few packets of papers still where I've only used a sheet or two from them.

Last year before I resigned from Stampin Up I went to an Onstage function at Luna Park It was in April 2017. Many of you I know who were there may have received one of my 'swaps'. A very cute little gift bag with the teeny weeniest little box of Tictacs inside.  As promised early this week, below are the instructions for making this little gift bag.  It's so easy and you can do production line batches too.  Not only will they hold those mini TicTac boxes, they'd hold say a ring, pair or earrings, necklace etc. So you could also make them Christmas themed & put them on Christmas trees as decorations. The ideas are endless!  Remember my guest Designer samples from Onstage back in 2016 at the Sydney Hilton Hotel? It's a very similar bag, see... (sorry it's upside down/sideways, but those watermark details are different these days anyway)



Here's the production line I had going for 2017....



Here is what it looks like when you cut down your patterned paper.  Yes, that's my template that I stuck inside my SU notebook with my Onstage confirmation booking LOL.  I will put the dimensions underneath this photo with a new photo of one I've done this morning.  You can potentially get  8 out of one sheet of 12"x12"/30cmX30cm of double sided patterned paper and yes, this looks best with double sided for sure! You'll even have a few little strips left over that you could use for little handles/straps instead of punching holes in for threading ribbon.





NOTE: when using patterned papers that have a direction, check before cutting and scoring that you have the paper the way you want it to show eg stripes up and down or horizontally.



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(paper used for these three little gift bags comes from the current 2017 Stampin Up annual, page 188 "Coffee Break DSP, ribbon is hand dyed white seam binding on the right and Lemon Lime Twist Ombre Ribbon on the left, page 198)

I trust you like this week's ideas and project, do leave me some feedback, it's really nice to know people enjoy what I put effort into to share with you all.

Til next time,

Happy stamping colouring and creating!