Conference Goodie Bag Item (Part 2)

Last time, I was in the middle of creating a goodie bag for teachers at a conference. I had scoped out seed companies and chosen U.S. wildflowers for their universal appeal and easy growing habits. It was getting late, so I went to bed. When I went back the next day, the seed was no longer on sale, and was almost double the price it had been! L

What was I going to do?! I couldn’t afford that price! Besides, I was really set on wildflowers! I decided to keep looking for other seeds, but planned on using them for the goodie bags anyway.

In the meantime, I ordered some 2” by 3” poly bags from a shipping company and started designing a “seed package” insert for the poly bags. I wanted the insert to show the flowers, my store name and website, as well as give directions for growing the seeds. Once I got everything set except the picture, I went back to the seed company website and found a different mix on sale: still wildflowers, but not a mix. It’s all good. J

Uline 2" poly bag

Cosmos

I went back to my design and inserted a stylized sketch of the wildflowers, then saved the file as an image. Here’s what I had so far:

Next, I opened a new PowerPoint and inserted, then shrunk the new image. I copied and pasted it so that eight would fit on a page. I wanted to make certain that the folded inserts would fit into the 2” by 3” poly bags.

Although there are a few spots of color on these inserts, the color is not important to the overall design, and I wanted to save some money, so I printed 52 copies in black and white. That gave me slightly more than the 400 individual inserts I needed to fill the goodie bags, so that I wouldn’t worry about a few cutting mistakes.

When it came time, I cut out four sheets at once, using a small paper cutter that grips the paper as it cuts. (I didn’t want the slanted cut you so often get when making multiple cuts on a giant cutter.) 

Next, I sat on the couch watching T.V. while I folded each tiny slip of paper in half. The next evening I again sat on the couch watching T.V. while I inserted one folded piece of paper in each 2” by 3” poly bag.

On the final evening, I took all the bags to the dining room table, where I added 1/8 teaspoon of the wildflower seeds to each of the poly bags and sealed them. Whew!

The bags were filled, but I still had to attach my new business cards! I had never created my own business cards either, and I was really  nervous! Read about that next time, as I show you all the steps it took to create them. Until then!

Have a wonderful week!