Forgeries on the Fourth

As you know, I bow to the Queen of Forgery, MF Leslie who inspires and impresses me each and every month. And now there's Princess of Forgery, MF Lesley too! They are both fabulous at coming up with original ideas of how to replicate items from the inspiration kit to fill our own.

This month, as I had picked out the kit to counterfeit, I thought it would be appropriate for me to have a go at one or two items myself.

There are loads of ideas over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog today so do make sure you check all those out too.

The Papier Werkstatt kit included a bag and I knew that I wanted to give that a go. A few years ago I made a whole bunch of little gift wrap bags for Advent and this time around, I wanted to use to scrapbooking paper. I decided to go outside of my kit and even outside of the inspiration of the kit and looked through my supplies of 12x12 papers for some that are less likely to be used for actually scrapbooking. I still like them, but maybe not enough to put them on a page - I know you all have some of those!!!

These were the handful I picked out. And of course, right away I messed up that first sheet and ended up throwing it out :-(

Anyway, to begin with I looked on Pinterest and searched under the terms: craft, gift, bag. There were loads to choose from and I've linked a couple over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog. I followed the instructions for this one and then decided to come up with a template for my own that would be folded in such a way that they could be stored flat.

Here we go - let's see how well I can explain this!

First of all, I took a sheet of 12x12 paper that comes in page protectors that I use to back layouts or for things like this and decided the vertical fold lines for my bag which then determined how much I needed at the bottom and the top to use the whole 12x12.

This is the template and the lines and numbers are score and fold lines.

I then used this to score and fold a full sheet of BasicGrey paper here

 After folding all the lines as shown you then need to bring the two ends together on the vertical and stick them together. I used double sided tape as it needs to be quite strong.

After refolding the sides, I then folded the top in on itself. You don't need to stick this as the ribbons will hold it together and I decided not to reinforce it so I won't be able to put a heavy gift inside. Just to note.

Then you have to press the whole bag flat again to work the bottom section.

This is complicated to explain but you need to match the vertical fold lines below the bottom score line in so that they lie flat along the bottom fold line and then press the sides into a diagonal line. I hope you can tell what I mean from this photo below!

And again, you need to fold along the remaining (side) fold lines so that there are two flaps that overlap each other to form the flat bottom of the bag. Again, secure well with tape. If you need to, you could also cut a piece of card to reinforce the bottom of the bag from the inside.

After adhering the flaps, it should look like this!

I then used my Cropodile to make hole about 1/2" from the top (I used the smaller hole) and threaded ribbon through for my handles.

This pink bag uses exactly one piece of 12x12 and makes a bag which is approx 10" high, 4 1/4" wide and 1 1/2" deep.

The bag with the large spots was made shorter by cutting 4" off the height of the paper at the beginning and making the top reinforcing fold about 3/4". The third bag at the back follows that original tutorial I found on Pinterest (here).

While a 12" paper won't make a large gift bag, I can imagine using up some of those "difficult to use but difficult to throw away" sheets to make some more bags and it uses ribbon too which I always forget - so double win!

I also had another go at the print and cut feature of my Silhouette Cameo. I wasn't sure about the embellishment pack from Pebbles but it looked to me as if some of the die-cuts were actually printed vellum so I thought I'd have a go at my own. I could see doilies, hearts and flowers so I went through my Silhouette library and picked out some similar shapes. Printing on vellum needs patience because the paint doesn't dry very fast and I needed to use my heat gun in the end. And then the Cameo couldn't find the registration points and my manual input appeared a little out which meant that some of the shapes didn't cut well. But the few that I ended up with are super cute and perfect for adding into my kit. You could achieve the same effect by stamping and manual die-cutting (some manufacturers offer sets for exactly this type of effect) or even stamping and then fussy cutting the shapes yourself. Vellum is great to use in clusters and layers that it's definitely worth the effort of trying this technique out I think :-)

Don't forget to head over to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge for more forging ideas and link up anything you made on our Link Up page. We love to see your own forgeries!

There are details at the end of every Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog posts on how to join in the fun