Glow in the Dark Trick-or-Treat Bag

Welcome to the 31 Days of Halloween, Day #8! If you missed any of the previous days, click here!

I have a new toy. It’s my Silhouette Portrait, and I’m a tiny bit in love with it.

Well, I have to be honest, it’s not actually new. I got it in May, and it sat in the box next to my desk for about 4 months because I wasn’t sure how to use it or what I was going to do with it. I was totally intimidated by it.

Then, for Connor’s birthday party at the beginning of September, I decided I was going to make some tote bags for his party favors, so I decided to put on my big girl pants and bust it out.

And I got totally hooked. I bought some glow-in-the-dark heat transfer vinyl and created some simple totes with each boy’s name on them. 

Then I made a tank top for myself with some regular white heat transfer vinyl. 

And now I have a whole big ol’ list of stuff I want to make. 

One of the things I’ve crossed off that list is this glow-in-the-dark trick-or-treat bag. 

I had so much fun making this, and Mason was beside himself when he saw it. 

It was so easy to make, I just used this design from the Silhouette Design Store, and then I used this font for his name. I had a leftover bag from Connor’s birthday party, but these were the ones I ordered. If you don’t want that many, I’ve seen individual totes and packs of 2 or 3 at Michael’s.

I’ll give you a quick rundown of how I did it, but if you’re not sure how to use heat transfer vinyl {or your Silhouette machine, for that matter}, this blog will rock your world. Melissa is amazing, and knows more about Silhouette machines that I even knew was possible. 

I started by laying out the design in the Silhouette Studio software program.

Once I had it where I liked it, I mirrored the image sent it to the machine to cut. {If you’re using heat transfer vinyl, ALWAYS make sure you mirror the image by going up to Object, then Mirror, then Flip Horizontally, or it will be backwards when you go to iron it on. Again, if you have any questions about any of this, check out this post.}

Then I weeded the transfer, or peeled out everything that wasn’t part of the design, which left me with the design on a sticky piece of clear plastic.

I found that the easiest way to center the design was to fold the bag in half and crease it at the top with my fingers. Then I folded the clear plastic in half {non-sticky sides together! Don’t accidentally fold your design in half and ruin it by sticking it all together!} and lined up the creases. If you look closely at the top of the picture above, you can see the two creases lined up. I love that the heat transfer vinyl comes on the sticky plastic, because it’s so easy to get everything where you want it and make sure your design isn’t going to slide around when you iron it.

Once you have everything where you want it, iron that bad boy on there! I used a piece of parchment paper on the top, but be sure to follow the directions on your particular brand of vinyl.

That’s all there is to it!

When I gave him the bag, Mason asked if he could go trick-or-treating today. He wasn’t pleased when I explained that we still had a few weeks to go.

He is so very excited to take this with him on Halloween.

And I am so very excited about how well it glows. My mind is going a little crazy thinking about everything else I can make with this glow-in-the-dark vinyl!

 

Do you have a Silhouette machine? What have you made with it? Or are you intimidated by it like I was?

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