PTI It's in the Bag Challenge

Papertrey Ink is celebrating its 2 year anniversary with 2 whole weeks of give aways and exciting announcements. Today's challenge is to create, alter, or decorate a bag of any kind, so I made this cardstock tote. It is perfect for giving or storing standard A2 size cards and also works great as a gift bag for any number of small gift items. I've made quite a few of these over the years, but this is my first using PTI materials and I love how it turned out!

The base is Aqua Mist cardstock and the patterned paper is from the Polka Dot Parade collection. The ribbon handles are double stitched grosgrain in Ocean Tides. To make the tag, I used a metal edge tag from SU and punched out a piece of polka dot paper of the same color scheme, but in a smaller scale. The flower is one of the bridal flowers from Michael's that I dyed by pressing it into a silver Encore ink pad. A small punched out dot of Ocean Tides cardstock is adhered to the center of the flower, and the tag is attached to the bag using some silver cord.

I debated about stamping the base with Polka Dot Basics using Aqua Mist ink, but didn't know if that would be overkill with the polka dots (if too many polka dots is even possible!). I'm still not sure, but the lack of stamping sure made for a very quick and easy project!