My husband, for one, was impressed by this year's effort for my son's birthday.
At his school, the tradition is to bring in sweets on your birthday to hand out to your classmates at home-time. Lately, though, kids who don't have birthday parties tend to give out goodie bags to their classmates instead. Not to buck the trend, I jumped right in and worked my magic.
I kept it mega-simple.
The bags are made of "manilla" C5 envelopes from the pound shop, 50 in a pack for... guess how much? Yeah, I think you got it.
The thing with envelopes is, if you seal them up and then lop one narrow side off, score the other three sides with the same margin left, right, and bottom, add a score line from the bottom corners to where the score lines intersect, you then have something that folds out into a little bag. I was taught this years ago at a Stampin' Up party. Vary the margin width, vary the size of the envelope, you can pretty much make a bag for anything, as long as you don't mind it being a bit thin.
So, taking this information into account, the only other things you have to do to make bags like these is the following:
Choose and stamp your design before scoring and folding the bag.
When the scoring is complete, use a border punch on the cut side to add interest.
When the folding is complete, fold over the top of the bag. from the fold line to the decorative border, ink the surface of the envelope. This gives contrast when the bag is closed.
Punch two different-sized flowers out of different patterned papers and (after filling) staple the bag shut over the flower. These were for the girls. the ones I made for the boys had no flowers on them, just the staple.
The teachers and parents were intrigued. :)
If I had this to do again, I might have made toppers instead, but this is the inexpensive option. Even the papers came free with a magazine. How fortuitous!
