Happy Gift Bags- cutesy crochet

Happy Gift Bags from cupcake downunder


I usually don't do mid week posts, but I am a bit excited about this lot. These little guys took me quite a while. As with most stuff I design, I start small and then get carried away with myself. It all started with the clown. This was a flow on from the EKKA. This year I didn't get to the EKKA because I was crook, but the boys came home with the show bags and associated junk. Made me think about what it is that makes us smile. Mostly things associated with childhood and happy times.

I just loved the EKKA as a kid. It was probably the only good thing I can remember about growing up as a kid in Brisbane.

So what is the EKKA??? Slang for the Exhibition or show. The farmers all romp in to town. We laughed at work at how the country folk, particularly the blokes all seem to wear a uniform. Chambray shirts, tweed jackets, RM Williams boots and trousers, and the Akubra hat. This is another way of telling the EKKA is on as the farm folk bring their bulls and chooks and tractors etc to the big smoke. The pubs over flow, and their is a sense of broader community around the place.

Any way the gifts bags were triggered by the sample bag idea, and a crochet version of the cheap paper ones in the stores. I also had to raid the boys sample bags to get some choccies for the photo shoot.

I wish I had of thought of these a few years back when my kids were younger.

I have now designed 12 of the things, plus worked out how to upsize if you want something a bit bigger. The look pretty cool with little gifts in them, lollies and party treats and can be reused as a pencil holder of you shove an aerosol lid or right sized box in the bottom of them. They measure 4inches/10cm long, 1 1/2 inches/4cm wide and about 4inches/10cm high. They can be made with a smell of yarn and the whole 12 weigh a whopping 180 gms or 6.5oz. The cheaper and tougher the yarn the better. And what a great use of scraps!

I am going to do a heap for Christmas and have decided they are now my standard gift wrap. If it doesn't fit in a Happy Gift Bag, then I am not giving it! My imagination was telling me they might look rather cute actually hanging off the tree. We don't do Halloween down here, but I had to do a Halloween one. The others have both specific and generic use ala house warmings, baby showers, get well soon, kids parties, thanks and so on.

The series has the following:
Happy Clown,
Happy Hearts,
Happy Home,
Happy Baby,
Happy Flower,
Happy Days,
Happy Allsorts,
Happy Halloween,
Happy Christmas,
Happy Aussie,
Happy USA and
Happy Anything!

I am up to about page 12 of the instructions and there has been a bit of work in this lot. Eight of them have special motifs. This has tested the old grey matter!

Once I have written the patterns up in Australian, I then go through the tedious task of converting it to American terms. I then worry that I may have made errors.

In my enthusiasm I thought I would try and upsize a bag. I was starting to feel better! Too cool for school! The vermillion yarn cosy me a whole dollar at one of the crazy stores here.

Sorry I have wacked fugly labels on these, but I have a worry that the trolls out there might steal my ideas and my images. This is the down side of the internet. I keep thinking of new things cos I think people might be interested and I get a real buzz out of the fact that someone has had some fun making or giving something which started as a dopey idea in my head. I was recently made aware of the risk of intellectual theft, and that while the internet provides exposure, there are threats as well. I don't want to stop sharing what I do, but I also don't wish to be exploited or stolen from.

So these ideas and images are copyright. Direct links are fine, but please don't go redistributing or flicking my images around the place.. Any way enough of the serious stuff....

I am planning to have this little lot up on my Etsy stall by the weekend. All depends on how long it takes me to check the instructions again, and then do the Australio American translations.

So you you like them, or I have I taken the crochet thing to places it should never have been?

I guess I could always join them together and make an afghan... or a poncho! Or the Americans out there could make them in cotton and turn them into dish cloths ;o) (just pulling your leg here).

Whatdayareckon????

(c) crochetroo designs from Australia 2006