At the end of every school year I like to do a little something for the kids in my big girl’s class at school. The trouble is, it gets harder to do something ‘different’ each year, especially as they’re getting older and more discerning!
This year, was made a little easier by virtue of the fact that a few weeks ago, a fellow demonstrator posted a message on our demonstrator forum (FAB resource that it is!) that she had loads and loads of long, thin self-sealing plastic bags that she’d be happy to offload in packs of 100 to any interested parties.
Turns out there were a lot of interested parties, so it’s a good thing she really did have loads of them!
I relieved her of 10 packs, which if you bother to do the maths, is a whole BUNCH of bags, but I had never seen them anywhere before and they’re perfect for fun little gifts of the classmate variety, and with my small girl starting Kindy next year, I’m all of a sudden going to find myself needing to make double of everything at gift time.
As it turns out, another demonstrator on the forum alerted us all to the fact that Woolworths had packs of red, green and white jelly beans available for Christmas, so after picking up an armful of those, sitting with my big girl on the floor, first sorting the jelly beans into colours, then loading them into the bags, a stamped and folded tag punch later, this is what we had….!
The Sparkly and Bright stamp set would have to be my favourite Christmas set for this year – SO cute and whimsical and perfect for this particular job 
I arrived at the little folded over tag at the top, as it gave me a place to stamp something, without being so labour intensive that I would start to hyperventilate when the crowd of seven year olds in receipt of the jelly bean packets started ripping them apart and throwing them away.
I put together an impromptu little tutorial in case you’re wondering how to achieve the folded over tag idea for yourself. Please keep in mind the word impromptu when considering the quality (or not) of the pictures…
Start with a piece of cardstock folded in half. I used Whisper White, which is a bit thinner than the regular cardstock so the double width is easily punched through. Not sure how the thicker stuff would go…
Now slide the folded cardstock into to the punch so that there is a tiny (1mm or so) gap between the cardstock and the top of the punch…
Now punch! And this is what you get…
And if you’re doing a whole batch of these as I was, you can cut strips of cardstock (I cut a piece of A4 Whisper White in half lengthways, then folded it in the middle, lengthways again), you can punch out a whole series of them…
To attach them to the bags, I simply stapled the back of the tag to the bag, then stuck the front of the tag down with a Stampin’ Dimensional.
Since I have a truckload of these bags now, I’m going to give a pack of 100 away to one of you, but you have to earn it!
Tell me your ideas for little stamped gifts so that I can be ready in advance for next year – I have double the amount to make from 2011 onwards remember, so I’m going to have to get myself prepared well in advance!
Winner will be randomly chosen on Monday!
“Merry and Bright Classmate Gifts”
Stamps: Merry & Bright
Paper: Whisper White
Ink: Early Espresso, Real Red
Accessories: Early Espresso, Real Red & Wild Wasabi Markers
