DIY Tutorial - Halloween Treat Bags

Today I have a diy tutorial to share with you to make little paper bags – perfect for Halloween treats!  It’s a simple and quick project to make with minimal supplies.  I made this tutorial for Halloween but you can make it with any paper you like – these bags would be great for so many other occasions; for giving gifts at Christmas or Easter or as party bags at Birthdays!

You will need:

• patterned paper (I used A5 sized pieces of my Halloween scrapbooking papers printed onto 120gsm paper)
• glue
• optional; baker’s twine, tags (I used my Halloween cupcake toppers printed full size and half size)

1.  Fold your paper into 3 sections – one narrow strip and 2 equal sized sections.
2.  Glue the narrow strip, so that it is on the inside
3.  Fold up the bottom of the bag – varying the position of this fold will alter the depth of your bag
4.  Open out the bottom fold to create 2 triangles
5.  Fold up the lower section of the bottom piece – fold it past the middle
6.  Fold the upper section of the bottom piece to overlap the lower piece and glue down
7.  Open out your bag
8.  You can seal your bag in various ways – I have folded over the top then punched a hole through the bag and tied it with black and orange baker’s twine, with a tag

If you like the papers I have used in this tutorial you can buy them from my shop – my Halloween range of printables includes scrapbooking papers, cupcake toppers, bunting and more.  I also sell coordinating baker’s twine.

How to make Birthday Bunting…

What birthday party would be complete without a birthday banner?  This ‘Happy Birthday’ bunting is made from my printable butterflies themed bunting, below are some different ideas for putting the bunting together…

The basic bunting

The printable bunting comes as 5 sheets for you to print (I have more themes in my shop for different themed parties).  Each sheet measures 8.5x11 inches (or prints on A4) and each pennant measures 5.2 x 7.6 inches.  {If you would like more information on printables – what they are and how they work please take a look at my faq page here.}

When you have downloaded the bunting, print the 5 sheets onto white card using your printers highest quality setting.  Using card rather than paper makes the pennants sturdier and stops them from curling.  Cut the pennants out.  You’re now ready to try these different ways of hanging the bunting…

1. Peg up your pennants!

Lay out all of your pennants, equally spaced, to measure how long the banner will be.  Cut some coordinating ribbon or thread to the desired length – make sure you leave enough on the ends to tie the banner up.  Attach the pennants to the ribbon using pegs or clips.  Try clothes pegs decorated with scrapbooking paper, mini pegs or binder clips.

2.  All tied up

Punch 2 holes in each pennant – one in each top corner.  Tie pennants together with ribbon or fancy yarn – you can experiment with different textures colours and widths of ribbon.

3. Thread it up

Punch 2 holes in each pennant as in the previous example.  Thread the pennants together on one long ribbon or length of yarn.  Lay all of your pennants out first to make sure you thread them in the right order (yes, I have got words backwards before!!).  In the photo above I’ve made my own cord by crocheting yarn in chain stitch.

I hope this has inspired you to be creative with your birthday banners!

Jubilee Party!

There were quite a lot of fish on the blog last week so I thought it was time for something a bit different with some inspiration for parties celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee...


I love the bright colours of these cupcakes :) They're really easy to make - I used this recipe to make strawberry flavoured cakes.  Half the cakes were iced in blue glace icing and half were iced in red.  I left the icing to set before piping white glace icing on top - that stopped the white from sinking into the colour underneath.


I finished off the cakes by making some toppers with my Rule Britannia printables.  I made the toppers by sandwiching a cocktail stick between two circles.  Some of the circles were hand cut with scissors and some were cut with a 2 inch scalloped circle punch.

I also made some bunting with my Rule Britannia scrapbooking paper - you can print this template and use it to make your own bunting.  Plain red, white and blue papers would look good too.

Some royal facts...

• The Queen is the second longest serving monarch - only Victoria has reigned for longer at 63 years.
• There have been 12 Prime Ministers over the Queen's reign.
• The Queen has owned more than 30 corgis during her reign - she currently has 3; Monty, Willow and Holly.
• In an average year the Queen will host more than 50,000 people at banquets, lunches, dinners, receptions and Garden Parties at Buckingham Palace.

For more facts on the Queen take a look at this website: http://www.thediamondjubilee.org