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Mrs. Sundae, Chicago/Lake Geneva, WI Age and Occupation: 28, Knowledge Manager Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Investment Advisor Engagement Date: July 20, 2007 Wedding Date: September 2008 Blogging Since: February 5, 2008 Venue: The Abbey Resort About Me: It’s hard to believe that by the time Mr. Sundae and I get married we will have been together for almost ten years. When we first met in college we split dollar pitchers and now we share the mortgage payments. Despite our love for the city we are looking forward to tying the knot in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
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Personalizing the Totes

September 3rd, 2008 @ 3:01 pm by Mrs. Sundae

The lovely Miss Cupcake just wrote about personalizing her Out of Town Totes, and that reminded me that I never got around to writing about ours! I bought our plain canvas totes from cheaptotes.com several months ago for .99 cents a piece. It seems that they went up in price for a little while, but right now they’re on sale for .99 cents again! This is how the plain tote looks:



Much like Cupcake, I wanted to print them somehow but I also didn’t want to slap our names on there in huge bold letters and deter people from using them in the future. So I decided that using the same flourish that we incorporated into the invitation suite would make sense - provide a little consistency and still keep it rather plain.

Since I don’t have a gocco (tragic, I know) I priced a few options for having them professionally printed and most of those defeated the whole purpose of paying .99 cents for each of the bags. I kept thinking about how I could get the flourish into a stencil somehow, and after one attempt with foam board failed miserably, I turned to google and found Custom Cut Stencil Co. They were so easy to work with - I emailed them my design, they added the necessary breaks, and one week and $30 later this was at my door:

It’s a mylar stencil which means that it’s pretty durable, but in retrospect I should have made the lines a little thicker (you’ll see why in a second). I went to JoAnn fabrics and bought a fabric paint pen for $3 and away I went! Important tip - put some cardboard in the middle of the bag before you start painting. Bleeding is a bad thing…

I should have made the lines on the flourish thicker because the paint pen doesn’t quite fit into the stencil. So, basically I have to trace it once with a pen that will fit into the lines and then go over it with the paint pen. Not the biggest deal in the world because we only needed 40 bags, but a little added work. Here is how it looks after tracing the stencil with a pen:

And here is part of the process of going over the pen marks with the paint pen:

To get the line on either side of the flourish I just got out a ruler and tried to line things up as best as possible:

And there you have it! I used a warm iron on each of them to set the paint and make sure they weren’t overly wrinkly.

All in all I would say that it takes about 10 minutes per bag for the design and just a few more minutes for ironing. There are 40 bags in total, so when you break down the cost of all the bags, the paint pens (it took two), and the stencil it cost around $2 per bag. Here’s hoping our guests get some use out of them in the future as well!

Is anyone else personalizing their out of town totes?

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10 Responses to “Personalizing the Totes”

1.
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Guest
HayJ

are you putting your wedding date in the flourish or initials?

 
2.
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Nada

I love your flourish design! did you design that yourself? also, what font did you use for your invitations?

 
3.
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Bee
Miss Sundae (message)  198 posts, Blushing bee

I don’t think I am going to put the date or anything in the flourish, just leave it blank. I’ll just tie a green ribbon around the top to give it a little color!

Thanks, Nada! I did design the flourish myself. The font that I used on the invitations is bickham script.

 
4.
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kerac5

has anyone used iron transfer paper? I was thinking of making labels (using some graphics from my invitations) and ironing them on… but i’m wondering if this is feasible… it works with t-shirts, right?

 
5.
tea
Member
tea (message)  2,616 posts, Sugar bee

@kerac5: yup kerac5, it does work with tshirts. i’ve made quite a few for myself over the years. you shouldn’t have a problem using them on fabric tote bags [in fact, i think there was a picture of one as an example on the front of my tranfers box]. it doesn’t hurt to just buy a bag and try it out though if you’re worried!

 
6.
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Jenny Louwheeze

These turned out great! I love that your personalized them without including anything that would detract people from using them again - and all without a gocco! We purchased the very same bags a long time ago, but we’re just tying a tag on one of the handles with our signature wedding seal. Kinda boring, but out of town bags got kind of bumped to the bottom of the priority list with only one week to go.

 
7.
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bugaboo

Awesome! I love your stencil! Who would’ve thought there is a custom stencil co? That’s why I love weddingbee! Thanks Miss Sundae!

 
8.
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Bee
Miss Espresso (message)  1,064 posts, Bumble bee

I love these! So simple, classy, and eco chic :)

 
9.
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Guest
OOT Bags! » Weddingbee » The Wedding Blog

[...] in the footsteps of Miss Sundae, we bought our OOT bags from cheaptotes.com. The first totes that I ordered were entirely too small [...]

 
10.
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Tiff

Hi, Do you still have the design you sent to the Custom Stencil co. that you could send me? I just purchased these bags and I want to try adding some words inside of your design! It is just beautiful! tiffanymbrady at gmail dot com

 


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Mrs. Sundae
Mrs. Sundae Mrs. Sundae, Chicago/Lake Geneva, WI Age and Occupation: 28, Knowledge Manager Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Investment Advisor Engagement Date: July 20, 2007 Wedding Date: September 2008 Blogging Since: February 5, 2008 Venue: The Abbey Resort About Me: It’s hard to believe that by the time Mr. Sundae and I get married we will have been together for almost ten years. When we first met in college we split dollar pitchers and now we share the mortgage payments. Despite our love for the city we are looking forward to tying the knot in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
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