We’ve had a spaceat the Stars Antique mall in the Sellwood area since last December. Moved into a bigger space after just a couple of months. For ‘most’ of this time I have had a ‘mixed bag’ of items . . . some primitive, some shabby cottage, some handmade that goes with vintage
. . . nothing ‘difinitive’ though.
I was hoping to detect a PATTERN as to what was selling the best, and then focus on that particular style. Alas, a little bit of everything always sold. But I really wanted to have a THEMED space. Those are the kinds of spaces I am always drawn to visit the most.
I finally decided that I was just going to have to ‘pick a theme’ and go for it. I decided upon SHABBY PARIS APARTMENT, and then I can mix in some ‘French Country’ too. I’ve wanted to hang a sign in our space too, and was thinking that when I made new signs for the store that I could ‘cut down’ the old signs and use the ‘Sophie’s Cottage’ part only to hang in our booth. Well, two years out in the Oregon weather took it’s toll on the signs and they were not salvageable.
I was in NO MOOD to hand paint another Sophie’s Cottage sign! If I was going to MAKE something, I wanted something that would really catch their eye. I spotted some pretty aqua gift bags. I have lots of aqua tissue paper at the store. I’d make a sign out of those!

Here’s what I came up with. First I put some empty boxes in the bottom of the bags so they’d stand up nice. I printed up the word ‘Paris’ using different fonts on my computer. Cut those out and mounted them on various patterns of a very light aqua scrapbook paper which I mounted to a piece of cardstock. Cut each one into a ‘tag shape’ with two holes at the top so I could just slip it onto the bag via the handle (which came out and went back in very easily) Fluffed and stuffed some tissue paper into each bag and Voila!

They sit perfectly on the shelf we put up in our space. And if I ever change my mind I can easily just change out the wording; or just do something totally different and take the gift bags home to use as gift bags!
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