Treat Bag Purse

My DD is having her 6th birthday party in a few days and I still need good bags.  I looked and could not find anything that I loved so I am going to make them.  We are having a Pretty Pretty Princess Party, we needed something to carry, that was cute and super cheap.  So the cute canvas bags were out.

We went to the Scrapbook Expo to see if we could get some ideas and having a 6 year old with you, you know that you'll be doing some mak-n-takes.  We stopped at this booth that were making this really cute paper bag purse... LIGHT BLUB!!  I have all of this stuff at home, and if it is a make-n-take, it has to be easy.  So we sat down and my princess did the make n take and Mommy was smiling!!

Since all bags are different, you will need to adjust the cuts according to your bag.

To make one you will need:

1 paper bag (you know those brown bags that you can do 101 things with, more on that later)
1 pattern piece of paper and 1 solid piece of paper (or double sided paper)
coordinating ribbon for the handle
velco for the closure
embellishment
Scoreboard
Cutter
Double sided Tape
Regular Tape
ink (optional)

I am using double sided paper from Keller's Creations.  I just love their items and they are all made in the USA.  The paper is grown and made right in GA.  Check out their stuff here.

 Cut your paper bag to 4".

 Fold your flap down to make both sides - front and back - flat.

Cut your pattern paper to 5 1/4 x 4, 5 1/4 x 4 1/4, and 5 1/4 x 1 3/4.

 Cut your solid paper to 5 1/2 x 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 x 6 1/2.

 Ink to your hearts content.  My favorite part.  :)

 Score your solid paper at 4 1/2 " on the longer side.

 Tape down your pattern paper to your solid paper.  Keep the pattern paper close to the bottom of the solid.  The top flap will hide the extra space (if any) on your solid paper.

 Get out your Crop-a-dile and punch holes for the handles.  The holes go on the longer piece and you place the marking under the fold on the larger side of the pattern paper... hope that makes sense. I used the larger hole on the hole punch.

 So you will have something like this.

 Now grab some ribbon that coordinates.  I used the ribbon that is sold at Keller's Creations.  All their lines match in one way or another.

I do not know the length that I used, so use your best judgement.  I string it in and then decide where I am going to cut the length at.  After you get the size you want, make sure the ribbon looks nice on the outside, and then tape the inside really good.  You can double sided tape for this, but since you can't see it, i just used scotch tape.

 Now here comes the most important part of the whole project.  If this is not correct, your bag will not last 1 minute with a 5/6 year old.  Trust me... our bag from the Expo was destroyed before we got home.

Use really good double sided tape and tape on the brown page all the way around as CLOSE to the edge that you can.  I used Red Line tape (that I also got from Keller's Creations) to show you what I mean.

After you have placed your tape, take the bag to the paper.  You want to line your bag on the paper and not the other way around.  The bags are not straight and they look really funny if you do it the other way.

After you get one side come completed, tape the other side.  With the second side, you are going to line your papers together... so take your paper to your bag.  Again the bags are not straight, so if you line up your paper to the bag, you will have a crooked purse.

Now open your bag and admire your work... 

With the bag open, grab that Velcro tab that you have.  While the Velcro is closed together, take the paper off and adhere to the top flap on the inside of the bag and close the flap to where you would like it to be.  This is the time you can make sure it is level on the top and sides.
 

Ok so now we are to the point were we need to let those little 6 year olds know where they have to open the bag.  Originally I was going to use a button, but I didn't like the size and to be honest it was BLUH.  So I was going through my Keller's Creations supply box and found these cute cut outs that had 2 hearts in them.  The pinks kinda matched so why not.

 

Ink those babies and tape together.  When you put them on the bag, you want to place it so they are half on the flap and half off the flap.

 
Here are two finish products to see, front and sides.  Just look what I was able to fit into it.

Thanks for stopping by my little spot in the world.