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This is all part of my gift for my Red Hat Society® chapter's holiday party, which takes place tomorrow. It is going to be a basic rubber stamping kit. This card, the other RHS card in the post below this one, and the bookmark are intended to be samples that the recipient can get ideas from. I am also including a few items purchased especially for this...a RHS rubber stamp, red & purple markers, and a couple of stamp pads. Finally, there will be a small selection of papers, cardstocks and ribbon from my vast personal stash, as well as a hand-made instruction booklet.

The card here started with plain white cardstock, the striped paper (Designs By Reminisce, an excellent source of Red Hat Society scrapbooking supplies) was cut to size, torn, and adhered to the card. "Uptown Girl" (Close To My Heart®) was stamped onto white cardstock, as in the previous card, and was cut into a circle and matted onto a red and then a purple circle. I didn't have any pirple cardstock, so I just applied ink directly from a stamp pad onto the largest white circle. Finally, I stamped "for you" (also from Close To My Heart®).

The easiest way to make a bookmark is to go to a craft store and buy pre-cut plain bookmarks which you can decorate. But I found myself with a strip of the striped paper that was about the right size. I adhered this to a piece of white cardstock, to give it extra strength, and trimmed it to shape. I stamped the hats on more white cardstock, cut that to size, and matted it onto a scrap of purple paper. This was then glued onto the striped bookmark. I punched out two small red circles, and attached one to either side of the top of the bookmark, to provide extra strength to the hole that I then punched into that.

For the tassel, I cut 5-6 strands of red yarn into about 12-inch lengths. I only had red yarn, but if I'd had any purple, I would have used some of that, too. Take all the strands, put them together, and make a loop. Stick the looped end into the hole so that it sticks out by maybe 1/2 inch or so. Thread all of the non-looped ends through this, and pull. Finally, finish by making a knot near the non-looped ends. You can also buy pre-made tassels, but this is less expensive, especially if you knit or crochet and have a lot of odds and ends of yarn laying around.

If you have a Xyron® machine with a lamination refill, you can certainly laminate the bookmark before punching the hole and attaching the tassel. But I am assuming that the recipient of this gift does not have one, so I didn't bother with that step.

To make the box...I took a recycled box with a flip-top lid. This box orignally contained a Christmas gift from Marsha...thanks, Marsha (for the gifts and for the box)! It's about the size of a cigar box, but a little deeper.

I only covered the top, as the rest of it is just plain white. I used a template to cut out a white tag, stamped it with the hat and the letters, and used the edge of a red stamp pad to color it around the edges. Finishing touches were a couple of red star-shaped eyelets and some red & purple ribbon.

I hope that whoever ends up getting this will enjoy using it, as much as I enjoyed making it! :-)