School Days Craft: Make Decorated Lunchbags for School!

If your child is going back to school, then chances are you are buying those brown paper bags that we all know lunch gets sent to school in. Aren't those bags a little boring?

You can turn those lunch bags into a fun craft for you and your child. This can be something fun that you do every week or every other week, decorating the lunchbags that they use for school. This is an especially nice thing to do if your child is feeling a little shy this year or out of sorts about starting the school year. When your child gets to lunch and remembers the fun they had making the lunchbag crafts, this will make them happy. They will also probably get compliments on their pretty lunchbags, and this could start conversations with potential new friends, an "icebreaker" of sorts.

For this craft you will need:

Brown paper lunchbags

Rubber stamps of your choice (fun choices are letters, your child's name, favorite animals, flowers, cartoon characters, sayings or other themes of choice)

Colored inkpads

Markers or crayons to color

Or you can make your own stamps (not as fancy) with either an apple or a potato

If you make your own stamps you will need some craft paint in bright or pastel colors of your choice

Optional: stickers

There are so many ways you can do this craft; I will suggest several ideas to get you started. But I would encourage you and your child to have fun with this project, to let your imagination take you where it wants to go.

The first thing to keep in mind is that many children (And parents) like to have the child's name written on the lunchbag. This keeps them from mistaking someone else's lunch from their own. You can write your child's name, or even their initials as part of the craft project. One tip to keep in mind is if you stamp, or write your child's name on the opposite side of the bag facing the opening of the bag, when you fold the top of the bag down to seal it, their name will be right there, on the flap.

A fun design is to use several rubber stamps repeatedly, in the same color inks. So for example a star could be used in the blue ink on the bag, a flower could be used in pink in on the bag and a happy face could be used in green ink on the bag. Then you could stamp your child's name on the top, or the bottom of the bag. If you want to be extra creative, you could stamp your child's name on the side of the bag, but it might be harder to read depending on how folded the bag is.

If you are making your own stamps, a parent should make the stamp designs using a sharp knife and then let the child stamp the bag. Easy stamps to carve include a heart, a star, letters, a happy face and simple shapes. Some children really like to make things, or they like paint and then making stamps will appeal to them.

Other children may have a lot of fun putting stickers on their bags and then drawing a design, and writing their names on the bags. You can get stickers for very reasonable prices if you buy them in bulk. I've listed one great website to get stickers in the Resources section of this article.

Happy crafting!