Make Back To School Fun - Idea #2

Personalize Your Own Lunch Bag

Be enviro-friendly and trendy when you bring your lunch to school!

Do your part to keep trash out of landfills by making your child their very own personalized lunch bag that they can use over and over again. When school is out, use this cute bag to carry toys, snacks, or coloring supplies.

What you'll need:

• Small canvas bag (11"x9"x3")
• Foam stamps (smiley face, bugs and letters for name)
• Fabric paint (yellow, green, pink, purple, orange, light blue, black)
• 3-D fabric paint
• Paintbrushes (thin and medium)
• Fabric hook-and-loop fasteners (recommended: Velcro)
• Sewing needle
• Thread to match canvas bag
• Wax paper

How to make it:

1. Line inside of canvas bag with wax paper.
2. Line up alphabet foam stamps on top of bag to decide where you want the child’s name to be. Once you are happy with the placement, paint the foam letter stamps purple, one at a time, and carefully press down on to the canvas bag. Lift stamp straight up to remove. Repeat for entire name.
3. Paint a smiley face stamp with yellow paint. Apply to the bottom right corner of the bag in the same manner as described in step 1.
4. Paint bug stamps with different colors (pink and purple for a butterfly, yellow and purple for ladybug, and so on) and decorate the rest of the bag.
5. Use a paintbrush to touch up any areas that the stamps may have missed.
6. Use paintbrush to add any details to bugs, such as dots on backs, antennas, or decorations on wings.
7. When paint has dried, use 3-D fabric paint tubes to pipe a border around the smiley face and the child’s name.
8. Place bag in a safe place to dry overnight.
9. Sew fabric hook-and-loop fasteners to the inside lip of the bag to keep it closed.
   

Tips:

• You can easily adapt this project for a boy by using primary colors, bugs, cars, or sport stamps.
• If you don’t have fabric paint, you can use acrylic craft paint mixed with textile medium.
• You can fix textile medium at your local craft store, simply follow the mixing instructions on the bottle.
• You can wash your lunch bag on gentle in the washing machine, lay flat to dry.