While I am soaking up the rays in Florida (while wearing SPF 50 and a big floppy hat), I will leave you with 4 days worth of quick and easy crafts. You may have seen some of them multiple times. Some may be new. All with be easy, fairly quick and inexpensive ways to entertain your friends. Enjoy!

You know what stinks.  When you turn your supposedly non-crafty friends into better crafters than yourself.  I created monsters.  Our next adventure in crafting was using freezer paper as a stencil for tote bags.  I’ve had the freezer paper forever but I had been afraid to use it.  My newly created craft monsters were all over it.

Materials Needed:

• Tote
• Fabric paint or acrylic paint/fabric medium
• Freezer Paper
• Iron
• Paint Brush
• Cardboard

Start by tracing and/or drawing the design you want onto freezer paper with the shiny side down.  Cut out your design.  We used scissors.  (And Exacto knife would be awesome too.)  Iron the freezer paper to your tote (shiny side down).  Pay special attention to the edges.  We found that the freezer paper stuck best if you let the iron rest on it for about 5-10 seconds.

Stick a piece of cardboard inside the tote so it doesn’t bleed through.

Now it’s time to paint.  My friend, Melissa, choose to stick with one solid color.

Amanda went wild with stripes.  (I really should have busted out the real camera.)

Every tutorial I read using freezer paper recommends leaving it on for an hour.  The three of us combined have about 8 minutes worth of patience.  And that is precisely how long the freezer paper stayed on the tote bags.  The both turned out great.  I wish I would have grabbed a better picture of Amanda’s because the stripes were so cool.

I totally almost stole Melissa’s.  It’s just too cute.  (Mine is the striped one in the corner. Boring.)  I really like how the stencil paper turned out and I’ll be making one for myself very soon!  I think they’d be great farmer’s market or beach totes!

Have you tried using freezer paper for stenciling before?