Christmas Tree Gift Bag

My life has been a bit of a blur the past few weeks with the end of semester wrap-up.  As of 7:30ish last night, I finished grading the final paper from my students.  It feels SO good to be done and to have my evenings back.  That said, I've still got a fair bit of baking to do, although that might wait until the end of the week.

I did manage to find just a little bit of time to craft last week.  This week's challenge at My Craft Spot is Wrap It Up (gift packaging).  A few weeks ago, I saw some clip art with a tree containing a variety of sentiments.  I used that as my inspiration to make this gift bag.   

I hand cut all the branches - and used a variety of My Craft Spot sentiments to stamp the festive sayings: Jingle All the Way, 'Tis the Season, Think Snow and Christmas Banner sentiments.  Each branch was inked and then embossed with Distressed Stripes.  The stars were cut with the My Craft Spot Small Alphabet metal dies.  (The set of dies has a few fun shapes too!)  I used an argyle folder for the mat. 

I also used Stamping All Around Christmas for the "To" and "From" on my little tag - and added a star to that as well.  The "No Peeking" is from the Jingle All the Way set too.  I tied some fun yarn and my bag was complete!

This will be our last challenge of the year at My Craft Spot, so I do hope you'll be able to join us!  We've got lots of fun planned for the new year and I'm looking forward to the holidays to get started on that!!