Thursday, May 30, 2013

Wedding Welcome Bags


Photo taken by Starfish Studios.

I love wedding welcome bags!  We made ours in our theme colors. They included a customized wedding tote (tutorial is below) with our wedding date, personalized water, a note from us, some snacks, a "prep" kit (emergen-C, sunblock, hand sanitizer) and a "recovery" kit (advil, shout wipes, and  alka seltzer).

Tutorial for Personalized Tote Bags:
1. Tote Bag (I bought mine in bulk online).
2. Fabric Paint.
3. Freezer Paper.
4. Sponge Brush.

To start, cut out a stencil on your freezer paper. You can do this by hand with an xacto knife, or you could try a cutting machine. I found the Cricut Mini to be great for this task, because I cut out a million freezer paper stencils at once! On a Cricut (or any cutting machine), the trick to cutting freezer paper is to put it shiny size up on the mat. You have to cut at a low pressure/depth and speed. In case you have a Cricut, I think the numbers I used for those were 2, 2, and 2, respectively! Pro tip: Make sure you cut out the stencil backwards on a machine (i.e., flipped to be a mirror image) because you have to iron the shiny side down onto the tote bag. Sorry I forgot to take pictures of this step!

But, you then iron your freezer paper stencil onto the bag, shiny side down. Here's a picture of our tote bag sweat shop.


Next, place cardboard or thick paper in the bag to keep the paint from bleeding through.  Then, you paint the stencil! I used a sponge brush, because I found that the regular brushes bled paint.


Let the paint dry for about 24 hours (if you are in a huge hurry, let the paint dry at least a half hour).  Then, rip off the stencil! This part is very satisfying.  Follow instructions for setting your paint. Mine said to iron on low heat.



Voila! You end up with a million bags, easy peasy.  Cat is not included.




Hope this is helpful! Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

~SaltyCrafts

Note: The link above leads you to my Amazon Affiliates page. I only post links to items that I love and use regularly. I bought my Cricut Mini at Amazon because of the free shipping (and the prices were competitive- but feel free to shop around)!



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