Crazy Hat Bear Gift Bag

Michelle loves the Minions so I decided to go with that theme for her upcoming birthday.  I found the cutest Minion slippers on Amazon.  Every time I see them they make me smile and after having them sitting around the studio for the past few weeks, I'm going to miss them.

Minion Slippers

Like most crafters with an SVG cutting machine, I am always looking for interesting cutting files.  One of my favorite sites is Kadoodle Bug Designs. While I was browsing the site for a suitable image for my gift bag I decided to checkout the Freebie section.  This week's freebie is the Crazy Hat Bear.  He's so cute with his Minion style hat.  I decided to use the jpg image from the downloaded file.

Crazy Hat Bear Gift Bag

Directions for Crazy Hat Bear Gift Bag:

Crazy Hat Bear zip file from Kadoodle Bug Designs
Medium white gift bag-available at craft stores
Pink Satin Ribbon
White card stock- letter size (8 1/2 x 11 inch)
Glue
Cutting machine with Print and Cut capability- I used Silhouette Cameo (directions will be for the Cameo)

1.  Download the Crazy Hat Bear file from Kadoodle Bug Designs.  Unzip the file and export the jpg file to the Silhouette machine.

2.   Open the Silhouette mat and resize the mat to letter size.

3.   Import the Crazy Hat Bear image to the mat and resize to 8.465 x 8.465 inches.

4.  Add the registration marks to the Silhouette mat.  Make sure the bear fits within the registration marks.

5.   Load a sheet of white card stock in the printer. Send the image to the printer.

6.  Open the Trace window and turn off the high pass filter and increase the threshold until most of the image is blocked out in yellow.  The area inside the eyes may not be blocked out but that will not affect the cutting.  Select Trace Outer Edge option.  There should be a red outline around the outside of the image.

7.  Open the Cut window and select cut outer edge.  There should be a thick red line around the outside edge of the bear. Place the printed image on the Silhouette cutting mat and load into the machine and select cut.

8.  Unload the cutting mat from the Cameo and remove the cut image.

9.  Apply glue to the back of the bear and attach to the front of the gift bag.  Cut a piece of pink satin ribbon long enough to tie around the top of the handles of the gift bag and tie in a bow.

Nutcracker Gift Bag

Every year we leave a gift bag filled with cookies in the mailbox for our letter carrier, Bryan. Bryan provides great service, he delivers our mail in winter weather even when UPS and Fed Ex won't attempt to make deliveries. In addition to the cookies, I like to make a card and a gift bag to show Bryan how much we appreciate having him as our letter carrier.

Cricut recently released the Holly and Ivy cartridge. One of the images on the cartridge was the Nutcracker, and of course I just had to have it.  The cartridge contains a lot of other nice images, bells, wreaths, Santa, etc. but the Nutcracker was definitely the selling point for me. The order containing my cartridge spent the last 4 days sitting in someplace in Maryland that I had never heard of and I was holding my breath that it would arrive before December 24, otherwise I couldn't use the Nutcracker for my gift bags.

Finally the cartridge arrived yesterday and I immediately started cutting the images for my gift bags. The Nutcracker is fairly detailed but there are none of the clothing or hair cut outs that I am used to with Cricut cartridges. While I really liked the image cut out of black card stock, it just looked blah on a gift bag and not very festive. I wanted to add color to the Nutcracker but wasn't sure how I was going to do that. I cut the image again in the solid option on white card stock and glued the black outlined image over it. I grabbed my Prisma Color pencils and my Copic markers and started coloring in the Nutcracker. I added a few embellishments and the result was dramatically different from the original.

Original Nutcracker from Holly and Ivy cartridge.

Embellished Nutcracker

Finished Gift Bag.

Cookies wrapped for giving.

Directions for Nutcracker Gift Bag:


Medium size gift bags- available at Michaels, JoAnn, Hobby Lobby or Walmart
White and black card stock
Cricut Holly and Ivy cartridge-this cartridge does not come with a key board overlay and uses the universal overlay available at Michaels. I didn't know this until the cartridge arrived. I was able to use the cartridge by substituting an overlay from another cartridge. The Holly and Ivy booklet shows the position of the keys for the image in a key board diagram for each image. I then pressed the corresponding keys on my the substitute overlay.
Colored pencils, markers or watercolors for coloring the image
Red ribbon
Recollections self adhesive gold beads and small blue crystals
Red plaid tissue paper
Blue brads-4
Cuttlebug Snowflake embossing folder
Embossing machine
Ranger Tim Holtz Tea Dye distress ink and foam applicator
Platinum Stickles glitter glue

1.  Using the Cricut Holly and Ivy cartridge cut the Nutcracker out of black card stock (at 5 1/2 inches). Cut the solid Nutcracker out of white card stock. Glue the black image over the white solid image.

2.  Color the Nutcracker's face and hands with peach color, colored pencils and accent his cheeks with light pink. Burnish over the face and hands with the white colored pencil until the face has a slight sheen.  Color the jacket and the crown with a red marker and color the pants with a dark yellow marker.  Add the gold beads to embellish to the jacket and the crown.  Add the small blue crystals to the eyes. Accent the shoulders, top of the boots and the sleeves with the platinum Stickles and set aside to dry.

3.  Cut a piece of white card stock large enough to fit the Snowflake embossing folder and emboss the image. Lightly apply the tea dye distress ink over the snowflakes to highlight them.

4.  Attach a blue brad in each corner of the embossed card stock. Glue the embossed card stock to the front of the gift bag.

5.  Glue the Nutcracker to the embossed card stock.

6.  Tie the red ribbon around on of the gift bag handles and make a bow.   Fold the plaid tissue paper to make a triangle and place in the gift bag, add the gift and add another piece of folded tissue paper.