Moving Away Keepsake Gift

I made a fun project yesterday that I have been excited to share with you! I am SO addicted to making these paper bag cards & books!! This project started because I was suppose to make a "going away" card for a friend who is moving away this weekend. All of the girls in our Bible study group were going to sign it and then we wanted to send it to her at her new home. Our group leader suggested that we each write a verse of encouragement to her and as I was thinking about that I thought that we were going to need space for all of us to write a verse so what better way to do that than for each lady to have an insert so that we could each write as much as we wanted!

So, what started as a small card turned into a keepsake gift! How fun!!

The layout is one that I had used for a scrapbook page for TAC's upcoming seminar. I'll share that with you at a later date. Often times you can take ideas and layouts from your scrapbooks and vice versa when papercrafting.



You can see the slideshow of the book at the top of this post and if you click on it, it will take you to my gallery where you can see the details of each photo and learn a little bit more about how I made this.

Basically it is made out of two white paper sacks. I cut off the bottom part of the sacks and then folded them in half. This formed 4 pockets. Then, I decorated each sack and bound them together with ribbon and cardstock. I made 8 inserts for the inside of the pockets so each person could write a note of encouragement. The tabs on the inserts were made with circle punches and then attached with glue. All stamps, of course, are from The Angel Company (except for the "Handmade by" stamp on the back cover).

One of the features that I really like, for some reason, is how I bound it. I know, that's a funny thing to be excited about! Here is a picture of the binding.

The reason that I like this is because of how the ribbon is hanging down the side so that both ends are at the bottom. I just did this by re-knotting the ribbon and looping the end so that it points down. You could add embellishments or beads to the ribbon to give it a really cool look as well!

This book could be made for so many occassions and in so many themes. Again your imagination is your limit. You can also use much smaller bags or larger bags to change it up a little. And, if you don't have paper sacks at home, you can do this same thing with envelopes! Just seal your envelope and then cut off the right side of the envelope to form your pocket as seen in this photo.



Happy playing!! Oh, and if this post inspires you to make a paper bag card/book or an envelope book, please let me know! You never know, I may just feature it on my blog!!