Rustic Charm bag for a tag tutorial

Hello lovely visitors, this is Astrid, sharing a little tutorial with you on how to create a bag, or rather pocket (I just liked the fact that bag and tag rhyme), but really it's a pocket for a tag. Such a pocket has many uses, it can stand by itself, be part of a journal, become a gift holder, or be part of a gift for a penfriend, as my original for our rustic charm challenge was.
Here's a little reminder of what the original looked like:

The tutorial is for the pocket you see on the left.
Here goes:
1. I started with a piece of coffee dyed  A4 card, and with a pencil marked around the tag to determine the size, making sure to allow for plenty of space for tabs to glue and to sew around without making it too tight.

2. Cut to size as marked, then fold in about 3/4" from the bottom and the same from one side, then fold  in half and then cut to the shape following the steps as shown in the photos below. With these simple steps you can create pockets to any size without the need of expensive dies!

step 1  fold 3/4" from bottom and one side

step two cut away on one side up to the fold at the bottom

step 3 mitre the flaps as shown.What you see in the last two photos are the in- and outsides of your pocket.

3.  Cut a notch with a circle punch, you can also emboss either along one side as I did, or anywhere obviously, but do that before gluing it together and then sewing around it if you like that effect. I did the embossing as an after thought to match it with my tag, and it worked, but it would be better I think to do it before.

4. Time to decorate. I chose matching colours to go with my tag in a mix of normal and oxide Distress Inks.Using both blending tools and just spritzing and dipping.

5. To go with the theme of the challenge I chose to embellish with some flower die cuts, also coloured with Oxide Inks, as shown below, and one of the Tim Holtz charms plus a few other bits and pieces..

6. I cut the flowers from kraft card, which can be coloured beautifully with Oxide Inks. I found the best way was to squoosh them on the white Tim craft mat, spritz with water and then use a refillable water brush.

And here the finished pocket, with the tag tucked inside.

 I'll put a few more close up photos below, but as you can see I also added some lace,  an element cut with one of the Tim Holtz 3D Cut and Emboss folders, some computer generated words and the charm I mentioned with some paper glued behind.

Well, that's it, a pretty simple project, but fun to do and it has many uses, which is always a good thing in my book.

On my own blog there are a few more examples of what you can do with little bags like this, and there are also some freebies you can use to decorate if you like such things.

Thank you for visiting and if you have not done so yet, there is still plenty of time to join in our Rustic Charm challenge, we would love to see what you come up with for that.

Happy crafting and stay safe!

Astrid xxx