some days your bargain crafting skills come in handy

Along with being an active advisor to my International Sorority, I also hold a leadership position in the Alumnae chapter as well. We’re trying to reinvigorate the membership of the group this year, and decided to throw in a “goodie bag” as an incentive for paying the annual dues. Well, wouldn’t you know I was just salivating at the idea and figuring out how to make something awesome for next-to-nothing…

After some deep thought about what was practical and purposeful and just plain pink and cute, this is the ensemble that we settled on…

I purchased pink insulated lunch tote bags from JiffyShirts.com for $3.29 each. Then, to personalize them, I created a mylar stencil of our icon (the crescent moon) and painted it on with white screen-printing ink.

We made “membership cards” out of business cards from VistaPrint (250 free!). Then I ordered pink carnation (our Sorority flower) seeds in bulk ($8.99 for 2000), dropped them into little plastic pouches ($4.30 for 1000), and sealed them with a printed sticker ($1.99 for 48 stickers from VistaPrint). We picked up some pink/brown/mode pencils from the Dollar Spot in bulk, and also designed and printed custom calendar magnets with all the dates of our meetings marked on it for the full membership year ($15.00 for 30 from VistaPrint).

Then, for the “too cute to resist” addition, we made some Crescent cookies. We purchased mason jars ($8.99 for 12 from Walmart), bought a yard and half of some colorful fabric, and printed out custom labels and recipe cards. Then we filled each jar with the ingredients as listed in the infamous Bakerella cowboy cookies jar!

As a membership “thank you” … I thought it definitely went the extra mile as a nice token of our appreciation! :)