I was recently asked to make some party bags for a ‘duck themed’ first birthday party. The birthday boy and his mum are both very special to me, so of course I jumped at the chance. Having been meaning to make some ink stamps ever since I learnt how at the Yellow Owl Workshop launch, I thought I’d try doing that. Plus it gave me the excuse to buy some lovely old fashioned sweetie bags to print on. I started by assembling everything I’d need, Blue Peter style…
I’ve posted before in some detail about how to do this, so I won’t bore you with too many details, just a quick overview of what I did this time…
1. Trace over your design in pencil and then lay it pencil side down onto your ‘speedy carve‘. Rub it with the back of your nail so that the pencil comes off onto your ‘speedy carve’ – ideally a little more clearly than mine did!
2. Using a v-gauge (a cutting tool with a blade shaped like a ‘v’), trace the outline of your design.
3. Using a u-guage (a cutting tool with a blade shaped like a ‘u’), remove any areas you don’t want to print, returning to the v-guage for the detail.
4. Print onto a piece of paper and compare with your design, to see which areas need further carving. Continue until you are happy with the print.
I already had a duck (alright, it’s a bird!) ink stamp, so I started by printing a little row of those along the bottom of each one of these gorgeous bags.
Then I printed ‘happy birthday’ onto each one using the stamp I’d made. But I wanted my party bags to be a little more personal than that, so using the same method, I made a separate stamp saying ‘1st’…
…and one with the birthday boy’s name on it.
The reason I did it this way, was so that I could use the ‘happy birthday’ stamp again for other things – and who knows I may find a use for the other two as well. As one collective stamp, it would have been a bit of a one trick pony!
And while I was making things, I thought I might as well make a birthday card and envelope to match.
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- http://www.yellowowlworkshop.com/bookkit.html
- http://yellowowlworkshop.blogspot.com/
- http://www.littlecherry.co.uk/a47/Make-your-own-Party-Bags!/article_info.html
- http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Create-Your-Own-Party-Bag-517019017
Love these Katie, I bet the birthday boy and mummy did too. You don’t often see the yellow sweetie bags either – they are normally pink/red.
Thank you Sam! They did go down well. You’re right about blue and pink – I was really pleased to find yellow ones.
A fantastic idea you have shared, keep it up.