This is a guest post in the series CREATE Mental Health. All week we will be exploring how different people use creativity to create and maintain mental health. Today’s post is by Kristen Bryant. Kristen writes the blog Stamping with Kristen.  Welcome, Kristen!

I love to escape into my stamp room to create cards.  I enjoy the satisfaction of being able to quickly make something.  One of my favorite times of stamping is with mothers and daughters.  I just had 7 moms and their daughters over to create and this is one of the projects we made:

I started out by using a Scallop Circle die to make the top of the purse.

Next I took a 8 ½ X 5 ½ piece of card stock and folded it in half.  Once I had a nice fold, I trimmed off ½ inch diagonally from each side to create more of a purse look.

Next I took the Scallop Circle and folded that in half and using a small circle punch made a little hole for the ribbon to go through.

I used glue dots to fasten the ribbon inside the scallop circle.  This picture shows the card opened up:

I use a piece of Velcro to keep the purse closed.  Here is another version using different paper:

I love having stamping as a creative outlet for me.  It gives me a quick escape for the business and chaos of life and results in cards to encourage others.