Taking #Cre8time Back to School... Designer Crafts Connection August Bloghop

Welcome! It's the first Monday of August which marks the monthly Designer Crafts Connection Bloghop. This month's theme is "Back to School"... crafting with school supplies - who can resist. I always loved this time of year - getting new crayons, pencils and other crafty school goodness... and I still enjoy stocking up on my stash of glue sticks and getting a new composition book to doodle and sketch in.

Using a handful of supplies, I have created some fun Back-to-School treats for my nieces. I'll admit I had loads of fun making these... maybe even more than the girls will have! 

Supplies used: scissors; push pins; binder clips; mini pencils, party favor stencils; ruler stencils; mini composition books, brown kraft shipping paper; standard notebook paper; black dye ink; Sakura of America Gelly Roll® Stardust® pens; pencil sharpeners; mini erasers; clear rubber stamps to coordinate; glue stick; circle and medallion punch; Herma Dotto adhesive runner by EK Success; and black marker.

I set out to make some of these plain utilitarian items fun and colorful. I added some rainbow colored mini DUCK Brand tape to the binder clips. This is so quick and easy and gets the WOW factor!! I grabbed a couple punches and scrap cardstock to create custom seals with the year drawn in stencil numbers. Lastly, I cut some squares of brown paper for shipping to make "brown-bag" covers for the mini composition books.

We all remember back in the day when we had to cover our schoolbook with brown paper bags... right??! How about a little mini covered composition book! It's so stinkin' cute... and screams for doodling and embellishing.

School supplies are so much fun and when I spied these mini erasers - I had other plans... making mini stamps. I layered some squares of chipboard onto a pushpin for shims and layered two erasers of the same shape on to create a cute little stamp. I could go even further and come back and make others and carve away the colored detail to make a whole set. But these are perfect for what I want to do.

Using a single sheet of notebook paper - I cut off about 4" from the bottom. I took the binding edge and folded that in half to the pink margin line and ran a line of dotto adhesive; making sure to skip over the holes. Then I folded the sheet in half and took the right edge, aligned it flush with the left and pressed in place on the adhesive. Now I have the closed sack - it just needs the bottom folded and closed up. I folded the corners in to make some score lines then opened it up and reverse tucked them inside and folded the outer two flaps over like flaps of an envelope. A small line of Dotto adhesive on the top flap holds it closed.

Easy-peasy! Four little mini notebook paper
treat bags ready to decorate.

Now that the treat bags, book covers and new mini stamps are completed... it's time to play! I set to work playing as I embellished the cover of the book and treat bags using my new mini stamps combined with doodling with Sakura of America Gelly Roll® Stardust® pens and some Hanna Montana clear stamps {I've been hoarding these for ages}.

   

In retrospect, I might glue two sheets of notebook paper together {side-by-side} so that I could create a larger treat bag. With the brown paper cover on, the book no longer fit in the bag... which was OK because I had plenty of goodies to completely fill the bag! I could tie the two together with some fun colorful shoelaces or book bands.

I think my nieces will be pretty excited to receive these. They will have a lot of fun doodling and jazzing up the mini composition books covered "OLD-SCHOOL" style.

Thanks for visiting. Continue on the Designer Crafts Connection "Back to School" Bloghop by selecting hop back/forward on the logo below.

Sb :)

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