An easy little Christmas decor project!

 Here's a little decorating project that I came across last year and saved it to share for December Daily.  It's so quick, easy, and inexpensive that you could make a bunch if you wanted to.  The idea is for turning dollar store gift bags -- gift bags! -- into Christmas wall art.  You can read about it here: Dollar Store Christmas wall art.

Photo by Aimee at The Crazy Craft Lady

If you ever go into dollar stores at Christmas time (or even Walmart or other stores, such as Ocean State Job Lot in our area), you have no doubt noticed some really lovely gift bags that are frame-worthy.  I sure have, and often snap them up after Christmas, so I decided in the interests of my blog readers to try this project for myself.  However, I had a bunch of nice Christmas bags in my gift wrapping stash, but none that really fit frames that I had on hand.

I finally decided to utilize a fun little frame our daughter had given us years ago.  It is intended to frame a 4x6 photo.  Well, I had a couple of very small gift bags, purchased after Christmas at Walmart some time ago.  They may have cost 25¢ or less.  I bought them because I loved the illustration, but they are too small for most gifts.  One of these bags would be just perfect for the frame I intended to use.

I had wondered what Aimee did with the handles of the gift bags when framing them.  Her post didn't seem to say.  So I tried cutting them off (these handles were made of twisted kraft paper).  That didn't solve the issue, however, as the handles extended far down into the bag -- a great feature making for a sturdy gift bag, but a bit of a problem as far as making a frame fit well.  They were sandwiched in between 2 pieces of white paper and glued inside the bag on both sides.  I ended up very carefully trying to pull the paper/handle unit off the insides, and it finally did come free.  Then I had to cut a little bit -- maybe 1/8 inch -- on the top and bottom of the bag to make it fit well in the frame.  

My project didn't turn out quite as well as I hoped, but it is cute enough and I plan to use it in my decorating this year.