It's beautiful birthday

My lovely sister came to us this weekend to celebrate her birthday and we've had a hectic time of partying and picnics! Here's the coordinating gift set I made for her:

Yes, that is the bird from Best Wishes and More and yes, it is carrying another flower! It is one of my favourite images ever! The sweets are her favourite liquorice torpedos - they're in a cello bag with a Whisper White folded topper and decorated with the It's Beautiful wheel. Her gift is wrapped in copy paper decorated with the same wheel and tied with the heavenly Old Olive striped grosgrain ribbon. I don't have the tag punches so I laboriously made this one (those tag punches are definitely on my shopping list!)

Supplies:
Stamps: Best Wishes and More, Happy Moments
Ink: Basic Black, Old Olive, More Mustard
Card stock: Whisper White, Old Olive, Summer Sun
Other: Old Olive striped grosgrain ribbon, It's Beautiful jumbo wheel, Boho Blossom punch, gold brads, Old Olive marker

It's the last day of the Easter holidays today and I'm feeling a bit wistful as I love having the children at home. By the end of tomorrow it will seem as if we'd never had the holidays.
Thank you for visiting!

It's Beautiful jumbo wheel bag-a-lope.

When I came across Lori Craig's bag-a-lope, I looked at it with great interest and noted it for future reference. Sure enough, it came in very handy yesterday when I wanted to package some lovely gingery biscuits I'd made for my friend's birthday.

The bag-a-lope is a gift bag made out of a humble envelope. Click on the link above for Lori's brilliant tutorial. She uses a C4 envelope but I thought that would be too big so I adapted the recipe and used a C5 envelope, cut it off just below the gummed flap and scored 1" in from all the edges. I also decorated the bag with my wonderful jumbo wheel (sigh - totally besotted!) which covered all the bag in seconds. Look:

I made a little tag using the scallop circle punch, layering some left over decorated paper with some plain Old Olive cardstock. The gold elastic thread is great for attaching tags. I liked the way the tag echoed the scalloped top of the bag. Here's a close-up:

The bag is finished by threading ribbon through some holes punched in the top of the bag with a cropadile. This turned out to be a quick and easy way to make a pretty gift bag and it's easy to adapt it to make different sizes. I think it could become a big favourite of mine.

Supplies (all Stampin' Up unless specified):
C5 envelope (from stationer)
Jumbo Wheel: It's Beautiful
Ink: Old Olive jumbo wheel cartridge
Cardstock: Old Olive
Other: Cropadile, Old Olive grosgrain ribbon, Gold elastic thread, Scallop circle punch, Scallop border punch

Did I mention how much I adore the jumbo wheel? There are many designs and I want them all to be mine! There's one with little houses on it, one with snowflakes, leaves, swirls... I need them!!!

Happy birthday to all the lovely people who are having birthdays this week!