Rainbow Art Party Loot Bags

My daughter celebrated her 7th birthday last weekend with a rainbow colored art theme. To be honest, thinking of the perfect giveaway was really stressing me out because there were so many options! I wanted it to match the theme, be cute, and useful. My budget was about P150 to P200 each for 30 kids.

At first, I was set on giving away these crayon pillows I saw in Toys R Us which were P199. They were really nice but my daughter said she wanted loot bags with candies and other stuff inside. Well, she's the boss lol! ;p

So I thought of having those canvas drawstring bags made at first, but then these cost about P120 up. Another option was a wooden art caddy from Handicrafts Atbp. But I still kept looking for something cheaper since I would still have to fill them up with a lot of stuff which could exceed my budget.

Good thing I stumbled upon these paint buckets at National Bookstore which were only P66.50 each. I know I could have probably gotten something cheaper at Divisoria but hubby didn't want to drive me there! He said the amount we were going to save on these loot bags would probably be offset by the gas and parking fee going there anyway. Hay naku! ;p

Well, I really fell in love with these buckets anyway! They were the perfect size and the divisions/compartments made it easier to fill them up. Btw, I found these in National Bookstore Alabang Town Center but they only had 23 pieces. I found some more at the Glorietta branch so I was able to complete the 30 pieces.

I knew I wanted to give away coloring materials because of the art theme. I found these Crayola ones with an "Over The Rainbow" packaging which again was perfect for my theme! The regular 8pc. Crayola is P21.75 and these cost P24.75. For just P3 more, I definitely think these are way cuter! I was able to get these at National Bookstore Southmall.

These 8pcs. markers were P17.75 each. But then, I just found 7 of these in the National I went to at that time.

If you want to save a little, you can get the 6pcs. which is cheaper at just P10.50. I also wanted to add other art materials like a watercolor set but the cheapest one I saw at National was about P50 each which was too pricey for me. I mean, the cost really adds up when you compute all the items. But if you're able to find more affordable art materials like pencils, erasers, stickers, and other stuff go for it!

Anyway, I went and bought different types of colorful candy like Skittles, Nips. Nerds, lollipops, marshmallows, gummies, etc. I brought a bucket with me when I went to the grocery so I could see if the candies would fit nicely inside. And of course, compute compute compute to get the cheapest ones hehe!

Now my favorite part, assembling everything!

Here's how a bucket looked like with the stuff inside:

I was originally supposed to just add a thank you tag and ribbon to the bucket, but last minute decided to wrap it in cellophane! I had to remove the handle first though, because I didn't want the handle wrapped inside the plastic. I still wanted the kids to be able to carry it easily. So this was probably the hardest part since I had to remove the handle, wrap the bucket, then attach the handles again (I poked small holes in the plastic where the handle would pop back in).

These were the thank you tags, layout from Etsy.com (with minor tweaks).

And finally here are the finished loot bags! So happy with how they turned out. Cost for each giveaway came out to about P150 each. So I spent P4,500 total for 30 pieces.

Oh, and just to share, I was also stressed about the number of kids that would come since I didn't want to run short of giveaways! We invited all her classmates and of course, hardly anyone RSVP'd lol. Good thing 30 was a good peg since I just had about 6 giveaways left over. ;p

Anyway, will be sharing more from my daughter's party soon!