Back to school with creative lunch bag decorating ideas

As a kid, being handed a packed lunch full of my favorite snacks before school was the first step to having an awesome day. (Because who wouldn’t get excited about eating fruit snacks and chocolate pudding in the same meal?)
The only thing that might’ve made that even more special is seeing cool artwork on my lunch sacks—and showing it off to the rest of the lunch table. Surprise your own kids on a random Tuesday or add a special touch to a big day with these fun, colorful lunch bag decorating ideas.
Inspired? Create and share by tagging @HallmarkStores.

What you’ll need:
This is one of those “use what you have handy” DIYs. Here’s what we used…
- Paper lunch bags (we used these brightly colored ones but you could also use kraft brown)
- Construction paper
- Scissors
- Glue stick
- Markers
- Acrylic paint or paint markers
- Paint brush
- Paint palette
For our decorated paper lunch bags, we chose a highly appropriate theme: our favorite snacks.
Raid your craft stash for paper and paint or markers. Go bold with your color combos—adorable is more important than realistic in this case.

Sketch out your food on the construction paper. Best advice: Keep it simple.
Then cut out your sketches and stick everything down with a glue stick.
Pro tip: Use a craft knife to cut the centers out of the pretzels, or gently fold the paper and snip it out with pointy scissors.

Don’t have construction paper in all the colors you want? No biggie. We used the same pink paper for the watermelon center, but switched to paint for the rind and marker for the seeds.
The bananas couldn’t be easier. Freehand the shapes, cut through a few layers of paper to make multiple bananas at once, and add details with markers.
Look at those beauties! Simple, smile-inducing and sure to brighten your kiddo’s day.

Want even more ways to make their school year one to remember? Start here:
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