First off, I’d like to say
thank you to Silhouette America
for sponsoring this post and
providing me with the supplies I used to make these pouches as
well
as compensating me for my time and crafting abilities! I have been a fan
of Silhouette and their vinyl cutters since my BFF got one several
years ago and am so excited to try out their new Mint machine. All
ideas and opinions expressed in this post are mine alone.
 
The day has finally come and I am headed out to Salt Lake City in just a few short hours for the SNAP conference! Of course I still have several things to finish packing (I am a last minute kinda gal), but one thing that I have ready to go are a few adorable travel snack pouches. With my busy days, there are often times that I forget to eat or just grab random things I find in the pantry. Not a great solution. To help my eating habits when I have no time to think, I decided to create a few fruity snack pouches filled with healthy, protein rich snacks that I can just grab and go. And they are going to be just perfect for my trip!

Aren’t they just perfect? And this pineapple pouch will be able to do double duty and work as my bag for the Palm Springs pool party that is happening at SNAP on Friday night! While I sewed these pouches, don’t worry if you don’t have the sewing skills to make your own zip pouches, because I have a solution for you!

The Supplies:

• Silhouette Mint Stamp Kit
• Silhouette Mint Stamp Kit, 45mm by 45mm (one for each type of fruit you are going to use)
• Silhouette Ink in your fruit colors
• Blank Canvas Zip Pouch (Or zippers, canvas and a sewing machine if you want to make your own)
• Pom pom trim and tassels (optional) – You can sew the trim into your bag if you are making your own or glue it on the pre-made bag and add the tassels to the zipper using a jewelry jump ring.

Whether you will be making your own pouch or not, you will begin the same way, by making your stamps. I used images of a pineapple and watermelon slice. You can save these here:

 Once you have these saved to your computer, open the Mint program and import the images. Size them as desired for the 45mm by 45mm stamp and then select Silhouette => send to Mint. Then simply load in your stamp from the back and the machine will do all the work.

Now that you have your stamps made, peel them off of the paper card and mount them to your stamp base.

As you can see, I used one large stamp pad (because I ran out of the smaller stamps) and made three images on one, which actually made it super difficult to use, but I ended up wrapping the portion of the stamp that I wasn’t using in plastic wrap and that seemed to work okay. Anyway, once you have your stamp, load the ink onto the stamp by tracing around the image using the different colors. This is where the Mint stamps are so much better than traditional stamps. You can actually use as many colors as you wish in your stamp instead of having to have the entire stamp be one color. How cool is that?! So for my watermelon I put green ink on the rind and pink on the center fruit part.

Let the ink sit for 5 minutes to absorb and then stamp off the extra ink until the image is clear.

Once your stamp is cleaned of the extra ink, go ahead and stamp your fabric or pre-made pouch in whatever pattern you want. You could even make a mixed fruit bag if you wanted!

I found that each type of fabric absorbed the ink a little differently. On the thick canvas, I could only get 3-4 stamps before I needed to add more ink, but the images where very crisp. On the cotton twill that I used, I could get about 8-10 stamps before I needed more ink, but ink ran a bit and made the small details blurry. So know that each fabric works a little different with the ink and stamp. So feel free to experiment with different types if you are making your own pouch.

Once your ink has dried overnight, you can use washable fabric glue to glue on the pom pom trim of your pre-made pouch, or go ahead and sew up your zippered pouch if you are making your own. Here is a little tutorial to get you started if you want to try to sew your own.

 Aren’t these just perfect for a quick snack on the go? And seriously how adorable are those fruit stamps? I know that I will find tons more uses for them!