Awesome But Never Again!

Here’s a quick addition: Our custom treat bags that we handed out for 2022.
These were designed and printed on 7″ zippered bags using a technique called Dye Sublimation. Once done, we had managed to make 200 of these treat bags since that was how many ToTs (Trick or Treaters) we were expecting this year.
Though these turned out pretty awesome, it was such a long process that we’ve already decided how to streamline future year’s treat bags: pay a company to print them for us!
There’s not a lot to detail the process but I’ll try my best to describe each picture.

It All Starts Here

Here we have a heat press and some finished and in-process bags.
The graphic that I came up with is printed from a computer onto dye sublimation paper using a sublimation printer. These inks transfer into the bag material when pressed under a heated bed.
The images are printed mirrored so that they are the correct orientation once transferred.
Here you can see one of the pictures taped down to the blank bag using heat transfer tape.

Some Materials

Here’s a picture of the printed materials before being taped and transferred to the bags. You can see in the photo how the image is reversed for the transfer process.
I’d print two of these per sheet so we’d have to make multiple cuts to be able to fit them on the bags properly before transferring them.
Our little paper cutter shown here was really put to work!

A Few Finished Bags

Here you can see a big ol’ stack of printed bags waiting to be stuffed with treats. We have a container holding some of the earliest stuffed bags.
We’d replenish this bucket throughout the night using it to hold the bags before we handed them off to the candy-fiends as they came to the door.

Tricks & Treats

Here’s a sampler of what would be inside each bag.
We’d have one full-size candy bar, two little candies of various types and three pieces of Halloween “swag”.
We bought up a lot of Halloween knick-knacks throughout the year and made a huge score of the clearance Halloween section at a local CVS.
We ended up with lots of fun little items to throw into each bag.

The Stuffins

Here’s a picture of some of the stuffin’ that went inside the bags. Fake witch’s fingers, spider rings, blinking necklaces.. lots of fun stuff!

More Goodies

Just a last photo showing more of the Halloween swag. “Eerie eyes” glasses, bat puzzles and of course soooo much candy!