Fun With Canvas Bags

Recently I came across this awesome tutorial for a painted heart bag at V and Co.  Not only did it fall in line with my Valentine enthusiasm, but I'm also a huge fan of reusable canvas bags.  (The husband likes to mock me by singing "bring your canvas bags...to the supermarket".)  All joking aside, being green is a constant major goal in my life and something I will elaborate on in the near future.  Anyway, the project had been on my mind for about a week now and I decided it was time to make an attempt.  Luckily my little partner in crime was equally enthusiastic and we had a lot of fun sitting with these on Saturday night.

First we gathered our materials:

 Three cheers for AC Moore who was having a killer sale on bags this week ($1.99 instead of the usual $4.99 per bag).  Gotta love those manager specials!

Next we ironed the bags, cut hearts out of the freezer paper, and ironed on our stencils.

Then we got to painting our dots using the ends of pencils like Vanessa had demonstrated in her blog.  Basically, you just start at the bottom and layer different shades of paint to create the ombre effect.  This part was time consuming but fun!  Initially we were going to stick to three colors but we played around with a bunch of different shades before actually touching the bags.  I ended up using four paints on each bag and my little helper used well...a lot more!  (OH and a little FYI: V and Co. used fabric paint, which is probably a better choice.  But considering the rate at which my acrylic paint permanently stains things I figured it could survive enough washes to last through February 14th.)

My attempt...

And my helper's.

As soon as we were done we peeled the freezer paper off to reveal the full effect of our art:

  Since I have a problem with enhancing things, I added some black and purple glitter circles to the hearts on the bag to the left:

And my own little motto to the one on the right ;)  

I have to say-we were pretty happy with the results!  This was the perfect project to kick off our St. Valentine's month: fun, not too involved and one that rewarded us with a great new (and useful) accessory to tote around through the January grayness.   Thanks so much to V and Co. for this tutorial, and for a great way to spread some reusable bagged love!

So what do you guys think?  Do you <3 them or what?

Linking up at