I absolutely love the end results here, but, hand drawing personalized names and pirate related images on loot bags for Baby #1's birthday party was painful! My hand gave in after the third bag, probably because I haven't drawn anything since high school, or was that middle school?? Good lawd, its been a while! Surprised even myself the images remotely resembled skulls, parrots, and treasure paths (well hopefully anyways). Still this didn't stop me from doing 10 more bags, nope, because you all know how much I love DIY vs getting these printed on. These bags were very easy and honestly anyone can do them.
I started off by searching for fonts I liked and saved them to my computer. Than created a mock-up of what I wanted the front of the bag to look like. I could have gone a step further by adding pirate images but I already had images I wanted to copy from his birthday invitation.
After many attempts of trying to eye ball the font from my computer screen onto the loot bag using a chalk marker, I realized, heck, I can print my mock up out. Than trace over the fonts using a pencil on to my loot bag to get an impression. After that I went over the impression using the chalk marker. Made my life much easier! Everything was centred and speeded up the process.
Next, I grabbed the invitation to draw pirate images so that everything would coordinate. There was no easy way of getting the images to look exact. Total eye balling here. Im sure the easier way to do this, is to find the exact images online and put them on my mock up and trace again. Honestly tho, wheres the fun in that?! Random drawings look much better and made every bag unique!
After completing the fonts and images on all bags, I created a chalkboard affect by inking up white ink with a sponge and randomly rubbing it around the font and near the edge of the bag (Sorry I totally forgot to take a picture of that step). And there you have it. Cheap, easy, hand drawn, chalk board, loot bags. There is no end to what you can create by doing this. Make personalized Christmas and birthday bags (that way you save on making a card!! Ha! Lets not fool ourselves, I would still make the card, craft girl problems!)
Supplies Used:
Blank paper gift bags
Computer
Printing paper
Pencil
Chalk marker
White craft ink pad
Sponge
Hope you found this project inspiring!
xoxo,
Chanthou