7 Days to St. Patrick's Day!!

Howdy Friends!!

Happy Week Before St. Patrick's Day - I hope you are ready for some GREEN!! If you've been watching my Handmade by Hallie Facebook Page you know from the sneak peeks that I've spent the last few days preparing several St. Patty's Day projects. I will reveal one sneak peek each day from now through the 17th so make sure to check back daily.

I am starting off with the most simplistic of the projects I made. If you know me, you know that simple is not my forte; therefore, it is extremely difficult for me to do. Meticulous, methodical, and/or detailed oriented - YES, PLEASE! Simple - NOT.SO.MUCH!! I avoid it like the plague! Seriously, I cringe at the mention of the word and start running for the hills thinking about all of the other things I could possibly do to avoid the "s" word. I would rather organize the letters in alphabet soup alphabetically than have to incorporate simple into anything I create. Now that you clearly understand that I have a serious aversion to the word, I will move on to my SIMPLE project which happens to be a ... bag-a-lope. That's right, an envelope turned into a bag! 

Last week Becky Roberts, Inking Idaho, posted a cute bag-a-lope on her blog and asked if any of us had been stamping long enough to remember when they were the CRAZE. I tucked my head and raised my hand because they were the fad 10 YEARS ago. To make myself feel better let me take a moment to justify explain that I had just started stamping and I remember them because a bag-a-lope was one of the first non-card items that I made. I also remember I was SUPER proud of my accomplishment so I'm sure if I look hard enough I can find it tucked away in a bin in the top of my craft closet. Maybe don't hold your breath one of these days I will try to find it and post it.

After taking that trip down memory lane with Becky, I decided that I wanted to make a bag-a-lope as one of my St. Patty's Day projects. It couldn't be a simple and ordinary bag-a-lope though ... you know, one where I followed the instructions on Becky's blog and finish it in 10 minutes. Oh No - not this girl!!! I decided that making my own *original* bag-a-lope, from scratch, with and invisible seam line on the back, and using some cah-ute Designer Series Paper was the way to go!! 

You see, a "regular" bag-a-lope transforms an envelope into a bag. Becky's bag-a-lope transformed a cute little pre-made flat sack into a bag. Then there was mine ... the one that started out as a flat piece of 12X12 DSP. Yep, I was going to re-invent the wheel bag-a-lope. Five hours and 700 seven mock bag-a-lopes later, I finally had my pattern perfected and was ready to make my final bag-a-lope using some Gumball Green Polka Dot DSP. By the time it was all said and done, and I had succeeded at re-inventing the bag-a-lope, I was too mentally exhausted to do anything else besides *simply* add a button and some Baker's Twine so that's exactly what I did.

(click here to enlarge)

Have a blessed day and I will see you tomorrow!!
 
Stampin' Hugs! 
~Hallie