Pirate Party Loot Bags

Shane's 6th birthday is coming up at the end of March, and the boys and I decided on a pirate theme for his party.  Aaargh!

I've been busy posting ideas on my PirateParty Pinterest board . . . everything and anything pirate.  

The main agenda of any good pirate is acquiring pirate "booty" or as defined in the dictionary:  pirate treasure, plunder or other ill-gotten gains.  :)

So I decided to make some little black bags for the children to accumulate their "booty" in during the party.  ( I love saying booty . . . I don't know why! )  I had some black material in my material stash that I used to make the bags.  I simply folded over some of the material, cut it the width and height I wanted each bag, and stitched up the sides to make the bags.

I may or may not finish off the top of the bags.  In some ways I think leaving the top edges rough adds to the pirate effect.  I'll probably use my pinking shears to finish the edges.

Next I wanted to stamp a skull and crossbones on the front of the pirate bags.  I decided to make a stamp using a potato.  I didn't have a small circular cookie cutter so I used a apple-shaped cutter from this Pampered Chef set.

I sliced the potato in half.  I used the apple-shaped cutter and pushed it into the surface of the cut potato until it was pushed in about 1/4 inch into the potato.  Then I used a small knife and cut around the potato using the metal of the cutter as a gauge of how deep to cut.  Below is the potato with the cutter pushed into the potato with the cut-away part laying beside it.

Once I removed the cutter from the potato, you can see the apple cut-out on the potato surface.

I then used the knife to cut away the apple design carefully to make a skull shape.

I used a paper towel to dry the cut potato stamp, and then I dipped it into some white acrylic paint.

Then I stamped the skull impression onto the lower part of the black booty bags.

I used the other potato half to cut away some of the potato to make the cross bones image to stamp under the skull.

It wasn't as easy to free-hand that design and I was worried about how it was going to look.  It looked okay once I stamped the bags with it.

I ended up just painting the crossbones by hand instead of using the stamp.  It looked just a good as the stamped image and seemed to be quicker.

I made a gazillion of these pirate booty bags.  I got a little carried away.  I had all the materials I used to make the pirate booty bags on hand so I didn't have to go out and buy anything . . . which is always a good thing.  

I made these very quickly on Saturday.  It took about 30 minutes to sew up the bags and stamp them . . . which was a good thing cause I wasn't feeling too spiffy this weekend.  Sinus crud has invaded my head.  :/

But I couldn't let the weekend get by without doing something productive toward Shane's birthday party.  

After all it's only a couple of weeks away, and I've got lots I want to do to make sure it's saturated with plenty of pirate adventures for Shane's friends and also for . . .

                            the Ferrell boys and me!

I'll be linking up to some awesome blog parties!  Check out Serenity Now:  Weekend Bloggy Reading for some great ideas.