Goodie Bags for the Kids

Every year for our family gathering at Three Falls Cove, I put together some kind of goodie bag for each family. The first year I did stainless wire baskets, one per family. Then last year I decided to make monogram bags for the adults (mainly for the women, but the men shared in the goodies in the bag.) You can see that post here. The women loved the bags, but the kids just got plain canvas bags from the Dollar Store. I think they liked them. Then this year, I decided to give the adults the re-usable shopping bags from Michael's. They are really cute with crafting type motifs, such as yarn or paint jars etc. I loved them because they were cute, inexpensive, and large enough to put all the goodies I wanted in them, and then once they got home everyone could use them for shopping bags. Sold! Since there wouldn't be any crafting time for the adult bags, I decided to do monogram bags for the kids this year. Again at Micheal's I found colorful canvas bags on clearance for $0.79. I bought six. Then I remembered my niece's boyfriend was coming too, so I went back and bought another bag. After I painted them one messed up with runny paint so I went back and bought one more. The next day my sister Lavonna called and said they were bringing her unofficial foster son, so back to Michael's I went for yet one more. Finally, on Friday morning, the day we were leaving for the Cove, I got up early to start stuffing all the goodie bags and realized I had miss counted in the beginning and needed eight bags instead of six. So you guessed it! Back to Michael's one more time. Why is it that a simple project never turns out to be simple? Anyway, I finally got them done and the kids loved them. I saw them carrying them around all weekend and even some of them insisted on sleeping with them. Just another fun thing for a fun filled, memory making weekend.

Here are the photos of the process:


Started with a blank bag. I wanted pink for the girls, but after all the mistakes and return trips, I ended up with pink, purple, yellow, blue, turquoise and green.

Just like last year, I used my handy dandy Cricut to make my stencils for the shapes (hearts for the girls and diamonds for the boys) and monogram letters.

After I got the basic vinyl shapes stuck down I painted the exposed part of the shape with black paint.

After the paint dried, I carefully removed the stencil and was left with the shape pattern inside the circle. I wanted to keep it simple and just use black, but then realized it wouldn't show on some of the colors and we had several kids with the same monogram, so I had to use various colors of paint.

I followed the same procedure for the monogram and placed it in the center of the circle and painted it with a complimentary color.

After the paint dried, carefully removed the stencil and viola' a cute monogrammed bag ready for stuffing with goodies and treats.