One of the hard things about living in Saudi Arabia is the shopping. Because women don't drive you can't just jump in the car and drive yourself to the store, you have to take a bus or hire a driver to take you. The buses runs 2 times in the morning and a few times at night. Most stores are closed in the middle of the afternoon. Drivers have to be called in advance, so no I forgot I have a birthday party tonight runs to the store. And then what store? We have very nice malls here but they are expensive and I am not much of a mall shopper, the souks are fun but don't carry great youth gifts. So when my daughter have a birthday party coming up we have found ourselves creating fabulous gifts for them from whatever stuff I have on hand.
That is what happened this week, we made birthday gifts. Both girls had parties and the three of us had such fun creating something special for their friends. Chay made Kim a file folder notebook holder and a paper purse for the dark chocolate Kim loves. 
The notebook was created from a file folder, by scoring pocket and cutting part of it off you have a great place to put a notebook, you could even tuck a few envelopes in the other pocket. We decorated the notebook and pen to match, added butterfly accents using Stampin' Up!'s stamp set Butterfly Prints. We used discontinued Stampin' Up! papers because it is what we had but any Designer Series papers would have worked great. Red is Kim's favorite color so this was perfect for us.
We 
wanted to create a matching paper purse and we made a card that matched as well. The purse is one piece of Designer Series papers, score both sides at 2 1/2 inches, then turn 1/4 of a turn and score these 4 inches from both ends. The tricky part is on both ends, both outsides; you fold the 4" score line up to the 2 1/2" score line creating a 2 1/2" diagonal fold, this allows you to put stuff into the middle section and creates the purse affect.
to finish the purse, fold the 2 1/2 ends in and add 2" x 7" piece of cardstock folded in half to the end of the purse. We also added a Round Tab punched from Stampin' Up!'s Round Tab punch. Finished it off with a rhinestone and white gel pen stitching. We also added her name that was cut using the Big Shot and Stampin' Up! Timeless Type Junior and butterflies from the Butterfly Prints Stamp set.
These gifts were the hit of the party which made Chay feel really good about what she created.
Remember you can order anytime from my Stampin' Web site: http://wendythestamper.stampinup.net
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