Easy Trick or Treat Tote Bags

This week, my sister-in-law asked me to make my niece some type of bag to hold her candy in while trick or treating that would match her bee costume.  My crafty wheels started turning!  I got excited thinking about all the possibilities.  I initially wanted to sew her a tote bag out of canvas, but, unfortunately, Walmart didn't have any canvas drop cloths left, so I had to buy pre-made canvas tote bags.  (They are a bit large for my three-year-old niece, but she will just have to get extra candy to fill it up.  I don't think she'll mind all that much.)  I got three tote bags in a pack for about six dollars.

I need to take a moment to explain that for some reason, my husband and his sister have this ongoing joke about mustaches and who loves them more.  So I decided to make a tote bag with a mustache and tell my SIL it was for my niece.  But I also planned to make a bee one too.  So I downloaded some templates for my Silhouette.  I used my Silhouette to make stencils of the shapes from card stock.

I used painter's tape to hold the stencils in place.  I used a stencil brush to apply the paint.  (After loading a small amount of paint on your brush, pounce it a few times on a napkin to get off the excess paint so your your paint doesn't seep under the stencil.)

I don't want to give away what the mustache tote says until the final reveal below, but one of the words on it was "candy."  In honor of Halloween, I wanted the word to be colored like candy corn.  So I used painter's tape in sections over the word to get the three candy corn colors.

 I applied some glitter paint over the finished word to give it a bit of sparkle, and I also glued some felt roses in the same colors to the bag.

After I stenciled in all the images and words, I used some puff paint to outline the mustache (and parts of the bee on the bee tote).

After waiting for all the paint and glue to dry, I had a finished tote bag.  You want to know what it says?  Here it is!

Do you get it?!  Mustache of candy.

Say it fast, and it sounds like "my stash of candy," and it's a bag that holds candy!  Okay, so it's probably not funny if I had to explain it to you, but I got a kick out of it.  My husband thought it was pretty funny.  My SIL liked it too. :)  I think she liked the REAL bag for my niece even better, though.

I let my SIL keep the gag bag.  Maybe she'll get a lot of candy too, and just maybe she'll share her 'stache with me!  ;)