Woman in Real Life

I saw these small colourful striped treat bags at the dollar store and I just had to do something with them. They are so cute and cheery and just $2 for three little bags! With Easter quickly approaching, I decided they would make fitting goody bags for sweets and treats. But I didn't want them to be too Easter-specific - I wanted the kids to be able to re-use them to store small things on their desks or in their drawers or backpacks.

Plus, I wanted to show you guys how they could be used as loot bags for birthday parties or any special occasion where you want to have guests walk away with a small goody bag. Of course, you could just as easily use them to store craft supplies, marbles, paper clips, business cards or any other small items. Simply adjust your iron-on wording accordingly!



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I am always itching for reasons to use my stock of Cricut iron-on materials and my Cricut EasyPress 2, in this case in the petite 6" by 7" size. See it here on Cricut.com and here on Amazon.  These treat bags presented the perfect opportunity for a fast and easy DIY iron-on project. To start this project, open Cricut Design Space™ and either type in your chosen word in your desired font or search for a word in the pre-made images. I typed in the words "treats," "trinkets" and "goodies." If you want to use the same words, you can access them in Design Space here. Size your words to fit your treat bags. Place the iron-on material liner (plastic) side down on the cutting mat. Send to cut, being sure to choose "mirror" in the sidebar to flip the images.


When the cuts are complete, use the weeder tool to remove any material that's not part of your design.


If you have trouble seeing the lettering when you're weeding iron-on, vinyl or other materials, the Cricut BrightPad can help. It's lightweight and illuminates cut lines for weeding, as well as being great for tracing on paper. BrightPad also reduces eye strain, especially useful for those of us who are over 40 and having trouble with our close-up vision (ahem).


Once the word is cut and weeded, place it (liner intact) over the treat bag and use this interactive quick reference guide to select the correct temperature and time settings for EasyPress 2. (You can also use a home iron, but your results may vary.) The EasyPress or EasyPress 2 simplifies the work by staying at the temperature you set and counting down the time for you.


Then comes the really fun part - filling your cute DIY iron-on goody bags. Candy is a natural choice for a treat bag, but you can also fill the bags with school supplies, small toys and balls, inexpensive jewelry, scrapbooking and craft materials or whatever your recipient would appreciate.


Of course the dollar store is your friend when it comes to filling treat bags. I especially love all of the goodies in the craft area, like the cute little scrapbooking stars in these photos. Be sure to pick up some bag fillers when you shop for the bags themselves. (That being said, I'm conscious of not buying crap that will break in a day and be discarded soon after buying. There's a lot of that to be had at dollar stores too, and that's certainly not earth-friendly.)


I have two children, so I guess one of these DIY treat or party favour bags is for me. The "trinkets" bag makes the most sense, since my daughter pointed out that trinkets isn't a word anybody uses at her age. Kids sure know how to make you feel old!

Questions for you

What favours would you put in these small DIY treat bags? What words would you iron-on? What fun items have you picked up at the dollar store lately?