In a galaxy far, far away, a little girl was about to celebrate her ninth birthday...
...and she picked Star Wars as her birthday party theme. And her auntie, which is only vaguely familiar with the Star Wars universe (as she tried to get into the movies and just couldn't muster any interest for it) really struggled to get into the theme. I've been warned months ago this is the theme she was going for and there has been a lot of Googling on my part to try and find inspiration for a costume as well as for the packaging of her gift. The character that appeals to me the most is Grogu, because he is really adorable. I remembered having seen cutesy interpretation of him on Disney merchandise, so I went searching for those type of images and I found an adorable mini backpack with a simplified version of Grogu that I thought I could do in paper piecing. I will say, paper piecing is not something I have done a lot of in my crafting career, as it has never been my thing, but in the spirit of trying to make my niece happy, I decided to give it a go tonight.
I am really pleased with what I managed to achieve, both because I stepped way out of my comfort zone to get this gift bag achieved, but also because I managed to use some retired cardstock that has been sitting in my stash for a long time. That Green Galore cardstock (which has been retired by Stampin' Up! a good 15 years ago) is so obnoxiously bright, it is really hard to work into designs, but it really is the perfect shade for The Child. The orange is Dusty Durango, the pink is Powder Pink and the brown is Cinnamon Cider (not retired, but not my favorite and I have a feeling I'll be stuck with leftovers when it retires).
I've invested in a lot of stitched dies in recent years, but I was thankful I had some regular dies to do my basic shapes. I went back to my old Nestabilities ovals. I used a wide one for the face and narrow ones for the ears, cutting the top off straight. (I layered my two ovals and cut them at the same time to make sure they'd be symetrical). I used the smaller oval die to the pink part of the ears and penciled a line that looked like the image I was working from. Again, I cut both shapes at the same time. The brown clothes are also just an oval. and I found some mini tag punches from an old Stampin' Up! punch pack. I used one shape for the sleeves and I cut the other tag shape in half to make the hands. I used layering circle dies from Tonic to make the carriage, and I used a grey marker to add the detailing, basing my doodling on the image. I used a green marker to add the facial expression, and I punched two circles out of black cardstock for the eyes, adding highlights with a white gel pen. All of my pieces were inked in matching ink before I assembled my image.
I knew I wanted gold stars on black cardstock for the background. I always try to recycle gift bags instead of buying new ones when I can. This is especially easy with a lot of shops switching to paper bags when plastic bags were retired. I used a Christmas bag here that was the right size and had black with stars on the sides, so I knew that would work out with what I was planning to put on the front and the back. I found a larger stencil from Stampin' Up! from a few years ago and I paired it with Gold Glitz glitter gel from Gina K Designs. I made sure to do the stars on two pieces of black cardstock, and I set aside to dry.
While going through my stencils, I had also spotted the Radiating Rays stencil from MFT. I thought it would look cool used behind Grogu, so I added Soft Suede ink to a piece of Crumb Cake cardstock with my blender brush, matted in Dusty Durango and I added my Grogu to the center using foam adhesive. Once the gold glitter gel was dry, I glued the panels to both sides of my gift bag and punched holes in the cardstock with a Crop-a-Dile. I pulled out Going Grey chevron ribbon and used it to make new handles (the one from the former bag having silver in them, which was not working with the gold stars).
Initially, I called this done, but later that same evening, I started wondering if I would be able to write my niece's name at an angle to mimick the sliding text at the beginning of the Star Wars movies. I was curious, so I started fiddling around in Word and then I thought, surely, someone's done it before me and shared the how-to online. It didn't take long before I found someone sharing how to do it in PowerPoint, but the same options exist in Word, so I went back to testing it out. It was working, but with only her first name, the angle was barely showing, so I started typing "In a galaxy far, far away, a little girl was celebrating her ninth birthday..." and the slanting became way more apparent. I played with the placement of the words until I got the result I was hoping for. I put the text in yellow and added a black fill and then I sent to print. I cut the cardstock at an angle and added the cardstock to the backside of the bag. I'm pretty pleased with that added detail. I think this will please my niece. As a final touch, I went looking for tissue paper and I found a piece of white tissue paper I had spritzed with Distress Oxide spray last year in something like Marmalade, I believe. I liked how it looked in the bag, so I went with that. Tissue paper is another thing that I try to upcycle rather than buy. So many stores use it when they ship items, this gives me a nice variety to choose from when I do my own packaging.
So I'm both happy with what I was able to come up with and to be leaving the galaxy behind and back to more cutesy stuff!
Supplies
Cardstock: Basic Black, Crumb Cake, Cinnamon Cider, Powder Pink, Green Galore, Dusty Durango,
Grey Granite (Stampin' Up!)
Stencils: Radiating Rays (My Favorite Things); Hearts & Stars (Stampin' Up!)
Ink: Green Galore, Powder Pink, Smoky Slate, Dusty Durango, Soft Suede, Cinnamon Cider (Stampin' Up!)
Dies: Large and Narrow Ovals (Nestabilities from Spellbinders); Layering Circles (Tonic)
Accessories: Gold Glitz Glitter Gel (Gina K. Designs); White Gell Pen (Gelly Roll);
Blender Brushes (Taylored Expressions); Mini Tag Punches, Circle Punch,
Stampin' Write Markers, Stampin' Dimensionals (Stampin' Up!)
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