Birthday Present & Gift Bag/Reusable Tote!

Happy Afternoon Everyone! Today I would like to share a quick and fun present and bag all in one! One of my friend's birthdays was the other day, and I always like to suprise her with something unique & different. She is one of my dear friends that truly supports my artistic endeavors. I wanted to give her something inspiring and as soon as I saw it, I just had to get it. I am sure that most of you already know Rhonna Farrer of Rhonna Designs. She creates the most amazing, visually interesting digital images I have ever seen! She is the designer behind Pink Paislee's Daily Junque line just to give you an idea of how talented she is. Rhonna recently created a digital image titled, Focus and here it is in all it's wonderful glory. The sentiment underneath reminds us to make time for ourselves every once in awhile! I purchased this wonderful image and decided to print and frame it for my friend. The funky colors and style I knew would be perfect. After framing it, I decided to make a rosette out of fuschia/orange dupioni silk. It ties amazingly well to the flowers in the image. Additionally I added the vintage blue tickets to make it more like a prize ribbon. I love the way it turned out, and she did too. :) For the gift bag, rather than using the typical throwaway ones; I decided to give her one that she could use as a beach bag or tote bag in the future. Since we are all about using totes these days for shopping, etc isn't this perfect? I also have noticed that burlap is becoming a very hot trend. I purchased this burlap bag and added the rosette/ribbon to the front. To make it a permanent fixture to the bag, I adhered it using E600. You can never go wrong with that stuff! As for the materials I used to create the rosette, I used some beautiful new Webster's Pages Ribbon, cream dupioni silk & some vintage pink/white trim I had in my stash. To give it the folded appearance, I simply used a Cosmo Cricket Gluber. My goodness, those things rock! To give the bag a little bit more of a festive flair, I added 3 pennant flag pins from the Girls' Paperie as well as the "joy" pin. Those are easily removable, and she can take them off before carrying the bag. Clever huh? I thought it would be fun to share this idea with you all. Not only was it fun/quick to put together, I think she truly likes it. I know if I was on the receiving end, I would love it. Which reminds me, I am totally going to print/frame Rhonna's "Focus" for my bedroom. It has such a funky flair...so totally me:)

Thanks for stopping by. I have some exciting news to share with you soon so stay tuned! Amy