Holiday Treat Bags

I truly love my new Cricut Expression and the possibilities are endless. I’ve been inspired by watching videos and tutorials and I am following a great blog and getting ideas from that. I watched a video where she showed how to make goodie bags and I decided to give it a go and make some for my co-workers for the holidays this year. I went on the website that she talked about to get the clear bags but I don’t need such a large quantity so I went on a search and for me the best bang for my buck is 100 bags for $1.19!! I got them at the party store near my house and they are great bags. The most important part is that you want bags that are flat and not the ones that are gusseted because that will make your treat bags too sloppy and they won’t lay right. Once I found my bags I had to stock up on the candy and I just chose whatever looked colorful and festive through the clear bag. If you are going to make bags for kids you might want to include a small toy as a treat as well, the party stores have tons of little things like that for not a lot of money.

I looked through my cricut cartridges next to decide what image I wanted to use and I settled on something from “Stretch Your Imagination” one of the cartridges I got on Black Friday for myself. I chose the snowman in the middle and I cut it at 3” on my cricut with the paper saver key and the auto fill key pressed. So at 3” I was able to get all of these white snowmen cut on one mat. Since I had decided that I was going to be making 30 of these bags I went ahead and cut another 15 and set the white snowmen aside. Next I chose light blue and pressed the shadow feature on my cricut and hit ‘repeat last’ and with the auto fill still selected I cut 30 of those. Next would be all of the “layers” and looking at the image I knew that I needed 30 sets in black, 30 sets in red and 30 sets in orange. Again you just hit your layer key and you will see the scarf, buttons, mittens, nose, boots and hat show up on your screen in one group if you hit repeat last. For this I didn’t want to use auto fill because it would have cut 90 sets or more if I had a 12 X 12 sheet in my cricut so I hit my quantity key and selected 30 for each and cut everything out. Here is what I had when I was done with all of my cuts.

Next was just a matter of putting everything together! I filled my bags with the candy and set them all aside. The toppers were cut with a blue that is a bit darker than the shadow on the snowman. Since my bags are 3” by 5” I cut the topper at 3 1/2” by 5 1/2” and folded them all in half. I used my Score-Pal but you can just fold them and use a bone folder on the edge to make it flat. I also cut a strip of green card stock at 3 1/2” by 2” and that would be to cover up the staples on the topper after attaching it to the bags.

Now I had everything cut and laid out and I started putting the snowmen together in an assembly line fashion one step at a time.

The snowman with his blue shadow

A hat to keep his head warm.

Festive red scarf

His carrot orange nose

I drew in his eyes and mouth and

added some ‘blush’ with my chalks.

Some red mittens

After I put all their black boots on they were

ready to decorate my bag toppers.

Folded topper placed over the bag

and stapled twice to hold.

I stamped the right lower corner with a sentiment for the

holidays. This was a $1 stamp set from Michael’s. :)

I love cheap little things that are also cute.

Add the green strip to the front of the topper to

cover up the staples.

Add your snowman and you are done!

I also stamped the back of these and signed my name to them.

And here they are! I delivered them to all of my friends and

co-workers today and I’m glad I was able to see what I can

create with my cricut and can’t wait to try some more fun stuff.