Feeling a little Blue!

 Happy Sunday! I'm just popping in today to share a fun little gift ensemble that I made yesterday to give as a hostess gift. It really wasn't necessary since it was just a Girls' Night, but I was in the mood to create just for fun, using a hodgepodge of products to put it all together! It's all  blue, hence the title of my post, and since I photographed it so late, my photos even look blue! LOL!

 The starting point for the entire ensemble was the earrings that I made for her. This is really all I was planning on making, but things just evolved from there, which they have a tendency of doing with me. I used the new Taylored Expressions Designer Dangles-The Bigger The Better  mixed media dies and some printed leather I bought from Etsy. I have been having a ball making all kinds of earrings and giving them as gifts! I had promised a post showing how I package the earrings up, so I will share everything here. 

The earring card is die cut using an old Nestabilites die, but you could use any shaped tag or plain shape to get the same look. I used a really old PTI set for the border around the die cut. It just gives it a polished and professional look that I am always looking for. The "handmade" stamp is from the retired "Handmade Hodgepodge" stamp set, but any "handmade" type stamp would work. Once the stamping is done, I just use a small hole punch to make tiny holes so that the earring wire will slide through easily. I bought the clear earring backs from Hobby Lobby to stabilize them on the card.

I recently purchased the Everything's Rosy stamp set and have been dying to use it. The flowers on the earring leather reminded me of these flowers so I used them to create this quick and elegant tag.  The gray tag base is die cut using the Tag Sale #6 die. 

The "thanks" sentiment is from the Never Enough Thanks stamp set and is just the style I was looking for. I adhered it to the grey tag using foam squares and then arranged the flowers and leaves around the sentiment. Once that was all done, I matted the entire tag onto a white rectangle to give it some extra dimension.

The key wristlet is a quick sewn project that I love to make to tuck into gifts. I used some Moda fabric cut into a 4 inch by 1/4 yard and then pressed in half and then each half folded in again. I place a 3/4 inch piece of cheap felt in the middle and then run some straight stitches in intervals along the piece. The hardware is from Amazon and I purchase it in bulk so that I have them on hand for times like this. I had some left over flowers from the tag, so I made a quick little tag to thread through the key ring. The sentiment is from a REALLY old SU! set, but it is one of my favorites. I bought 15 of these cute little hand creams from Bath and Body Works when they had their sale last week and the Gingham is just perfect to match the earrings.

I packaged everything up in a cellophane bag tied up with some black and white gingham ribbon. I also added some sparkling clear rhinestones after I took the other pictures and I don't know if I like it, but oh well!