Testudo Treats

As many people know, the official mascot for the University of Maryland is the terrapin (or a terp, for short... er, yeah). As fewer people know, I'm about ready to graduate from UMD with my Masters degree (HOORAY), which also explains the delay on this post. To share the happiness and indulge in sentimentality, I wanted to make some little goodbye/good luck/congrats-fellow-graduate gifts for those I'm leaving behind, and I came up with these little treats:

Here's the backstory: Back in February my mom gave me a little Valentine's Day gift that mixed together some of my favorite things - owls and candy! She was also proud of her bow-making abilities (check out that awesome and complicated-looking bow in the upper left-hand corner!). I liked the whole concept of the treat bag so much that I didn't even eat the M&Ms until last month, wanting to keep the design intact. I knew that I wanted to replicate it somehow for my end-of-the-semester gifts to grad school friends, so I began thinking about how I wanted them to look and what sort of candy to fill them with. Reese's Pieces were the obvious choice, as they incorporate most of UMD's colors (ok, not red, but look at the UMD logo and Testudo image, and you'll see what I mean). For the top of the treat bags, I selected my favorite crafting medium - book pages!

I've always been a fan of the stamping-on-book-pages look (evidence), like the Etsy pieces below from RococcoCo and collageOrama:

Happy Fourth!

I looked far and wide for a suitable turtle stamp for my treat bags... but no such luck. However, last Fourth of July, my mom and I created some decorations like this little twirler (right) by running a vintage book page through our home printer - pretty sweet, huh? So, when I hit a dead end in the stamp search, I came up with the next best thing - printing off color turtle images on pre-printed cardstock. Why not use actual book pages? Well, for one, I definitely wanted cardstock for the treat bag toppers (for sturdiness), and most books aren't printed on cardstock. Also, it was much easier to print off a set of four toppers on a sheet of cardstock (and then cut them apart) than trimming down four pages (I made 45 treat bags total, during the semester crunch, so easier = better).

I'll break down the steps for assembling below, starting with a picture of my "stamp" contenders:

I ultimately settled on the more detailed image (on right), and while I liked the red version a lot, it was a bit more maroon than I wanted (UMD's color is a solid red), so I opted for green in the end.

Step One: Making Toppers. After figuring out the dimensions of my treat bags from Wiltons, I set up a page on Microsoft Word with screenshots of Alice in Wonderland (taken from the free eBook on Google Books - I downloaded the PDF). After printing off several copies of these pages on white cardstock, I prepped my second Word document, on which I arranged my turtle 'stamps.' I simply used a clip-art from Google Image search, and recolored it via Word's picture tools menu - super low tech, here. Once my second sheet was prepped, I ran the same sheets of cardstock through the printer, layering the turtle images over the Alice text. So, they came out like this:

After they were trimmed down to size

 

Step Two: Filling Treat Bags. A little goes a long way with these, which was good for my budget. I just dropped in a little scoop of Reese's Pieces (after I peeled open the bag - curse you, static cling!).

Step Three: Attaching Toppers. I prepped my toppers by folding them all in half so that they were ready for this step. Simply sandwich the top of the bag between the two flaps of the topper (make sure there's enough to catch with your stapler), press the flaps together, and staple 'em shut!

And there you have it! It took me roughly three bags of Reese's Pieces to fill up 45 treat bags, in case you were wondering (I had a hard time guestimating, and ended up having to make a quick return to Target!). I used the back of the toppers to write little notes to recipients with a red Sharpie, which showed up pretty well. I am definitely planning on reusing this idea when I'm back in the classroom - it's really easy to reproduce in bulk, especially if you don't have such an elaborate topper-making process. And they are pretty cost-efficient, so win-win. Plus, people really enjoyed getting them:

@caritasity thanks so much for the treat in my mailbox! You're too sweet!
— Susie Compton (@academicsusie) May 9, 2013

Testudo Treats!