The Heart of the Challenge

This month's Dirty Dozen challenge took me several days to complete. That is a lot of time for me to spend on a project. Sharon Harnist hosted us this month and challenged us to make a Thanksgiving decor item, a hostess gift or really anything we wanted that was themed for the holiday. She didn't even give us any restrictions but there was a required element that was a bit different...the project must include one heart somewhere. Hearts and Thanksgiving?? Since I am not hosting dinner at my house, I decided I would make a gift for the hostess, which happens to be my MIL. I will say that I LOVE how it turned out!! (Mom, if you are checking out my blog you may not want to look at this post and spoil the surprise!!)

Drum roll please.....................
I made a purse that includes a set of 4 A2 sized cards and envelopes, 4 3x3 cards and envelopes and 4 Ghiradelli dark chocolates. For the body of the purse I used chocolate chip card stock that I simply cut and scored to fit my inside pockets. The handles are wide grosgrain ribbon. Notice the copper buckle? I used copper card stock with a Spellbinders buckle die and adhered some of those Basic Grey magnets so it will snap closed. I used one of Anna's tricks along the edges, a tracing wheel to mimic stitching. I love the subtle look of it, isn't she so clever??

The inside is where it gets fun. I cut down 2 clear card boxes to use for the inside "pockets". Because of how the boxes folded I had to carefully cut one side at a time with a hobby blade so when they were opened, the edges were even all the way around. I really like how the contents are visible even when in the pockets. Obviously the boxes were the perfect fit for the cards, but on the other side, the 3x3 cards fit nicely next to the chocolates.

Here is a picture of the side of the purse when it is closed. The pockets are only attached on the back so it will lay completely flat when opened.

Here is close up of one of the pockets. To tie in the Thanksgiving part, I stamped a label that went on the front of the pocket. The acorn stamp is from last months stamp of the month kit from Unity and the sentiment is from SU's Holiday Wishes. The background stamp on all the cards and the front of the purse is the Leaves 3 from CHF and the heart image is from Magenta.

I chose rich fall colors: SU's tangerine tango, garden green, chocolate chip, very vanilla as well as some shimmer ivory (poison ivory) and copper, both purchases from cutcardstock.com.

Here are the cards close up. I embossed the hearts in copper EP, once onto the chocolate chip and again onto shimmer ivory. The fun part was using Twinkling H2O's to color them in. I had colors that very closely matched the card stock and in person they really shimmer. I purposely loaded up the brush with a lot of color so it pooled up on the paper. The embossed lines ensured the color stayed inside the lines but when it eventually dried, it looked like cloisonne, especially the multicolored hearts. I went over the centers of the flowers with a peach souffle pen. The hearts were cut out and mounted with dimensionals.
I used the sentiment on all the cards and figure they can be used for most any occasion.

What do you think??

I hope you will stop by over at SCS to check out what the other DD's created!!