Festive Stenciled Bags!

Hi! Mary Nasser here! It’s nearly Valentine’s Day, so I was inspired to make Valentine’s gift bags!

I started using Margaret Applin’s HeartSwirl stencil, but you’ll see how I quickly used 3 more stencils

to decorate gift bags for other holidays, too!

For this project, I used white paper lunch bags I had in my kitchen. 

I trimmed the top of each lunch bag with Fiskars Border Punches.

(I used the Threading Water Border Punch and Apron Lace Border Punch for my gift bags in this post.)

After punching the border along the top, I folded the top of the bag down.

Then I turned the bag over, used painters tape to keep my stencil in place, then pounced on a light layer of acrylic paint

with an ink sweeper. I kept the paint light so that it would not seep under the stencil.

Here's the front of the bag to be filled with treats:

For the back, I stamped a tag and added a ribbon: 

I was having too much fun to stop there, so I made another one, using the same process.

This time I used a November StencilClub stencil designed by Joanne Sharpe:

And here's the back:

Then I remembered Bruno's birthday next month, and reached for my

Cupcake Sprinkles stencil designed by June Pfaff Daley:

Happy Birthday, Bruno!

And soon after Bruno's birthday comes Easter.

There's a stencil for that, too!

The Rabbits stencil designed by Tracie Lyn Huskamp!

How fun would this be to fill with colorful jelly beans!

As much as I love incorporating StencilGirl stencils into my mixed media paintings,
it's really fun to do quick projects like this, too!

Hope I've inspired you!

Mary C. Nasser

Mixed-Media Map Art