A girl's gotta have bling!

I bought this cute little chipboard purse pencil holder from Kaiser Craft awhile back and was planning to make it (someday...) for my daughter's desk. I convinced Emily that it would be a great gift for a birthday party she was going to today (which also meant that I could avoid going shopping-lol!). We made a trip to Michael's yesterday for lots of extra bling and sparkly paper to decorate it, which always makes my girl happy!

It comes unassembled, so I started by painting the individual pieces with pink acrylic paint. The purse was covered on both sides with patterned paper from the My Mind's Eye "Penny Lane" collection using Gloss-Luster Modge Podge, which really helped keep the sparkle of the paper showing through.

To assemble the purse, I used E6000 glue, which will hold anything together (including fingers as my daughter discovered- thank goodness for baby wipes!). My husband has these little clamps for woodworking that were perfect for holding it together while it dried, but you could easily just put it under a stack of heavy books instead.

Now came the fun part- adding all the glitz! We added clear rhinestone swirls to each corner, pink, green and blue rhinestones to random dots on the flap and handle and a white flower from the SU Paper Daisies pack with an enormous pink rhinestone brad in the middle- serious bling!

This is a view of the caddy in action- not the most glamorous shot, but darling daughter was itching to leave for the party so I was lucky to get photos at all! Before I assembled the purse, I coated the inner box with Modge Podge so pencil marks would wipe off the painted finish.

The other half of her gift was an iTunes gift card which we tucked inside this cute little purse card, CASEd directly from Melody's blog- luckily I had a friend with this set I could borrow!

I didn't like the font the set came with, so I generated my greeting in Photoshop- sorry MFT! I used the Word Window punch to create a pocket for an iTunes card (my VISA card was only for show, or so I had to tell Emily as she tried to make off with it-lol!).

Here is the set together- my daughter loved how it turned out and even better, her friend did too! Now I have to buy another one for Emily's desk (and maybe one for me too)- you know, every girl's gotta have some bling!

Now I'm off to conquer a World Culture project with Emily... it never ends! Have a great Sunday~