There’s no bigger time of the year for decorating than the holiday season. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas decorations flood the stores – and we can’t help but buy, buy, BUY. We recently took a little trip to our local party supply store to see what kind of Thanksgiving decorations we could get for the cost of one of our printable party sets.
Now, before I delve into my love for printables I have to say this… not all store bought decorations are terrible. There I said it. No really, there are some adorable and well-done decorations sold in stores and yes, even I buy them. The point I am trying (and will) make here, is how to get the best bang for your buck when it comes to paper. After all, that is kind of my thing.
For this comparison we used our Modern Fall Printable set, listed for $12.95. Then, we picked up 3 items at the party supply store (pictured above) to best match the cost of our printable collection. The store bought items included the following:
12 ft Honeycomb Garland – $8.99
12 Placecards – $2.59
4 Thanksgiving Playmates (pop-up decor) – $3.79
Now just think for a quick second about how your thanksgiving table would look with these three items…
…… exactly.
Now, here is a little taste of what your table might look like with our printables on it.
In just in this one photo, are only FOUR of the items included in the set – and that’s not even close to all of them!
Here’s a list of all of the items in our printable set:
2” Party Rounds use for:
place cards, party food labels, name tags or garland
Wine Glass Tags
Favor Bag Toppers / Party Food Labels
Napkin Rings / Watter bottle wraps / Juice box wraps
Banner Leaves (in 5 sizes)
Full Patterned sheets
Not only do you have more choices of decor, but you have the opportunity to personalize them and make them your own. You don’t get this kind of option with store bought decorations. And just think about next year… will you have saved your 3 items purchased from the party store? Where did you store them? Do you have room to store them? Did they get a little bit squished over the past year? Will you have to re-buy the set of place cards because you wrote on all of them last year? See where I’m going with this? The Modern Fall printable party collection is yours, forever. And you don’t need to find a box and a place in the attic to store it. Personalize and print again next year and you will have saved even more!
Let’s break it down just a little bit further… After you spend your $12.95, you will need paper, toothpicks, tape, string, scissors and of course printer ink. You can get a pack of 150 sheets of white card stock for as low as $5, I’ve also seen a pack of 75 sheets here. Maybe you already have some of the other supplies – but toothpicks, tape, string (or ribbon) and scissors can all be picked up at your local dollar store, or borrowed from your neighbor. And then on to ink… I’ve researched ink pricing, per sheet, and there is a WIDE range of cost from .05 per page to .20 cents per page. Let’s just say your printer ink costs .10 per page, and you want to print the following:
12 place cards = 1 printed page
12 cupcake toppers = 1 printed page
12 wine glass tags = 1 printed page
4 party food labels = 1 printed page
12 napkin rings = 3 printed pages
mini-leaves for sprinkling on the table top = 1 printed page
1 large banner = 3 printed pages
Now, I’m not great with math, but this is looking like you’ve just spent about $20 bucks- give or take. Pretty cool, right? Next, if you have caught the “printables” bug like SO many, how about a Thankgiving dinner activity to keep all the guests busy while you mash the potatoes? Photo booth props do the trick EVERY time.
This is the beauty of printables… a single party collection can work for your family of 5 or 50.