Nylon Bags and Gymnastics

My 7 year old is on pre-team gymnastics. What exactly is "pre-team"? Well, at the gym we are at, it means a day less of practice as team and also a little less expensive. She is technically a Level 2 gymnast.

She LOVES gymnastics. When she was 3, we began with ballet. She danced until this past year when she decided to give gymnastics her full attention.

The gym tries very hard to maintain the cost of the pre-team low. (Which I appreciate very much.) Because of this, they do not have a team bag. At our first meet, all the girls had their own bags to put their shoes and sweats in while they competed.

For some reason this drove me nuts. I decided to take it upon myself to buy the girls bags. The most inexpensive option is nylon, drawstring bags. The problem with this kind of bag is getting decorations to stick.

After looking EVERYWHERE online for information (and finding very little) I decided to experiment. I only needed nine bags and received twelve.

Online you can find a special kind of vinyl for nylon, but it requires a professional iron press. I just couldn't see how I was going to use it at home. I tried regular iron-on vinyl: no go. Then I picked up some fabric paints: the color was not bright and did not stand out. Lastly, I tried out my paint pen. Winner!!

I was able to use a silver, oil based paint to draw the team name on the bags. I then tried to layer a second color (fabric paint) on top to get the look I wanted. The fabric paint came off so I used a second oil based paint for the top layer. This worked perfectly!!

SO if you buy nylon bags, use oil paint pens!! I found mine at Michael's by the paint, not by the fabric paints. (Don't forget to use your coupon.)

The paint pens I used.

The finished bag.

Thanks for checking out my post!!