How to Stencil A Tote Bag

Being an employee at Blitsy, I get access to thousands of products. This is good AND bad. It’s good because I get to shop items that neither Michael’s nor Joann’s have (SCORE!), but it’s bad because all  I want to do is shop!!!

Speaking of shopping, we recently ran these blank shopper totes. If you remember way back when, I did a Trader’s Joe’s Bag Challenge. I did this challenge to start recycling all of the bags from Trader Joe’s I had been collecting. When I saw the shoppers on sale, I grabbed 4 of them. I figured it was about time I got on board with the reusable bag clan and stop my Trader Joe’s bag collection!

The bags were cute the way the were, but since they were blank canvas they begged to be decorated! To make my bags bright and cheery, I used a stencil to paint a cross pattern on all of the bags. I went with punchy colors that screamed Summer!

I somehow misplaced my tutorial pictures (whoops!). So, here is a quick explanation of what I did:

Supplies:

– Shopper Tote

– Stencil

– Fabric Paint

– Pouncer

– Cardboard

{Step 1}: Put your piece of cardboard inside of your shopper to prevent any paint from seeping through to the other side. Place your stencil towards the top of your shopper (I had my stencil overlapping a bit off the edge).

{Step 2}: Begin painting over your stencil, filling in your entire pattern.

{Step 3}: Once you have filled in your entire stencil, move it to the right. You will place your stencil over some of the crosses you already painted to ensure your pattern is straight. Let your paint dry and you are all set. Easy peasy!