Wedding Heart Rice Bag

This lovely little bag has a variety of uses. We originally designed it as a bag to hold rice that can be handed out to wedding guests outside the church following the ceremony. But it can also be used to hold small favors or candies and placed on the tables at the reception. We recently designed this bag for a 50th anniversary party and included a small fade-out photo of the couple's wedding photo. The clipart is actually pictures of gold curling ribbon that we took with a digital camera. The small gold hearts were cropped from a photo of a gold foil wine bag. See our Tips and Tricks section for instructions on how to make your own curling ribbon and foil clipart. Or drop us a line and we'll send you ours! Then let your imagination run wild with this project!

MATERIALS

110 lb. card stock (or the heaviest your printer will handle)

Plain inkjet paper

Curling ribbon

Sheer ribbon (about 20 inches per bag)

Glue stick or double stick tape

Single hole punch

Scissors

Rice bag template (see link at bottom of this page)

INSTRUCTIONS

1) Open a blank page in your graphics program in landscape orientation. Import the rice bag template by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page. When the template page opens, right click on it and from the drop down menu select "Save Picture As…". Select .GIF or .BMP as the file type and save the file to the directory of your choice.

2) Place the rice bag template on your blank page and resize so that it measures 7 3/4" wide and 5" high. Save the file and print it out on plain paper.

3) Open a second page in your graphics program in portrait orientation. Place a heart shape with no fill and a light gray outline on the page and resize so that it measures 4 3/4" X 4 3/4". Place whatever clipart you like on your heart. Don't be afraid to run some of your design off the edge of the heart like we did with some of the curling ribbon art. Add your desired text.

4) Group all the items - the heart, any clipart and text. Once grouped, move the heart to the top left-hand side of the page.

5) Select the grouped heart, copy and paste. Move the pasted copy down to the lower right-hand side of the page. Make sure that none of the cutting lines are overlapped.

6) Print the heart page on the card stock.

7) Cut out the rice bag and fold on all the lines. Glue the tabs on the bottom and side and press in place to form the bag. Remember our old tip about using a pencil eraser to get down inside the bag to make sure all the tabs adhere well.

8) Cut out the two hearts from the card stock. Place one on the table blank side up. Glue the back of the rice bag or use double stick tape. Carefully place the bag onto the blank side of the heart so that the bottom corners just about touch the side edges of the heart. Be especially careful if you're using tape, as it will not be as easy to move the bag around if you need to adjust the placement.

9) Apply the glue stick or double stick tape to the front of the bag and carefully place the second heart on it. Be careful that none of the bag corners are showing. It may be easier to try just the glue stick the first time or two until you become comfortable with the placement. Then you can move onto making them with the tape - which is a lot quicker and a lot less messy!

10) Gently open the bag while it is still lying flat and place a few fingers inside to press the bag to the heart. Turn it over and repeat to make certain it is adhered well.

11) Punch a hole at the top of the heart, about an 1/8" from the "dip" in the center.

12) Feed the sheer ribbon through the hole (wired ribbon is NOT recommended for this project as it can tear the card stock when you're pulling it through!)

13) Fill the bag with rice or candy or whatever else you are putting in it. Even out the ribbon so that it is the same length on both sides of the heart and tie into a bow.

14) Take a piece of curling ribbon and pre-curl it by running it over the edge of a scissors blade. Feed one end through the hole and just loop the back half of the ribbon over the front of the heart and twist them together gently.

That's it! The more of them you make, the quicker and easier it becomes! And the results are purely spectacular!

Rice Bag Template

Wedding Heart Rice Bag Instructions

For a print friendly version, click on this link.