For the past year, I have been a Creative Activities Coordinator for my local MOPs (Mothers of Preschoolers (see http://www.mops.org/ for more info) group. Last year we had approximately 100 women in our group. It was a challenge to plan and prepare crafts for the women that would be within budget (less than $3.00 per craft), take less than an hour to complete, easy for non-crafters, as well as interesting and useful. The projects we did were: laminated chore charts, tote bags, glass tile pendant necklaces, foam fortune cookie sharing game, and ribbon memory boards. Over the next few weeks, I will post the instructions and pictures of the crafts. I'll post the tote bags first, simply because I have the pictures ready.
Tote Bags:
Supplies needed:
Blank canvas tote bags
Sharpies (r) markers
Stencils
Blank tote bags can be pricey at a craft store like Michael's, but we were able to find reasonable prices and quality online from ingreetings.com, located in S.F.
We got Sharpies in a variety of colors from Costco, 12 pack for about $12.
We bought stencils from Michael's.
The Sharpies did wick (bleed) a little on the edges of the stencil design, creating a sort of shadow effect. Some people didn't care for that look and used paint instead. I preferred the Sharpies.