Weddingbee Blog

Here are the gifts I made to go along with my “Will you be my flower girl?” cards.

My supplies

My two flower girls are five and six (or somewhere around that age), and as I mentioned before, they love princess stuff. I decided to make them tote bags and fill them up with princess-related goodies. By “make” I mean iron some sparkly decals onto pre-made mini tote bags that I picked up at Michaels.


Embarrassing to admit, I actually had to buy an iron for this project. I usually just make do with Downy Wrinkle Release or hanging a wrinkly item of clothing up in the bathroom while I’m showering. I decided to go ahead and make the $7 splurge on an iron from Target (their cheapest). Maybe in a couple years I’ll actually buy an ironing board to go along with it!

When ironing on the decals (also purchased from Michaels), I had a few difficulties. I’m not sure if I was doing something wrong, or if they were just cheap. At any rate, the directions said to set the iron to the correct setting based on what type of fabric you were ironing onto—my bags were cotton, so I turned the dial to the cotton setting. Then, after the iron was warmed up, you were supposed to cut out the decals you wanted and remove them from the backing while keeping the plastic film on top in place. For me, this was kind of difficult, as the backing didn’t want to come off that easily.

I started with the biggest decal I was going to include, the rainbow heart. After positioning it onto the bag, I placed a cloth on top of it, and then pressed the iron down on top of the cloth for 30 seconds. I had to do this in two sections. It helps to press down pretty hard. After ironing it on, wait for it to cool for a couple minutes before you peel off the plastic overlay. When you peel off the overlay, you will be able to tell if it stuck or not. If not, put the plastic and the cloth back on top and try again.

Since the instructions didn’t specify, I used the iron on the dry setting. I wonder if it would have worked better had I put water into it and used the steam setting. The big hearts mostly stuck pretty easily, but I had a more difficult time with the smaller pieces. Some of them just would not stick no matter how long I ironed them for!

I had two other small hearts on top in my original design, but I had to leave them out as they just would not stick! Once everything has cooled and you’ve peeled off the plastic overlay, you should turn the bag inside out and go over the backside with an iron. This part is very important, as it ensures the edges will all stick. Ironing the inside of the bag really helped my decals stick!

I was really happy with the way the bags came out—kinda ’60s flower child meets ’70s disco. I hope the girls bring them when they come to Austin for the wedding. I’d love to see them carrying them around!

I made tags for each bag so that the girls would know whose is whose (even though they were practically identical). I used some cardstock left over from my save-the-date project and printed their names in black ink using a script font from Word.

Then I cut out their names, punched a hole in the side, threaded some pink birthday party ribbon through, and curled it with a pair of scissors. (Some Crafting 101 tricks never get old!) I filled the bags up with the Disney princess pencils and sticker books that I had purchased in the Target dollar section, folded it all up into a pretty box, and shipped it off to West Texas!

I hope the girls like them! I was such a girly-girl when I was their age—this is exactly the kind of thing I would’ve liked. I almost bought them some Barbie dolls to go with it, but I decided I might want to save that for a “thank you” gift at the rehearsal dinner.

What do you think?