How to make a Small Gift Bag

This article is written by Sandra Parés 

Today I am going to show you an easy way to make a small gift bag, an ideal bag to cover a gift for someone special on the Christmas day.

Small Gift Bag

Here are the materials:

  1. 1 recycled tetra brik that we will have cleaned before
  2. Scissors
  3. Black gesso
  4. Sponge
  5. Acrylic paint: Acrylic Glaze Silks, in my case I will use the violet colour of Irresistible Iridescence
  6. 1 Brush
  7. An adhesive tape, like washi tape or colored tape. I will use a white adhesive tape
  8. A regular white acrylic paint
  9. 1 template
  10. Crop-a-dile or some tool to make holes.
  11. Ribbon to make the handles.

Small Gift Bag

Step 1 – We start cutting the tetra brik. We cut the tetra brik in a half and we get a small bag. We can make it larger or smaller according our personal idea.

Step 2 – Then, with a sponge, we will cover the whole outer surface of the tetra brik with black gesso. If you want, you can also cover it with white gesso, depends on the type of paint you will use after and the result you want to obtain. In my case, as I will use the Silks Acrylic Glaze Irresistible Iridescence to colour the bag, I prefer the black gesso. The Irresistible Iridescence paint works good on dark backgrounds and gives a beautiful bright.

Step 3 – Once gesso is dry, we can paint the whole surface of gesso with the acrylic paint. The colour I choose is a metallic violet with a very nice metallic shine.

Step 4 – When the paint is dry, we can polish the edges of the tetra brik with the adhesive tape.

Small Gift Bag

Steps 5 & 6 – Then we take a template to add a picture on the bag. In this step we will stencil the template with a sponge onto one side or both. If we stencil onto both sides, we have to wait to have the first side dry before to stencil onto the other side.

Step 7 – And we only need to make some holes with the crop-a-dile to get a place where we can put a ribbon to make the handles

Step 8 – add ribbon to make handles

With this simple way we will have a beautiful small bag for a gift for this Christmas!

Small Gift Bag

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Sandra Parés loves working with mixed media. The colors and textures leave her amazed and she enjoys creating and getting their hands dirty with paint and gesso. She lives near Barcelona and works in her art workshop. On her site My mixed media you can find a mixed media online store, art and craft products, mixed media workshops in Spanish, tutorials, ideas and mixed media techniques.

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Small Gift Bag

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This article is written by Sandra Parés 

Today I am going to show you an easy way to make a small gift bag, an ideal bag to cover a gift for someone special on the Christmas day.

Three examples of the small mixed media gift bag.

  1. 1 recycled tetra brik that we will have cleaned before
  2. Scissors
  3. Black gesso
  4. Sponge
  5. Acrylic paint: Acrylic Glaze Silks, in my case I will use the violet colour of Irresistible Iridescence
  6. 1 Brush
  7. An adhesive tape, like washi tape or colored tape. I will use a white adhesive tape
  8. A regular white acrylic paint
  9. 1 template
  10. Crop-a-dile or some tool to make holes.
  11. Ribbon to make the handles.

Preparing and painting the surface of the tetra brik

Step 1 – We start cutting the tetra brik. We cut the tetra brik in a half and we get a small bag. We can make it larger or smaller according our personal idea.

Step 2 – Then, with a sponge, we will cover the whole outer surface of the tetra brik with black gesso. If you want, you can also cover it with white gesso, depends on the type of paint you will use after and the result you want to obtain. In my case, as I will use the Silks Acrylic Glaze Irresistible Iridescence to colour the bag, I prefer the black gesso. The Irresistible Iridescence paint works good on dark backgrounds and gives a beautiful bright.

Step 3 – Once gesso is dry, we can paint the whole surface of gesso with the acrylic paint. The colour I choose is a metallic violet with a very nice metallic shine.

Step 4 – When the paint is dry, we can polish the edges of the tetra brik with the adhesive tape.

Stenciling the template and making the holes to make the handles.

Steps 5 & 6 – Then we take a template to add a picture on the bag. In this step we will stencil the template with a sponge onto one side or both. If we stencil onto both sides, we have to wait to have the first side dry before to stencil onto the other side.

Step 7 – And we only need to make some holes with the crop-a-dile to get a place where we can put a ribbon to make the handles

Step 8 – add ribbon to make handles

With this simple way we will have a beautiful small bag for a gift for this Christmas!

Three examples of the small mixed media gift bag.

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Sandra Parés loves working with mixed media. The colors and textures leave her amazed and she enjoys creating and getting their hands dirty with paint and gesso. She lives near Barcelona and works in her art workshop. On her site My mixed media you can find a mixed media online store, art and craft products, mixed media workshops in Spanish, tutorials, ideas and mixed media techniques.

