Showing Some 'Purse-onality'

If you read my recent blog post, you'll know that I spent much of the beautiful weekend catching up on laundry, which I hadn't been able to do because of the fowl weather we've had for much of this year so far.  What I noticed as I was hanging the washing on the line was that I seem to have rather a lot of clothes in various shades of teal!  (Even my wedding dress was teal!)  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that some of my favourite papers at the moment at DCWV 'Linen Closet' (so aptly named), with their beautful combination of teal and brown. 

When I saw Project Tuesday's challenge this week, my hand immediately went to my DCWV paper pad.  The challenge was to produce a card purse, with matching cards, and this is what my 'Linen Closet' revealed:

Papers: DCWV 'Linen Closet'

Tools: EK Success Retro Flower punches; Cropadile (for eyelet setting); Martha Stewart border punch

Other: Buttons, bows and charm from stash.

This week's challenge host, Rose Miller, set us the challenge, using this tutorial from Splitcoaststampers.  Now, the dimensions were different than those I needed for my project, but I just took the basic instructions and used my own dimensions, which is very easy to do. 

I don't know about you, but there are always sheets in a paper pad that I don't use - usually because they don't fit with my card projects very well.  So these are the ones I concentrate on using when I'm making projects like this.  It enables you to use only small amounts of your favourites, whilst keeping the wonderful co-ordination that a paper pad gives. 

I printed a small 'Thank You' sentiment on some 3 x 3 inch square cards (took a little working out because I had to work upside down to get the sentiment in the right place!) and then just decorated with a few scraps, some ribbon and a single layer flower with a button centre.  How simple and sweet.  I made three cards in shades of green/aqua and three in shades of blue, all from scraps from the same pad.

The box was very simple to decorate - in fact, I cheated a bit and only embellished the front, although I did put a patterned panel on the back and each side to complete the overall look.  Then I attached a co-ordinating strip, just like the ones on the cards, to the front of the purse and wrapped some ribbon around the whole box, finishing off with nice bow.  Another few co-ordinating scraps made a flower (I chalked the edges for definiton) and I hung a little flower charm below, just for a bit of bling!

I set two eyelets in the back and in the front and threaded some ribbon through, for the handles.  Finished!

This was a really simple, really enjoyable little project and it has given me a really nice idea for some inexpensive Chrimble pressies, so thank you Project Tuesday for the inspiration.


I'm frantically working on this week's challenges now - can't wait to get home and play! 

Happy crafting.
xx