Gift bags for Birdsong and free images

Every year, my gift bags have been something different.  This year, I found a sale on heavy duty canvas tote bags with free shipping, since I was buying other supplies there at the same time.

 And when I saw this- yards of rosey fabric at Victoria Trading Co's outlet store for a DOLLAR, I knew just what I wanted to do with the bags.  But the fabric was a little too gray for the natural canvas, so while I was dying silk, I dyed it too. 

I dyed some of these cut, silk velvet scarves too. Yummy!  These are available in white from Dharma Trading Co, where I buy all of my fiber reactive dyes.

This is the original robin that I used for the bags (and the Birdsong 5 button, although I didn't use the words on the bags)

And here it is doctored up with some faded sheet music behind it, and the reds changed to pinks.  You can use the image yourself by clicking on it to open in a larger window, and saving it to your computer from there.

I knew I wanted to print an image from a vintage card onto fabric, sew it onto a square of this floral fabric and create a pocket on the bags.  But…. not only were my sewing skills not quite up to par, my machine was not behaving as it should.  It could be that I sewed too much glittered tulle with the machine, I can see where that could mess up the innards. 

So, I used pinking shears to cut everything out, and fabric tack to add them to the bags, then embellished with millinery and ribbons using more glue. I'd say the pockets are sturdy enough, but I doubt if I'd put anything too heavy into them.  My plan was to put a list of sponsors in the pockets.

Both  sis,Terry and bro, Randy are into steampunk much more than flowery birdies, so I made this design for them from 5 different pictures I got from the Graphics Fairy.  

It was pretty complicated to do, but not that bad. I found a guy on a bike, erased the bike with the cloning tool on picmonkey, then added a raven using 'upload your own backgrounds', after that, I layered some clock faces, light bulbs and other pictures with backgrounds, and faded those, tinted it all sepia, then used 'clone' to erase part of the man's leg so that it appeared to be behind the bird. After that, a little coloring in with eye tint, and it was done. Oh, and I drew the halter with a narrow, black line from 'drawing' and a yellow dot.

If you'd like to use this image I made up, feel free. Just click to enlarge in another window and save from there.

My buddy, Lori, got a custom image too, done in the same manner, but in a more romantic style.

I'll share her too, grab this one if you'd like also.

Over all, though, the bags were the same birds and floral fabric.  I like the way the colors look in the room.