At least my dolls have a shot at being organized...

Current Mood : Slinking out of the slump...very slowly. 

Few days ago, I snagged a great set of box and bag patterns and designs, in the style and scale for MH  and Barbie, and made a couple. It’s this one.  You get all the designs pictured, in two bag sizes and two types of box – one piece (lid is part of it) and two (separate box and lid) pieces – in full color print outs e-mailed to you about five minutes after you snag yours. Only one problem. We only have a black-print laser. Can always go to the library, but I wanted to play that first day a bit. I was surprised to see how good my efforts looked using greyscale and copy paper, even though it’s designed for cardstock and color. I knew I’d have to have more.

So today, I cleared the desks and played ! I made…two, six…eight bags and just the one box, a one-piece version. So. Much. Fun ! We had some yellow cardstock that worked well with the printer…until the toner started coming off. More I handled it, the more came off. Even waiting an hour didn’t help. Ah, well. That cardstock was older than laser printers, so I know it wasn’t made for them, I wasn’t too surprised.

We also have lots of colored paper and construction paper, not to mention scrapbook sheets, so… Decided I needed a template, so I wouldn’t use the printer so much. Stripped the fold guide for the paper-handle bag and printed that on cardstock – perfect ! Now I had something to trace and make as many bags as I wanted out of whatever I wanted. Made one from copy paper (green), construction paper (pink), cardstock print (yellow), and a scrap of star-print vellum I snagged on sale from Hobby Lobby’s scrapbook section. For kicks, I used my tiny star punch and threaded glittery trim cord through the holes for handles, and it looks great. Stickers from an Etsy order made the plain bags into birthday gift bags, and soon I could go from trace to bag in less than 15 minutes. I like this purchase !

Just made the one box so far – it’s a bit fiddly, but quite sturdy, even out of copy paper – so I need to experiment with them, too. Now that I have blanks, I can print out any bag or box I want, and even scale them down or up a bit, too. I love it when a craft works as-is…and I can easily mold it to my own fiendish needs, too !

Only problem is, Carlin brought all that pink kelp – two different kinds of it, too ! – like Lagoona asked…but where is Lagoona already ?