child holding customized cloth lunch bag decorated with fabric paint

Crafts

Customize Your Cloth Lunch Bags for Back-to-School

Here’s a quick craft that will make back-to-school lunch-making more fun… Lunch Bag decorating! Who wouldn’t want their own customized lunch bag? You might even find you want to make yourself one for the office or a picnic in the park. It’s really easy and quite affordable, too.

Supplies Needed to make Customized Lunch Bag:

cloth lunch bags (we bought these)
spray fabric paint (we used these)
covering for your surface and to protect your clothing (fabric paint is permanent)
foam letter stickers (optional)
shapes cut out of card stock (optional)
washi tape (optional, end result not pictured)

That’s it! And you don’t even need letter stickers, shapes or washi tape. We just thought it was fun to use them.

How to make a Customized Lunch Bag

If you are going to put words on your lunch bag like we did just simply press them down first before you paint. If you want to make stripes, use washi tape. If you want shapes, just rest your shapes on the bag. If you want to use all three, go for it! It’s your bag and you can make it exactly how you like.

Now you’re ready to paint! But first, make sure you are wearing something you don’t mind getting paint on (fabric paint is permanent) and cover your table with a cloth or paper in case you mist a little more than your bag with your paint. Messes happen, be prepared!

Spray fabric paint is really easy to use because it’s thin and squirts out in a mist-like water. You don’t have to worry about it blobbing up or taking days to dry. (Though do test out each bottle on a paper towel to get it going before you start spraying your fabric so you can get a feel for how it will spray.) You can even dab at places where you put too much paint with a paper towel and reabsorb some of the paint off, if you want it to dry faster.

So get to squirting on your stickers, tape or shapes and then remove to reveal the “negative-space” designs. You can move things around and add different colors in the negative space if you like, too. The hardest part will be stopping before you’ve put too much color down because it’s so easy, fun and quick. Maybe you should even consider ordering extra bags and make multiples for those days your lunch bag is in the laundry.