Contain Yourself

It's Wednesday--Happy Hump Day! I'm having so much fun playing along with this month's "Contain Yourself" Step It Up challenge over at the A Muse Addicts site. The challenge is to create any type of container, box or gift bag. In the 16+ years I've been crafting, I haven't done much to create my own gift packaging. Boy, I've been missing out! This is a lot of fun!

Two of the containers pictured here are recycled items. One is a plain brown craft bag I received when I made my last purchase at a local stamp store. The other item is a soup can that I washed out and then removed the original label. The last item is the small black polka dot bag that was made from just one piece of 8 1/2 x 11" decorative cardstock.

The large gift bag I made as a Halloween goodie bag for my boyfriend's five-year-old son. Inside is a coloring book, Halloween maze activity book. a small Halloween puzzle, a package of spider hankies, and of course some Halloween treats. The bag was super easy to make. I used decorative papers from this year's Halloween paper release from K & Company. All of the papers are double-sided, so you actually get 24 different patterns! I cut the 12 x 12" papers down to various size pieces to fit the front and back of the bag, then glued them down. The tag is also made from the same papers, which I die cut with my plain and scalloped circle Nestabilities. The "T" is from A Muse's large polka dot alphabet set. I set an eyelet at the top of the tag with my Crop-A-Dile and threaded the green ribbon from My Favorite Things through and tied it to the bag handle.

The soup can treat container is for my boyfriend. The hardest part of this project was punching the holes in the can with my Crop-A-Dile and making sure they were equidistant from each other! The can was also decorated with the K & Company Halloween papers. I die cut the spider web label from the papers with my plain and scalloped circle Nestabilities. The 3-D spider sticker is from last year's K & Company release. The handle is green rick-rack felt, I think it's from Making Memories. The orange metallic wire is from my stash, I'm not sure of the brand. I cut the tag from a sheet from Memory Box's mixed cardstock Spooky collection. "TJ" is spelled out with black glitter alphabet stickers from Making Memories.



Finally, the little polka dot treat bag was inspired by Rhonda's creation here. I used the same 2,5,7,10 box template as she did to create the bag. The black polka dot paper, orange rick-rack pretty little paper, orange sheer ribbon, and the two stamps are from A Muse. (Extra special thanks to Rhonda for getting the "Sweet Treats" stamp for me--you're the best, girl!)

Have a great rest of the week!