I love American Crafts!

This week after an appointment in Louisville, I drug my boys across town to Archiver's. (The exchange was that they'd get to walk through Dick's Sporting Goods AND we'd have California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. It was worth it!)

In the first display rack I saw, a fun, colorful paper line jumped out at me. It's was the new American Crafts Margarita line. It was love at first sight. I grabbed a few of my favorite papers from the line and selected the layered felt/button embellishments. I was good (so good) and passed on the coordinating Thickers. (That should have earned ME a treat!)

Tonight I sat down with only my new AC products in hand and a set of photos from Kevin's swim lessons last summer. I could envision a sun made out of one of the embellishments, the glitter/dot yellow paper, and hand-stitching.

And so, a layout was born...

It makes me so happy.

And then I realized I was left with felt/button FLOWER embellishments. Flowers? What would I ever do with flowers???

Then it hit me...

Last month when I delivered a birthday gift to my aunt, she commented that she loved the card (handmade) and said that my cousin had asked once when I was going to start making my own gift bags, too.

Hmmm.

Gift bags?

I found a "naked" kraft gift bag. I also found some colorful pipe cleaners that matched the paper line.

And so a gift bag was born. Complete with matching mini card. (I added the green pipe cleaners for leaves/stem and replaced the bag's handles with hot pink pipe cleaners.)

I'm afraid I like them too much to give them away...