~Blessings Tag Banner~ by Julie Jacob

I'm wondering how many of you participate in Ali Edward's "One Little Word" idea? You choose one word that's kind of your theme for the year.....this year I chose 'calm'. Some days that has worked out great...other (lots of) days, not so much.

For next year, I have chosen 'blessings'. Actually, I'd like to do 'count your many blessings name them one by one'...but since it's not "Nine Little Words", I just went with blessings.

I wanted to make a banner I could hang in my scrapbooking room, just for a visual reminder throughout the year. I used the Carolina Breeze paper line, and made this:

Just for the picture, I hung it up on my cupboards. You can get an idea as to the size here:

Eventually it's going to hang on the opposite wall, which is blue. You can see a little piece of the color on the right side of the picture. Ahem...please excuse the mess!
This one's a little closer-up:

I started with a pile of goodies a lot like this:

Supplies Used:
CB1301 Carolina Breeze – Gentry (both sides)
CB1302 Carolina Breeze – Kayla (front)
CB1305 Carolina Breeze – Myrla (both sides)
CB1307 Carolina Breeze – Shannon (both sides)
CB1308 Carolina Breeze – Shelley (front)
CB1309 Carolina Breeze – Taylor (front)
BL1902 Blingage – Amy’s Gems
BL1924 Blingage – Ali’s Pins
TC Sophisticated Cricut Cartridge - Provocraft
Flowers – Tim Holtz (buttons), hand made (cream on B), Recollections (small grey group of 3), Jolee’s Boutique (grey and sparkly black)
Lace & black ribbon – JoAnn
Black flower ribbon – Maya Road
Shipping tag
Stapler – Tim’s Tiny Attacher
Black cardstock – Bazzill
Sewing pattern - Simplicity
Sewing machine
Mod Podge

I used the brown shipping tag in the picture as my template, and traced tags from 9 different Carolina Breeze papers. Next, cut out 9 rectangles of sewing pattern tissue (big enough to cover your tags)...making sure you cut pieces with interesting lines and pictures on them. Good luck re-folding that stuff. It's pretty much impossible to get it back into the envelope the same way it came out! :)

Mod Podge the paper and overlay the sewing pattern tissue. Smooth it out so you don't get wrinkles, and let dry.
Next, machine sew around the edges with black thread.

Don't worry about having perfect lines!
Then, using my Cricut and the TC Sophisticated cartridge (found it at Michaels on Black Friday...woohoo!) I cut out the letters at 3" on black cardstock.

Adhere the letters to the tags and add doo dads. I used flowers, buttons, ribbon, trims, you name it. Cut 9 - 3/4"x 3" pieces of black cardstock for the hang loops and staple over the tag holes. Thread through your black ribbon and you're all set!

You could easily adapt this for Christmas using the Christmas Home papers (and shorter words like joy, peace, love, etc!)

I have close up pictures of each tag on my blog: www.juliejac.typepad.com in case you want to peek!

And just so you know...
Teresa has some awesome new holiday images available in the Cricut Craft Room!

http://www.cricut.com/craftroom/default.html Have you checked it out yet?
An account is free...you can connect your Cricut to your computer and design away! :)

See more on Julie's blog