Super Hero Birthday Loot bag - on a budget

My son's birthday was a couple of weeks ago and he really wanted to have a Super Hero party. I fully intended to host the party at our home but my husband kindly reminded me that a party in our house would consist of 10 kindergarten boys running around for 3 hours. I have a hard enough time keeping the house clean with 1 boy...what happens when you have 10 in the house? So, I quickly rented a local play gym for a couple of hours and I could not be happier with how it turned out.

Well, since I spent on renting a place for the party, I wanted to save a little on the loot bags. I am not sure if every parent gives these, but around here the kids almost expect a small gift bag when they leave. I see it as a thank you for coming but my son sees it as free candy.

So here is what I created for my son's loot bags.

I decided to save a couple of dollars and created my own loot bag out of paper lunch bags. For those of you who have not printed on lunch bags before, it is extremely easy. I created a Word file that was the same size of the lunch bag (approx. 5 1/4 inches by 10 3/4 inches) saying "Thank you for coming to my party. Have a SUPER Summer."  and inserted a Superman logo I found on the internet.

I taped the bottom flap of the bag completely closed. It is important to tape the entire way across otherwise the bag WILL get jammed in your printer. I speak from experience.

I then taped about 3 inches of the top opening closed. This was just enough to keep the bag closed while it went through the printer.

Load the bag into the printer the same way you would paper, making sure the correct side is up.

TaDa. Very simple.

I then filled the bag with some items from Walmart and the Dollar Store. Here is what we put in: bubble wand $1, sidewalk chalk $0.50 (bought a big tub and broke it up into 4 per bag), Pop Rock candies/super hero jellies $0.25, Finger lasers $1, Airplanes $0.25. Since I had the lunch bags on hand, thus far the grand total per loot bag was $3.

I then thought I wanted to make something for each of the kids. I have a great program for my Cricut that welds letters together so I decided to create a room sign for each of the boy's bedroom doors with a Super Hero theme.

I purchased the 7x9 inch canvas boards at the Dollar Store (2 for $1) and spray painted them black and navy blue.

I cut out each of the boys names on the Cricut in yellow card stock.

I then cut out the Superman (in red) and Batman (in yellow) logos. I got these images from a Dingbat on a free site. The program I have can cut these on my Cricut. For the Superman logo, I also cut out the shadow version of the logo in yellow. Using double sided glue, I secured the 2 pieces together.

With Modge Podge, I secured the names and logos onto the spray painted boards. I hot glued a little ribbon on the back to use as a hanger.

In total, all I bought for this project were the canvas boards for $0.50. I had all the other materials on hand.

So for a grand total of $3.50 per child, I created, what I think are pretty good loot bags. All the kids walked away extremely happy. I like the fact they have something to keep and hang in their rooms.

 

What have you done for loot bags? Do you have any secret ways of saving money on these things?

What do you think?

Stephanie
Linking to some great parties including: Story of A2Z