Upcycled Favour Bags

I’ve recently been experimenting with my butterfly favour bag template, seeing what other versions I could come up with, and just look at what I’ve created!

Aren’t they fabulous!?

Most of the bags are decorated with small paper scraps, and I upcycled old greeting cards, Christmas crackers and card packaging for the others ♻️

My favourite has to be the Guinea pig bag, made using a square tissue box.

I started by making the bag out of Kraft card, then I cut the front and back panels from the front and back of the tissue box and the two side panels from the picture on the base of the box. I drew around the edges of the panels with a gold metallic marker pen before gluing them on, then cut the handle panels from scraps of gold mirror card.

For this rainbow bag, I reduced the size of the template slightly and cut the main bag pieces out of an old school book cover. I then cut the front and back panels out of white copy paper. I found lots of different coloured cardstock scraps and cut them into thin strips. Then I glued the red strip down the centre of the front and back panels and filled the rest with the other colours. After trimming any ends off, I drew around the edges with a gold metallic marker pen, then cut the two side panels and the handle panels out of gold mirror card.

For this next one, I made the main bag out of red cardstock, then cut a front and back panel out of white copy paper. I die cut small hexagons from old Christmas crackers (that I had saved from a couple of years ago) and glued them onto the panels to make a patchwork effect. I then cut the two side panels out of a larger piece of glittery, silver cracker and cut the handle panels out of silver mirror card.

The pink card that I used for this next bag was an old A4 folder divider that I no longer needed. Again, I cut the front and back panels and two side panels from copy paper, then found lots of small scraps of cardstock, greeting cards and food packaging and punched out as many squares as I could using my 1.1cm square punch.

Call me obsessive, but I really wanted all of the edges to match up so that it looked like a candy wrapper bag, and here’s how the panels looked once I’d finished.

Before gluing them on, I ran the panels through my Big Shot to flatten them and it gave them a nice smooth finish.

I made this next one in a similar way, using scraps of gold mirror card. Running these panels through my Big Shot created almost a matt finish, and I drew around the edges with a gold metallic marker pen afterwards to hide the white core.

It’s very similar to these mini gold handbags that I made using the same template.

I’m completely obsessed with making these bags now, and will definitely be making more!

Watch this space!

Suzanne