Tuxedo Gift Bag and Card

Sometimes when you've got an oddly-shaped gift to give your best bet is to use a gift bag. But my inner crafter wouldn't let me simply use the complimentary shopping bag that the store gave me. I knew I could turn it into something super classy. Thanks to a friend's suggestion, I created this tuxedo-themed gift bag that was a little complicated to figure out until I got the hang of it. I completely failed on taking step-by-step pictures because I really needed to focus! But you can learn from my lessons and recreate it yourself. Here's how I did it:

First, I started by visiting my old standby - Google Images - to download a tuxedo jacket pattern. Once I found one that I liked, I used it to trace out the black lapels of the jacket and layered on a white triangle to represent the shirt.

From there, I started adding in some extras - I used spray mount adhesive to mount the lapels and shirt onto black card stock to round out the tuxedo jacket. I cut two white triangles to represent the collar and used two pieces of satin ribbon to create the bow tie and pocket square. I mounted both with a hot glue gun and partially covered the pocket square with black card stock to make it appear like it was tucked into the jacket. I used a hot glue gun to secure white buttons to the shirt.

I mounted the whole tuxedo to a piece of black and silver craft paper that I'd cut to size of the bag and used spray mount adhesive to secure it to the shopping bag (and hide the store logo!) I didn't snap a picture of it, but I layered the other side of the shopping bag with black card stock to truly customize it.

Since the bag was so complex I went super simple with the card. I printed this picture from Google Images onto sticker paper and layered it onto some grey textured card stock. I used a 1" corner rounder to make softer edges all around on the card. 

Here's a view of the card standing up. I didn't want to reveal the message but I used a "Happy birthday" stamper to create a general message on the inside to finish it off before writing my own best wishes.










***

I absolutely love how everything came out! It was really hard figuring out how to represent the tuxedo look on the bag - and tying a tiny bow tie definitely took some effort! - but the results speak for themselves. This did take some time to pull of but it's totally achievable. Hopefully these tips make it a little easier to work through on your own if you give this a try!