Sassy Purse Gift Set

My gift set will be finding its way into the hands of a very dear friend whose son was deployed last month. I’m sure you can think of some special women in your life who could use a little extra love this Mother’s Day too!

One of my favorite things about doing a hybrid project is that after you print out your digital papers, you can just use whatever you have on hand to embellish. I like to rummage through my various boxes and containers before I start and pull out anything that I think might come in handy. It seems to save me time later on, and helps get the creativity flowing. Below you can see some of the things that I ended up using for this particular bag and card set.

Supplies:

Sweet Memories, a Sugarplum Paperie and Danielle Engebretson Designs digital collab
Sassy Purse #3 by Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs
Mini Envelope Album Template by Karla Dudley Designs
Handwritten Sentiments 1 by Karla Dudley Designs
Red River Paper (Aurora Fine Art White Double Sided for the purse and Polar Matte for the cards)
Colorbox Creamy Brown and Dark Brown chalk ink
Making Memories flower
Metallic Rub-ons
beads, button, embroidery floss & velcro from stash
and the basics (ruler, craft knife, and adhesive)

Of course the first thing I did was to decide which of the digital papers I wanted to use for the Sassy Purse template and coordinating cards. Then I printed everything out. Since I knew that I didn’t want the inside of the purse to be plain white, I decided to print it on Red River Paper’s Aurora Fine Art White Double Sided paper which also has the advantage of being a nice, heavy weight. I simple printed the purse template on one side of the paper, gave it a few seconds to dry, and then sent it through the printer again to print the coordinating paper on the back side.

I thought it might be fun to add some textural interest to the purse by beading the handle, so before I cut any of the pieces out, I took a heavy needle and pierced holes along both sides of the handle on top of my upside-down mousepad.

After I had finished piercing both sides, I cut all the pieces out, scored on the appropriate lines, and inked the top edges of the purse with the creamy brown ink. Before I print Kelleigh’s templates, I like to change the blend mode of the layer with the cutting & scoring lines to “Overlay” and then decrease the opacity until it’s just visible on the paper. I find that this allows me to see clearly where I should be folding, but is not obvious on the finished project.

I then assembled the base of the purse. I’m sorry I don’t have any photos of that, but it took both hands to get it together and I couldn’t figure out how to hold the camera and snap the shot without any hands. I did however find it easier to apply the adhesive to all the tabs before I started and then simply press them into place.

I tried all different ways of making a clasp for the bag, and finally settled on some velcro strips. Because they were the kind that had the fuzzy part on one side, and the little hooks on the other side, they were too thick to sew or get an eyelet through, so I ended up sticking them on with some really thick glue dots. It worked well, because the glue dot was thick enough to go between the hooks and provide a really strong hold.

Here you can see the purse with the clasp and velcro squares attached:

Next it was time to add the beads to the handle. I used tiny pearl-like beads that I had salvaged from some other project a long time ago, but seed beads or any other little beads would work great too. I’m sure there’s lots of different ways to sew them on, but I used a back stitch to attach them and taped the end of the embroidery floss down on the back of the handle.

It took a while, but I love the way it looks now that it’s done; even my five year old son stopped by the table occasionally to see how it was coming and it got two thumbs up from him when I finally finished. I didn’t use any kind of tool to make sure that the holes I pierced were evenly spaced so some of the beads are closer than others, but I’m sure you could find a piercing guide if you wanted all of yours to be perfectly spaced. I left enough room on each of the ends to adhere it to the inside of the purse.

I printed off some of the digital elements from the kit to use in embellishing the purse, and one of those was a key. I felt like it could use a little extra something before I attached it to the bag, and I had some metallic rub-ons that I bought a year or so ago and never used, so I decided I’d see if I could add some dimension to it. Here’s the key just as it looked before I started playing around with it.

The first thing I did was to flip the paper over and add some dark brown ink to the back side. I didn’t want it to be a solid brown though, so instead of smearing the ink across the paper or using a sponge, I used the ink pad itself. It gave it kind of a mottled effect.

Then I flipped the key back over and used my finger to apply the metallic rub-ons to the front of the key. I used the copper and gold colors, and just smeared them right over the print, including the digital jewel that was on the top.

I used a combination of my craft knife and some sharp scissors to cut out the key, and then I added a jewel on top of the digital one and this is what I ended up with:

I used some more embroidery thread to tie the key along with a heart charm and a tag that I had printed from the digital kit to the side of the purse, and then added a little bit of fuzzy green fiber that I had.

I used Karla’s Mini Envelope Album Template to make a little set of notecards to include in the bag and there was just enough room to slip a sample size of hand lotion alongside them. I hope that this little gift set will inspire you to to get crafty and show your appreciation for all those special mothers in your life!

Sassy Purse Gift Set

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