Tutorial No.1 Little Gift Bags

 Little Gift Handbags

Perfect for Gift Cards of Sweet Treats!

Good Morning Ladies,

We have a blog first today....My first Blog Tutorial, I am going to walk you through making these 

darling little handags, made from just a 6 x 6 in piece of card, so here goes........

Handbag Tutorial

Firs of all you need a piece of 6 X 6 inch card or good quality paper

2 x 1 inch strips (to be scored down the centre)

2 x 1/4 inch strips at least 7 inch long

You will also need 4 tiny brads 

You will need to score your 6 x 6 card firstly at
1 1/4 inch on opposite sides and at
2 1/2 inch on the other two sides
(see diagram)

Fold in the two 1 1/4 inch folds.

You should end up with your card looking like this.

Make sure you have burnished all 

of your scored lines as this will make folding easier

Turn your card around so that the two folds you have just made are horizontal in front of you, You will see the little rectangle made by the two score lines, this is where we are 

going to make a fold

 To try and make this fold a little clearer I have tried to indicate the places you need to fold with an arrow and a circle.
We will be folding the arrow over to the circle, basically the corner of the little rectangle over to the edge of the card (see diagram)

Holding the fold in place score the 

crease on the inside as in diagram

Repeat for the other three corners.

                                                                                                                      You should end up with your card looking like this, make sure that all of your creases are well burnished as this makes folding easier.

Thicker card will be harder to fold.

                                                                            You can see the bag starting to take shape now.

We can now add glue to the top part of each side of the card, this is the part at the top of the bag, do not let the glue get on the part of the bag with the folds.

Now take the two 1 inch strips of card and score down the centre at
1/2 inch
Apply glue to either side of the score line.....

Now stick the strip along the top of your bag
on each side and press down firmly and trim to the edges of your bag.

So you should end up with something looking
like this, now time for the handles.

You will need to use your piercing tool to poke tiny holes where you want your bag handles to be attached to, you can measure if you like, I just went by eye!
You will need to cut the handles to the length you require and pierce holes in either end.

Now this is purely down to preference but I go for the 'belt and braces' approach so I applied glue around the hole I had pierced, on the inside of the bag, to make sure the thin strips of card stayed put.

Now  take your brads and push through the hole you have just pierced and thread on one end of one of your handle, open the legs of your brad and press firmly into place, repeat for the other 3 ends.

This picture shows the position of the brads and handles really well.

You will also notice that I have used a small oval die to create the 'clasp' of the bag.

You can use whatever shape you chose,

just add glue to one side and position in the centre of one side of your bag.

I then glued a Velcro dot to the other side of the oval (making sure that I placed both sides of the velcro together on the oval, then bend the oval clasp over and the other side of the velcro dot will be in the right place.

This is how your Velcro dots should look,

I would add glue as they do tend to lift, I will add that I did try magnetic sheet cut into little dots but it wasn't strong enough!

Et Voila !!!!!

Here we have the three bags I created, the back two were created from good quality paper from some of the many 6 x 6 pads I have bought.

The bottom one is card.

Phew!! I hope that you have made it to the bottom ok, it seems a little bit long winded but once you have got the technique you can whip one up in about ten minutes, I just wanted to make sure you could see every stage in detail, these things are easier to explain verbally than they are to write down.

I think these cute little bags would make great little table favours, you could add a tag with a name on, or use to give a gift voucher of mini chocolate, the choice is endless.

I look forward to seeing your bags, they are a perfect way to use up those 6 x 6 pads we get free with magazines etc.

Have a fantastic day,

Love and hugs

Sandra

xxxxxxx