Party bags

[Hereslookinatyoukid]

What are your best ideas for children’s party bags? My DC has absolutely fixated on them, but I cannot bring myself to just fill them with tat… please share your ideas and ideally links!

Budget is - as low as possible as it’s a class party plus extras 🤦‍♀️

Sweets

And if you must, why not a Lego blind bag? Or similar.

In my experience kids love tat they don't want books seeds and the like. Buy a load of vegan sweets a multitasking of those wrist slapper bands and some stickers and it's all done kids are happy

Multipack even

You can sometimes find job lots of things online, eg Vinted. We went for various things over the years, including wooden bead bracelets, sweets, mini chocolate bars, bouncy balls in all different colours, erasers in animal shapes, pencils with dinosaurs on them (during the ‘dinosaur years’!), fortune telling fish, little books for those children that would like them, mini themed notebooks (eg football, fairies etc) with a matching pen, mini puzzle mazes, pots of bubble liquid with the wand for blowing bubbles, packs of crayons, those springs that ‘walk’ down stairs, finger trap toys, stickers, slow in the dark stick on stars. My rule was never more than £1 total per party bag, because I am a skinflint! Think this was our last party bag year. I also got a job lot of striped paper bags in different colours a few years ago, shoved them in a drawer and just used a different colour each year as party bags!

Oh my goodness how are you managing £1 per party bag @AllTheChaos?! Do you have any links/suggestions?!

Ok - let’s do this! £1 goal per bag… Try putting in ‘children’s bracelet bundle’ on Vinted, as an example one came on in the first few with about 20-25 bracelets, plus necklaces etc, that they had made themselves from beads and were selling as a bundle for £1, even with fees and postage it’s less than £5 total! With all of the other things included (like earrings and necklaces, I’d set aside for gifts or party bags when children are older) it’s about 10p per item. There’s quite a few like that. On Amazon (other online retailers are available!) I looked up ‘bouncy ball pack’, and a pack of 40 small bouncy balls came up for £5.99 with free postage, so about 15p each! ‘Pack mini maze’ brings up a set of 24 for £8, a little under 30p each. ‘Pack striped paper bags’ brings up sets of 100 in lots of colours for just over £5, so 5p each. So far that’s 60p per bag with contents. 20 mini space notebooks for £5, so 25p each, now up to 85p per bag. 62 bendy pencils for £8, so 13p each, up to 98p per party bag, for what I think is a pretty decent haul! Admittedly this includes lots of spares, but I put them to one side in a drawer, and use them for the next party too! any that get outgrown before use, there were never that many, went into the ‘jolly jars’ for the school tombola. Packs of sweets or mini chocolates from places like Asda. For what I have listen here, plus sweets and chocolates, you are looking at a total spend of about £40, which will give you enough for party bags for several parties!

For the older ones one year I got a beading jewellery set online, it was about £8. I made little envelopes out of doubled over tissue paper, and into each one I put a pre-cut length of the beading elastic, and enough beads to make a bracelet. DD personalised them by ensuring it was each child’s favourite colours, plus letter beads to spell their names (or a Taylor Swift album name for the swifties etc). That went down well as a party bag item, and we had lots of beading supplies left over to use in crafting sessions at play dates.

Others may think these ideas are rubbish, but I had fun doing them, the children all like them, and it meant I could stay in budget, which is important cos I am skint 😂

The curious caterpillar has great eco friendly party bags - they have pre filled ones or you can design your own . Very quick shipping sbd very reasonable prices

Thanks so much @AllTheChaos- you have really inspired me! I think the “things to do/make” side does appeal, and actually going the vinted route so it’s sort of re-using (although postage and fees slightly make me 😭 when the item is so cheap). Mini bubbles gets a mention by a few people, and they are usually brilliant. Thank you!

I can’t quite remember the name of it but there is an “end crap plastic parties” campaign thing doing the rounds at the moment and one of the things they suggest is a present swap instead of party bags – i.e. every guest brings an unwrapped small toy to the party and at the end of the party each of the guests takes something home – perhaps with the birthday kid getting early access to nab a favourite few items. Less crap, less cost. The money that you saved on party bags can go towards one chunkier present for the birthday kid.

thecuriouscaterpillar.co.uk do ready-made eco conscious party bags and are very reasonably priced. You can also buy individual bits and make them up yourself.

You can easily do it with homemade sweet cones. Just buy the bags online and get a selection of cheap supermarket bags of sweets. Job done.

I can see this resulting in lots of tears for younger children and most guests having something they don’t want with the parents annoyed they had to pay to provide the source of all the tears in the first place.

Present swap sounds dreadful in this situation.

The only toys we want to get rid of are too young to give as gifts for the age group now. No 6 year old wants Duplo or whatever.
And knowing our parents, they'll buy a new toy anyway and it will be "high value" like a real Labubu or a medium sized Lego set.

I'm all for toy swap/libraries etc but I don't think a kids party is the place for this.

For DS’s party before Xmas I’m doing a home made sweetcone (all with coordinated colours and nice sweets) and a smaller Xmas themed hot chocolate cone (Xmas themed sprinkles in point of bag, hot chocolate next, then marshmallows on top tied with a mini candy cane) he’s 10 so I had to check it wasn’t too babyish first 😂 but he really liked the idea.

The best party bags I did were these filled with sweets. A couple of larger things to fill out the bulk of the space and then smaller ones on top to make them look fuller.

https://amzn.eu/d/3CWFaGM

novelty shaped post-it notes and a colourful pencil plus eraser or ruler worked well here (and kids need it for school anyway)

Stickers, tattoos, notebooks, Lego poly bags, sweets and mini play-doh have all been things my 7 year old has liked.

Don't do seeds or books, no child actually wants them.

I sway away from party bags and go more for one main item and a slice of cake.

Thing we've done or have been given and liked:
Sweet cone
Personalised cup filled with sweets
Lego blind bag
Inflatable sword (ninja themed party)
Decorate your own item (e.g. mug or t-shirt) at the party and then get to take it home.
Playdoh
Bubble wand
Glow sticks

This is all really helpful thank you!

I must admit, I’ve been a bit stressed out by the enormous quantities of sugar coming home, so I hadn’t thought of sweet cones, but that’s actually not a bad idea. Or just bulking out a bit with wrapped sweets.

Thank you for all the good ideas.

To warn you, I thought we would be well done with this by year 6. Oh no. By then, for girls, it is more like "party favours" and the quality of your party bags were discussed in school. Not realising this, ours were not up to expected standard apparently. Expectations were personalised items, and fancy claw clips (not primark). Enjoy the lift of sweets and washable tattoos while you can !

A cheap and popular one we did was plastic/reusable popcorn boxes/holders with a packet of popcorn and some sweets in.

A quick Google shows that they're 79p at The Range ....probably buy them cheaper in multipacks elsewhere.

Punch balloons were also popular (and cheap)

Ah yes, I do not relish this thought at all! Thanks for the reality check @espresso14