If you saw my “naughty and nice” Santa tickets project last year, you know that as much as I love the joys and giving of Christmas, I also love to have some fun! Not everyone is a perfect angel every year, and legend has it that Santa brings the naughty kids a lump of coal instead of a stocking full of presents. I wouldn’t know about this firsthand, of course, because Santa loves me. However, I hear that bad kids get a little bag of coal.
I thought it would be lots of fun to make some coal bags for fun gifts this year. I got some nice, scratchy burlap fabric and made the bag in just a few minutes with our drawstring bag tutorial.
Then I got out my computer and hooked it up to the awesome eCraft electronic die cutter that I got as an early Christmas present last month. (See, I told you Santa loves me!)
I used the included software to create a “COAL” design with a font that looks like old fashioned stencils and I used the eCraft to cut it out of a piece of cardstock.
In this particular case, it wasn’t the letters themselves that I was interested in. Rather, I wanted the remaining cardstock that had the letters cut out. This would be my stencil for my bag! You don’t have to use an eCraft for this, of course. You could use a Cricut to create your stencil or use some traditional alphabet stencils to create your design. Or you could even print the word out on cardstock and then cut it out with a craft knife. Once I had my stencil created, I just held the cardstock in place and dabbed some black craft paint on with a paper towel.
When you do this, make sure you dab straight down with the paint and don’t rub it in. You don’t want the paint to leak under the stencil. What I really like about this project is that you don’t have to be very neat or careful with the stencil. In fact, the finished product looks even better if your letters are rough.
Once the paint dries, the bag is ready to be given. I suggest filling it with something that looks like coal, such as black licorice, chocolate candy coal, or one of the many other candy coal options that are available.
Here’s hoping you all only give coal this year and don’t get any from Santa!
3 comments so far:
I am so jealous! What a nice machine. I’m trying to do lettering on some cloth grocery bags I’m making with the ColorArtz airbrush kit I won from you guys–big thank you, again, on that. The eCraft die cutter or the Cricut would make this job sooo much easier. I’m using sticky back letters which is a long and tedious process.
In any case, I will post on the bags as soon as I get them finished and continue to nag my lovely husband for a machine!
This is a great idea! Where can you buy and ecraft? Are they available online? And, I’m kind of in Canada so… please tell me where you got yours!
Hi Maddie. You can purchase an eCraft on Amazon, but you can also complete this project with any electronic die cutting machine. Having tried several of them over the last year, I’d have to say that my favorite is the Silhouette and Jo’s favorite is the Cricut. We’ve used them for projects like this many times!