Project Eight: Reindeer Gift Bags

I wanted to make ornaments for my son's class this year. If you're wondering where the post is about the ornaments I made off a Pinterest idea, you will not find it here. I tried. I looked. But none of the Pinterest ideas seemed appropriate for 1 year olds to remember their daycare years. But, they needed a cute way to be wrapped. Enter reindeer gift bags!

Here is my model. This is from a site called Room Moms 101: Where you can find ideas for all your school needs. P.S. They did a much better job than me!

Here are my supplies. I had the lunch bags and clothespins on hand. If you read my last post, the wiggly eyes and jingle bells were borrowed from my Reinbeers project. I did not have enough pipe cleaners left for the antlers on the bag, but I felt the clothespins would keep the bags closed better.

I took a brown marker from the kids markers and put some lines. I was trying to be artistic, but I think maybe they just look lazily completed. Keep in mind, these are for 1 year olds.

If you're wondering what is going inside these lovely bags, here it is. Their treat is a package of fruit snacks. And here is my ornament. I ordered these from Oriental Trading Company. You could make a Santa, Snowman or Reindeer. I loved these because there was plenty of room for the kiddos names. They all received a matching rubber ducky, also from Oriental Trading Company.

Here is my first completed bag! They are much simpler than my model, but I wasn't willing to put a lot of time or money into this project. Especially since I know the bags will be thrown away. Oh, and they took very little time to make. A total bonus in my full-day-craftathon!

Here are all the bags. I ran out of supplies for the teacher bags, so I used my red jingle bells and made them some holly. They also got cupcakes, so I doubt they were concerned about not receiving a reindeer bag.

Project Seven: Reinbeer

Christmas is next week! Knowing the clock was ticking away, I made this weekend a very crafty one. On Sunday, I tackled quite a few projects. One of those projects was my "Reinbeers."

My family, like many families, does a name exchange for Christmas. I love exchanging names, but I have a love/hate relationship with the price - $10! That's all we can spend on the gift. It is really hard to spend $10 and not give a really bad gift. Thanks to Pinterest, I decided to give the gift of alcohol. Who doesn't need alcohol during the holidays?

Below is the picture I used as my inspiration. If you type in "Reinbeers" as a search on Pinterest, there are many to choose from!

The supplies for this project are very simple. I purchased my brown pipe cleaners, wiggly eyes and jingle bells at Wal-Mart. I had a very tired toddler with me, so I really do not know how much this project cost. I do remember the pipe cleaners costing .77 cents because my husband laughed about them being cheaper than at the dollar store. (Long story short... I checked out the dollar stores and found items were not cheaper and I had little luck. Very rotten experience.) I did re-purpose the eyes and jingle bells for my next post, so I got two projects out of my supplies!

I simply tied the pipe cleaner around the beer bottle and cut the antlers to match in length. I took a few pipe cleaners and cut them to the same size to complete the points of the antlers. Again, I tied those on. This took no time at all!

And here is my finished product! I hot glued the eyes and bells on for noses. I used all red noses for the bottles so it looked consistent. I think the jingle bells add an extra layer of fun to the project. I think this took me maybe 15 minutes and that was with lots of help from my little guy. This idea would be perfect for a white elephant exchange!

Archives: Button Christmas Tree

Before I started this blog, forcing myself to be a Pinterest Pinup, I tried a few Pinterest projects here and there. This project is from last Christmas. I thought it would be a fun, easy project to do with the kids. Even though it is a year later, I still remember this project vividly and here is why...

First, finding buttons was not an easy task. I went to Michael's and spent a lot on small bags of buttons. I bought about 5 bags and about 3 packs of stick pins. I purchased the three Styrofoam trees and headed home for some crafty fun with my daughters.

I did not plan out the best way to attack the Styrofoam with buttons. We started placing buttons here and there, willy nilly. This was NOT the best approach. I can tell you looking back, we should have started at the bottom with the big buttons and then worked our way up. Mistake number one.

Mistake number two was thinking a 5 and 7 year old would have the patience to pin all these buttons onto the trees. While this seems very simple - take one button, place pin in button, push into Styrofoam, repeat - it was very daunting. The large tree was mine and it took 3 nights to complete. I worked on the tree for a few hours each night. And then I got to finish the two little trees because my daughters lost interest.

Mistake number three was thinking the supplies I purchased were enough. I grossly underestimated the amount of buttons and pins. I had to make about 4 more trips to Michael's and had to drive around to multiple store locations because I bought out all the pins and buttons available at my main store. Let me reiterate how much this project cost - A LOT.

Now, had I known how all of this information ahead of time, I would have purchased bulk buttons from the internet. This Christmas I found Oriental Trading Company sells very large bags at a very reasonable price. I also would have waited to complete such a project with my daughters until they were older.

The upside to this project is my daughters are very pleased and proud of their work. The trees sit on an end table in the living room during the holiday season - a prime spot in the house. They love putting them out and looking at their names on the bottom. And we do receive many compliments on them.

My final thought, if you will... These look adorable and can be much more cost effective, but be prepared to spend much more time than expected completing this craft!