Andrea's Bow Cottage: Little Felt Birthday Bag

Hello all! I've got a really fun, really cute and really simple project for you today!

We are going to transform this cute little felt bag into an extraordinary cute little felt bag with a coordinating present and card to boot! Let's get started.

Supplies used are:
Little felt bag purchased from my local craft store for 99 cents,
hot glue and gun, scissors, ruler, lighter
card stock, 1/2" plastic headband,
Ribbon NV27 1.5" ruffle
RG17, 27, 34, 46 3/16"
and a few other embellishments.

I decided I wanted to make a weave pattern on the front so I

started by cutting my first piece of ribbon at an angle, heat sealed with a lighter, and glued to bag.

Little Tip from a ribbon pro....

Heat sealing makes for nice clean ribbon edges that won't fray. Fray check only works short term. Every ribbon is a little different so when heat sealing a new ribbon make sure there's a little extra length. Grosgrain, satin and suede heat seal really well. It actually makes the ribbon melt which is what prevents the fraying. Thinner ribbons such as sheers etc. burn easily so hold your lighter further away or you may need to blow your ribbon out. Wink, wink! The cheaper the ribbon the more you'll have a problem. I love May Arts ribbon for this particular reason. It's a very exquisite product and even the thinner ribbons heat seal nicely with out melting to quickly. Don't let me scare you, just practice and you'll see what I mean about your nice edges. Candles will turn your ribbon black! Don't use a candle in my opinion. I have not had good success with them.

Now that the first layer of ribbons is glued on let's start the second layer. Felt melts too, so once you're done gluing the ribbon run your lighter up and down the edges to make the felt, ribbon and glue look nice and neat.

Instead of doing the criss-cross all over the bag I cut and glued ribbon straight and added some cute glitter butterflies to kind of give it the Merry Go Round look. I then added the yellow ruffle ribbon over the top all the way around. Having the additional cut piece of ribbon I glued to the inside gives it a nice clean look from the top.

Now, we will make a cute head band using the 1.5" ruffle ribbon.

I had technical difficulties with a few pictures so these next two will be with the Sea foam ruffle ribbon.

Head bands are usually about 14 inches from one end to the other.

Cut two pieces of ribbon, one 15 1/2" and the other 13 1/2".

Put hot glue just below the ruffle (top and bottom one side at a time) to glue your two pieces of ribbon together.

This will give you a pocket you can easily slide the headband through.

You will also need approximately 1 yard (depending on how full you want your flower) of uncut ribbon to create a second flower that will be glued beneath this one.

I used a large white scrap booking brad for the center.

A matching card made from DCWV's 12x12 glitter stack cut down to 5x8 1/2 card.

Cut and glue ribbon and butterflies, and add some sticker letters.

Here you have it! A really fun, really cute and really easy project! For the flower on the front of the hand bag I added some pictures that I did previously to show those who haven't seen this how I did it.

For more detailed instructions visit my website at www.andreasbowcottage.blogspot.com