Easter is a great holiday where kids get to go on egg hunts and collect hidden goodies in your garden. Even if you don’t have kids, you likely have siblings or friends who have kids. Here are some great ideas for making very cool Easter treat bags using printable transfers.
Why not use regular Easter baskets?
For most little kids, Easter baskets are big and clunky and always have a habit of spilling out everything you put in them. The advantage of using a treat bag is they’re durable and don’t tip over as easily as an open basket would. And if you’ve hidden a lot of goodies, these can spill out and potentially causing boiled eggs to fall out and crack. The other advantage is that you can put any kind of Easter image onto a treat bag as you like.
If you’re planning for a group Easter egg hunt you can have a whole set of bags ready to go and all have the names of everyone who’ll be at these events. They make a great SWAG bag for parents who bring their kids and then become a neat keepsake after that. With woven Easter baskets or even ones made from plastic, these take up space and can’t be stored in a drawer so easily.
How to make your own DIY treat bag?
You don’t need to be that great at knowing how to use Photoshop since there are programs that are so user-friendly. If you have a PC at home or a laptop, you need to start with an image that’s large enough to not have all those pixels showing. The best size to start with should be what most people call Wallpaper download size. These files are pretty big and need to be 1024×768 in size.
This is pretty typical for PC-sized screens and will give you a good starting point for a basic image. If you want to customize this image by adding a name, there is free photo software you can use to fix this in seconds. Since you aren’t selling these treat bags anywhere, you don’t need to worry about breaking any copyright issues such as Disney characters and such. Finding the right image is probably the hardest part you’ll need to search for.
I’ve found that it’s easier to search on Google for free Easter PC wallpaper images or any variation like that with added keywords. You’ll need to save these images to your desktop so you can find them faster rather than searching all over your download files. This also makes this mundane task simpler when you upload your image to make corrections or add little details like a name or date.
After you’ve finished customizing your image you’ll need to save this image so it can be printed. If you don’t save the image, you won’t be able to print this very easily and end up having to fix your image once again. I also need to tell you that the file name on your finished image needs to have a title that you know is your finished version. Something simple is all that’s needed including a title like: Finished Easter Bag Image’.
How do I get the image onto a fabric treat bag?
This is the best part of the project since I love finding simple methods that don’t cost a lot of money. You need to look for special iron-on fabric transfer sheets. These transfer sheets are specially designed so you can run them through your home printer or at a copy and printing store to get the image onto the material. Once it’s printed onto the transfer sheet it can then be ironed onto any fabric or cotton surface.
As long as you aren’t using plastic-based treat bags made from synthetic fiber, these transfers will work great. I highly recommend the Canon Light Fabric Iron-on Transfer Sheets. These work best for light-colored fabrics but they sell a different version for dark-colored shirts too. The important thing to remember is that these iron-on transfers can be deceiving. You might have to print out an image that is reversed as you see in a mirror.
This way you get an image that comes out looking normal when you put the image onto the fabric face down. This is how the material gets glued to your fabric and keeps the image from being rubbed off. It doesn’t work so great for everyday t-shirts and will wash off after 2 or 3 washings, but for Easter treat bags, these are perfect! You may also need to trim the image with a pair of scissors to keep the excess material that isn’t part of your image.
The next step is taking your iron and warming it up to the temperature that’s recommended for your fabric. You need to protect your iron from the plastic transfer, so these iron-on kits will often add paper protectors that are put over your transfer while you seal the iron-on onto your treat bag. Once you go over this spot a couple times to smooth out the image onto each bag, let it cool down for a minute or so.
Depending on the iron-on transfer you’re buying, these may have a layer that is peeled off before you put these sheets in place. Reading the instructions carefully will tell you much more than I can explain, so be sure to know this info ahead of time. If you have to make a reversed image (mirror transfer) or not when you print this image from your home printer. Not every iron-on transfer paper works the same way.
You can even print both sides of each treat bag if you want to make an ordinary bag more customized for the occasion. The best part is that this process won’t cost more than the time it takes to find an image online and edit it how you like. The iron-on part is perhaps the easiest if you have an iron and ironing board handy. If you’re like me, these are two things I can’t live without! Have fun!
