Sewing birthday gifts for the *tween* girls

As you may already know, I have two *tween* girls, ages twelve and ten. 

Besides making handmade items for my girls, I also enjoy making handmade birthday gifts to their friends. 

This is a ribbon pouch that I made recently for a ten year old girl.  Per request of my daughter, I (overly) decorated this one by attaching a detachable ribbon to the pouch front and clear dangly stars at the zipper pull.

Lining of the pouch is pink... of course! (lol)

We bought a couple of cute pencils and an eraser to go with the pouch and wrapped them altogether in a plastic cello bag. The gift is now ready to be delivered :)

This one is another birthday gift that I made for a tween girl who likes Rilakkuma (the lazy bear character from Japan).

Once again, I followed this this fun and crafter-friendly tutorial by Pink Penguin to make this bag.  

The reversible side of the bag is brown x white polka dots cotton prints.

Here, we placed more Rilakkuma goodies inside the matching handmade bag. 

According to my daughter, the birthday girl seemed to like our gift set which made all of us happy :)   

You see, tween girls can be a bit difficult to deal with at times (and I'm speaking about our tweens in our house :P) but sewing gifts for them is so rewarding and fun!