Collegiate Christmas!

Inspired by the colors over at Color My Heart, I decided to make a Collegiate Christmas bag for my son who is starting his Senior Year at Purdue!  Do I have anything to put in it?  No, of course not!  I'm not that far ahead!  : )

I used CTMH cardstocks in Ruby, Lagoon, and Honey.  Now Keith, his dad and sister all are, or will be, Purdue grads.  I know placing those Ruby Christmas balls on there was a terrible faux pas, but I had to use Ruby for the color challenge!  For those of you not familiar with Indiana Colleges, Purdue and IU are the 2 large universities here.  Purdue colors are Gold and Black; IU is Crimson and Cream.  

I started by stamping a gift bag from Dollar Tree (3 for a dollar!) using the letters P and U from the CTMH Homestead Alphabet with White Daisy Pigment Ink.  I then sprinkled it with embossing powder and heat set it.  You can barely see it in the pictures, but it does give the bag some texture and shine!  One thing I learned doing this project is this: do a row at a time!  I first tried stamping the entire bag and then sprinkling.  For me it didn't work.  My ink had dried and the embossing powder didn't stick!  I tried the warm breath trick, but maybe I hadn't had enough hot coffee before breathing on it!  

The tree is cut from Celebrate with Flourish.  Merry & Bright is from CTMH Artbooking and the PU is from Plantin Schoolbook.  I finished it up by adding a little Baker's Twine bow where I can later attach a tag.

Obviously, this would work for any school; simply change the colors!  

For those of you who haven't seen the New Annual Inspirations from CTMH, you are in for a treat!  The papers are so beautiful, there are a few new ink colors, new stamps abound, and they now offer embossing powders.  I am loving the Halloween and Christmas sections and placed a huge order last night with my favorite CTMH consultant, Katie!  For those who don't know me, she's my daughter.  Any way, if you would like to peruse the new Idea Book and see some wonderful inspiration, check out KatiesCorner!  While you are there, take advantage of the wonderful videos under the CTMH TV tab.