Just Us Girls Challenge #9 - Gift Packaging

This is post #2 - if you are looking for my Gina K CSS Blog Hop please scroll down... or click here.

Happy Saturday - hope everyone had a blessed Thanksgiving (at least those of you in the USA) and that everyone enjoyed "Black Friday" shopping if that's your "thing" :-) It's the first time in many years that one of my DDs and I did not go out at 5:00 am but we ended up meeting at about 9:00 because we missed the tradition and the time together!!

Anyhow - It's time for Challenge #9 from Just Us Girls and this week Mona is our hostess with a template challenge for us. Stay tuned - I hear that there is a bit o' blog candy up for grabs this week *wink*

Now, if you follow my blog at all you know I LOVE templates so I was super excited over this one. Your mission is to use any template to make a holiday decorated gift box/bag. You don't have to buy a template to participate - you may use one of the free ones that you can find on SplitCoastStampers or one of the free ones from Papertrey Ink OR you can make and share one of your own template creations with us. :-)

Here's my project using one of my favorite templates created by the amazing Lauren Meader. This is the full size Around Town Tote.

I started with Gina K's fabulous card stocks - the gold metallic is the prettiest gold cardstock I've ever seen and Pure Luxury Ivory CS is my go to Ivory! I pulled out the poinsettia from Melanie Muenchinger's Year of Flowers set and stamped in Versamark then embossed with detail gold embossing powder. Did some dry embossing on the gold layer with my Scor-Pal, added some pearls for that touch of elegance along with a strip of gold and ivory braided ribbon.

For the tag, I stamped and embossed the poinsettia again along with the simple word Joy (from Melanie's Festive Frame) and then cut it with my nestie. While it was still in the die, I rubbed some gold metallic paste around and over the image. All of the poinsettias on the bag and on the tag have pearls in the center (you can see that in the detail photo above.)

Here's another picture of the bag stuffed with a pearlized champagne tissue paper. I tied up the whole tote with some wired ivory and gold ribbon from Hobby Lobby. You can see in this shot that I used gold embossed polka dots on the side panels for just a touch of whimsy :-) This generous-sized tote EASILY holds a paperback book, a CD or two, some lotions or would be a great way to gift a box containing some fabulous jewelry :-)

I can't wait to see what you will come up with - be sure to link your creation to the Mr. Linky at the bottom of the JUGS challenge post. You will not only be in the running for our top pick "Chic of the Week" stamper BUT the generous Mona has also offered up a bit of blog candy to the participants who follow the requirements for this challenge and who get their projects posted by the deadlines.

In case you missed it - the rest of the Design Team (see my right side bar) has cooked up some wonderfulness for you - I promise you will be inspired. Thanks for stopping by - have a lovely week. As we prepare to enter this busy holiday time get your gift packaging ready to go!