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Handmade Vintage Christmas Greeting Cards

With the Holiday season approaching, it’s time to get started on our handmade greeting cards. Here we have used our Mixed Media Art Ephemera Sheet 17 ~ Vintage Christmas Greetings to get us started. Once you have downloaded the ephemera sheet and get it printed, it makes it easy to create individual handmade greeting cards.

These Vintage Christmas Greetings have also come from my Aunt’s vintage greeting cards collection. The box is still FULL of cards and interesting ephemera that you haven’t seen yet and I just LOVE going through the musty smelling papers to bring the interesting and the strange vintage images to you.

using vintage images to create your own handmade greeting card

Tools and Materials

Process

1. Download and print off your Vintage Christmas greeting ephemera sheet. Gather supplies together. You can choose the colored card that suits the image that you have chosen.

2. Cut out the image you will be using. I prefer to use a craft knife, steel rule and cutting mat.

3. Cut imaging into roughly thirds, taking the image as a guide to get the best fit. Don’t worry if you make a mistake – just print the ephemera sheet out and start again!

4. Edge three panels with black ink. Let them sit for a minute or so to dry.

5. Use double sided tape to stick three panels onto green card, leaving a gap of about 5mm [3/18″] between panels and around edges. I did this by eye, but you can measure the distances if you would prefer.

6. Cut out the green card, using the craft knife.

7. Layer the green card with three image panels onto the cream metallic paint. Cut it out. I used a slightly smaller border, just to allow the image to sit up off the backing card.

8. My original plan was to put this straight onto the green card, folded in half, but something was missing.

9. I pulled out a holly stamp to tie in with the image theme.

10. Stamp holly around the edge of the green card. Use part images and turn the stamp to add interest and variety from one stamp.

11. Layer image and background onto stamped green card. And admire your work now that your greeting cards finished – don’t forget to sign the back and add the date.

Handmade greeting cards with mixed media art epherma sheet

Beeswax Collages for Christmas

This article is written by Debbie Davis from In Art Therapy

Debbie davis beeswax collage

I love creating collages using beeswax as the decoupage medium.  For these collages I used 4 x 4 inch canvases, some paper napkins with Christmas designs, vintage images along with some buttons and ribbon for added texture.

Debbie davis ephemera beeswax collage

Here’s how to create a beeswax collage:

  1. Gather the items you would like to you use in your collage such as papers, napkins, buttons, ribbons, etc.  If using decorative napkins, remove any layers of white paper from the back of the napkins by lightly tearing a corner and rubbing until you are able to peel back and remove the layers.  I like to save the white layers to use for cleaning up in other projects.
  2. Melt beeswax in a small crockpot.  You will not be able to use the crock pot for anything else after you have melted the wax in it.
  3. Using a cheap, natural bristle brush, paint a layer of wax onto the canvas top and sides.
  4. Next add a napkin to the top of the canvas and paint over it with beeswax.  You can wrap the napkin around the sides of the canvas or use pieces of napkins or other papers torn or cut to fit the sides.  Once you have coated the napkins in wax, use a hot mini iron to smooth out the wax and remove any air bubbles.   This also fuses the wax layers together.
  5. I wanted the design/words from the napkins to show through my Christmas images so I printed the images onto tissue paper (see instructions below).  The thinner the paper, the better the images/papers underneath each layer will show through.  Place the printed image on the canvas and paint on more wax.
  6. You can now continue adding whatever embellishments you would like to add to the collage.  For the buttons, I added a puddle of wax and pressed them into it.  Be careful not to burn your fingers on the hot wax.

beeswax collage with images and mixed media ephemera

Printing on Tissue Paper using an Ink Jet Printer

Using a heavier printer paper, such as card stock, rub a glue stick around the edges.  Next lay a piece of tissue paper onto the cardstock and smooth down into the glued edges.  Trim off any excess tissue paper.   Once the glue has dried, place the paper in your printer and print your image onto the tissue paper.  This may take some practice.  I jammed a few papers when I first started printing on tissue!  Remove the image by cutting or tearing around the edges.

printing images on tissue papers

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My name is Debbie and I live in Morton, Illinois, USA. I’m happily married and have a wonderful family that includes a daughter, son, son-in-law and 2 of the sweetest grandchildren ever!

What I love most about mixed media art is that you don’t have to be an expert at anything to create beautiful art. It is a great way to recycle found objects. Art is such a wonderful stress reliever. I just wish I had more time to play!

I have a shop on Etsy called Artful Explorations where I place some of the art I have created for sale. Having been inspired by others who are willing to share their techniques and ideas, I decided to start a blog called In Art Therapy and hope you will visit me there.