gift bag

No measure gift bags

~ guernseyjane ~ Leave a comment

You tube easy gift bag how toimage need a gift bag but no time to fuss?

just fold a rectangle of paper as below … or watch the video

place the paper face down and landscape (long sides north and south)

fold  a small border on the west edge of the paper, just wide enough to later run some tape or glue along, then fold the remaining width of paper in half and  in half again to create four equal panels. With the paper still folded in four, crease up from the south a panel that will  form the base of the bag. An optional last step is to open out the sheet then fold down a little collar along the top this is only needed if your paper is flimsy and you want to strengthen it a bit

cut – cut out the little rectangle at the south of the border fold then cut up the three bottom creases just as far as the first width crease – if you are being smart you can cut either side of the creases to make final assembly even easier

stick – if you have a collar  stick it down

then fold the little border over so a little bit of the pretty side of the paper is facing you, run tape or glue down the border and then fold the eastern side of your sheet over and on to the sticky border. once the glue is set wobble the paper to form a floppy box,  crease each of the panel folds to encourage the paper to set in the final shape

now fold each of the bottom panels up, you may need to crease them with your fingers to set the folds in the right direction, add some tape or glue on the plain side of the last two bottom pieces. You may need to put your hand inside the bag/box to ‘set’ the adhesive.

close and decorate with paper clips, pegs, stickers, brads, staples or ribbon threaded through punch holes

 

No glue gift bags

~ guernseyjane ~ Leave a comment

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Exacto knife and paper is all you need to make a quick, cute and quite strong gift bag…

The pattern for this came from ohappyday.com where they are intended as brown paper picnic snack bags but they are far too cute to stay in brown paper.

I started by downloading the template from the diy picnic basket post. It makes a quarter of the template needed so should be placed on a larger piece of paper folded in four to get the whole template. You can just cut round the folded paper with an exacto knife. Or you could follow their instruction to rotate and trace the template, but I found that a longer process.

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I decided to trace mine on some wallpaper remnants – only 50pence in the end of line box at B&Q. This made for an even stronger bag and handle than a brown paper version.

Once the shape is cut, the side flaps are folded in and round and the handles are just threaded through the slits in the flap and the bag pulls together. So satisfying.

I couldn’t resist embellishing with a cheater’s ribbon made from three strips of the paper scraps – yes this was taped together and stuck on the bag. But tags tied around the handle would look good too.

The first bag was filled with shredded paper, the second one had its handles clipped together with a mini peg which pushed out the sides to make more of a handbag shape. Oh this is addictive.

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Buoyed by success I then scaled the template down to make a mini bag from a piece of unloved 12”x12” paper.image

 

Even cuter. Can’t recommend this highly enough.

 

Co ordinated gift bag and tag, so simple

~ guernseyjane ~ Leave a comment

I bought a bundle of brown food bags from the catering supplies shop for Christmas and duly stuck on panels and greetings in red, green and gold. But eighteen months on I still have plenty left, so have decorated a few simply ready to pop gifts in.

I used a stencil panel which fitted the bag front perfectly so used all the patterns rather than re aligning one of them.

I dabbed some distress ink- evergreen bough- on to a craft sheet and rubbed the ink through the stencil with a piece of cheap bathroom ‘sponge’. The back was also stencilled the same way.

The gift card and flower were cut from craft card with the scan n cut, the same distress ink rubbed on the edges of the flower and stamped on the tag. The message is ‘a gift for you’ stamped repeatedly on the diagonal, so it can be used for many occasions.

Distress ink or sepia browns work brilliantly on craft and for more masculine versions I am using rosettes rather than flowers.

Inside is a sheet of tissue paper ready to wrap a goody from the present drawer. Even so this will store almost flat until needed.