Trick-Or-Treat, Smell My Feet

Trick-Or-Treat, Smell My Feet. That phrase is so weird, right? Who the heck even thought of it? Feet totally creep me out, but I absolutely love Halloween and trick-or-treating. So, let’s not talk about my fears and focus on the things that I adore.

It is so much fun to embellish everything with creepy décor and pumpkins in the fall. And I love to come up with costumes for Trick-or-Treating each year and watch as my kids go from door to door collecting goodies. Instead of going with the whole plastic pumpkin buckets and/or plastic bags this year, I decided to take the classic pillow case candy bag and vamp it up a bit for a cool candy carrier that any kid would be proud to sport.

I love that these treat bags can be so versatile and hold a ton of loot for my kids (which I will kindly raid of all chocolate and caramel items post October 31st.)

These are the supplies I used for this project:
– 1 king sized pillowcase (a standard size will work as well)
– Printed Template
– Freezer Paper
– Acrylic Paint
– Fabric Medium
– Sponge or Spouncer
– Pencil
– Scissors/Craft Knife
– Iron
– Ribbon
– Sewing Machine (Optional)

Since I had an extra unused king sized pillowcase in storage, I opted to use that, although any size will work. My huge pillowcase would have been too big for either of my kids to lug around by itself, so I decided to cut it into two pieces, sewed up the sides and hemmed the tops, which created 2 separate bags. You could also do this with a standard pillowcase, but the bags will end up being just a bit smaller than mine. Or you can skip all of the cutting, if you prefer a bigger sack, and proceed onto the part with the freezer paper. Below is a photo with all of my cutting, sewing and hemming lines. The left side of the pillowcase is the open end where the pillow would be inserted.

Does this make sense? Because Emily didn’t get it at first, but that isn’t all that uncommon. *wink*

After my bags were ready, I tore off some freezer paper just a bit bigger than my prints. (I had two different simple prints which I made in Photoshop, but anyone could easily whip up the same thing in a Word document. I used the font Boogaloo, found {here} and my own bat design, which you can download {here}.) Each print was taped to the waxy side of the freezer paper (facing up) and then I traced the letters and image on the matte side with a pencil.

Once everything was traced, I used a craft knife to cut it all out.

Next, I centered and ironed the freezer paper, waxy side down, onto the bag. You can see here that the middles of the R’s, O and A were also cut out and ironed on to complete the letters.

Then, using a small cup, I mixed black acrylic paint and fabric medium in a 1:1 ratio and applied it on top of the freezer paper stencil using a spouncer.

After waiting eons for everything to dry, I peeled the freezer paper off of the pillowcase bags to reveal my finished stencils. This is where you hear the angels singing. Ahhhhhhhh.

Then, all that was left was to add a couple of ribbon shoulder straps to each bag. I attempted to use the sewing machine to attach them, but after a few hiccups with that whole process (my sewing machine hates me,) I opted to hand sew the rest of them on. Pain. In. The. Butt. However, totally doable for those of you without sewing machines.

Besides a few little leaks on the letter “K” of the word Trick, I think that they turned out pretty great. They are super sturdy and can easily hold 5 lbs. of Jolly Ranchers, so I think they will be good to go when my kids drag them around the neighborhood in a few weeks.