MIM#130 Heat N' Bond and Die Cutting

Good morning friends.  Don't have a card to share with you today, but I do have a fun little project that I made for Papertrey Ink's Make it Monday challenge.  Erin Lincoln over at PTI made a cute little decorated muslin bag using material and Heat N' Bond, and then dies to cut out shapes and letters from the material.  I've been seeing these little decorated bags quite a bit recently and have wanted to try my hand at them, so this seemed like a good time!  You can buy these bags pre-made, but I decided to make my own (I used to sew quite a bit before card making took over my life!).  I've also been wanting to "tea stain" something since I saw some of the video's during PTI's Stampafaire, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to stain my muslin, sew them into little bags, use some of my background stamps to stamp the bags, and then finally, decorate with the material and die cuts.  I've made several, but I'll just show you one today - take a look:

Are these not the cutest little bags ever?!!  I love the color from the tea staining (black tea is the ticket to getting a nice color...I had tried with lace before using the mint tea I like, and while it smelled good, it didn't stain all that great!), and if you click to enlarge the picture, you'll be better able to see the background where I used my "French Script" stamp and Crumb Cake ink (both SU!).  Next came the fun part of decorating and I pulled out some material scraps I had and Wonder Under (same as Heat N' Bond).  I used PTI's Holly dies and the "merry" die (also PTI).  If you enlarge the picture, you can also see that I added a few red pearls to the smaller holly leaves over the "merry" to bling it up just a bit.  Very simple decorating, but I love how it turned out! I'll definitely be making a bunch of these to give small gifts in for this Christmas! :0)  Make sure you check out the other entries over at Nichole Heady's site http://nicholeheady.typepad.com/capture_the_moment/ ...there are some awesome idea's there including another muslin bag where the gal (Angela Pearson) did an entire little mini scene using fabric - too cute!! :0)

That's all for today friends, but thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend! :0)