Make your own charades kit

There is always a scramble to find supplies when it's time to play charades. For each team, you need some paper (to make the challenges), a pen (of course), and a bag to let the other team's players draw their charade challenge from.

I decided to make a nice charades kit. Added bonus: it will be a gift for my friend who loves to play charades, and often suggests it when there's a large group around on a holiday weekend. She also plays charades sometimes on New Year's Eve, so I wanted the bags to be a little bit fancy, but still whimsical.

This is an easy sewing project. I up-cycled some materials, and you could certainly recycle some fabric.
On to the instructions!

How to play charades:
Instructions here, here and here.

Step 1 Supplies

Materials:
- Fabric -I used a piece of black synthetic fabric about 11" wide by 40" wide
- Cords to make the ties -- these I obtained from handled shopping bags (up-cycling)
- Decorative ribbon or braid - also up-cycled from various packages, wrappings, etc.
- Two small notebooks and two pens to go inside the finished bags. I happen to like Rhodia notebooks, and they can be obtained inexpensively at art supplies stores. but any notebook would do.

Sewing supplies:
- pins
- thread
- sewing machine
- sharp scissors
- measuring tape or ruler