If, like me, you are trying to do your bit to reduce your waste footprint on the planet and reuse whatever you can, then this is just a small way to help with one of those things that can create unneeded plastic waste at kids birthday parties.

I decided this year that instead of buying (very cheap I have to say) themed plastic party bags I would either make something myself or buy paper bags.

To be fair you can buy reasonably cheap paper party bags so that is always an option, but I wanted to go one step further and make my own.

I unusually have a bunch of papers hanging around the house as I had been collecting some tokens for a cheap holiday so I decided to use those and had seen some online. Although I had also seen some instructions about how to make them I thought I had a better (and quicker) idea of how to make them so this is what I did:

Using the following things it took me no more than 5 minutes to make each bag:

You will need:

• old newspapers
• a tissue box
• PVA glue
• spray glue (not essential)
• a brush

Directions

For my party bags the newspaper that I had was the perfect size to use one whole sheet folded in half (it was a tabloid newspaper). In order to make the bag a bit stronger I first used the craft spray glue to stick the folded newspaper in half (i.e. take the whole sheet and glue it together at the fold).

I then placed the tissue box on the newspaper to act as a guide for the size of the bag.

I used the PVA glue to stick the 2 ends of the newspaper together over the tissue box:

Treat it as if you are wrapping a present and fold the newspaper around the end of the box. then glue down with PVA (this is a pretty strong glue so holds well):

To keep the bag sturdy, add a cardboard section at the bottom. I used an old cereal box to cut out a rectangle, using the tissue box as a guide. Again, stick this down to the bottom of the bag using PVA.

I finished off the bags with some stickers that my son had lying around that had not been used.

Eco friendly things to put in the bags:

To keep the eco-friendly theme going I am putting the following in the bags:

1. A small colouring book – similar to this in the US and this in the UK.
2. Color my bath water changing tablets (US link) – a tub of 300 can be split into 15 each for 20 children at a party and wrapped in tissue paper. You can also buy these in the UK.
3. Instead of buying individual bags of Haribo sweets I decided to buy one big tub (UK link) (that I could reuse) and split them up into recyclable and biodegradable paper sweet bags (UK). The small, individually wrapped bags are only 20g, so a 1kg tub should be plenty for a party.
   In the US it seems that Haribo are not so popular so you could use M&Ms instead as you can buy a big 42oz bag and spit that up into paper bags (US).

The whole cost of these party bags in the UK is only about £1.30 a bag which is also very easy on the pocket and means that you could add something extra if you wanted to.