Homemade Holiday Gift – Garden Tote

One inexpensive and easy homemade gift for gardeners or garden lovers is a handy homemade garden tote. You can give these to anyone who one, likes garden themes, or two actually needs to tote garden gear around.

Peggy's Poppies from the Stencilled Garden

How to make your garden totes:

• Choose your tote bags – you can usually find nice sturdy totes on great deals during the holiday. Especially if you buy in bulk. Local fabric store and craft stores run great deals on plain totes as well.
• Iron the bag if it’s wrinkly, so that it will lay flat – makes it easier to decorate.
• Now for decorating your bag you’ve got a few choices – stenciling, freehand painting, stamp prints, or if you want to get fancy you could try creating a garden design with small beads or pretend gems, although this is way more time consuming. Although, if you use adhesive gems, it’s much faster.

Get decorating:

• For stenciling – choose a nice garden stencil, a decent stencil brush, and some stencil paints. Make sure you let your bag dry enough after you paint it.
• Freehand – if you can make your own garden art, grab some fabric paint and go nuts.
• If you’re using garden stamps make sure you use fabric ink or paint. You can also skip buying stamps and cut veggies and fruits in half and use those, which is a clever way to get a nice garden tote made cheap.