VBS Craft supplies

I am planning/leading the crafts for our VBS this year. I began by looking what supplies we had at church that we could use and then what supplies I had leftover from teaching. I then went shopping with my 40% or more off coupons to buy a few more supplies at several stores. I had expected Hobby Lobby to be the best place to buy wooden crosses but I didn't see any in their wood section.

Last week I hit a few stores to buy school supplies on sale for both VBS and for homeschool. We needed a lot of glue bottles for VBS so I was happy to see those cheap at several stores.

I figured I was pretty set with supplies and ideas for projects for 3 days of VBS. Then I went into Hobby Lobby to get a present for my sister. While I was in there I saw their summer VBS craft stuff was 80% off. No wonder why I didn't see wood crosses the week before, they were in a whole different section for VBS. I bought several items and most of them the whole pack (with supplies for 6 or 12 kids) was 40 cents or less.

I plan to use a couple of these items for VBS, switching what I had originally planned in order to save myself time of cutting out items for the preschool class. The rest is organized in a tub for use for the Sunday School throughout the year or VBS next year.

I bought:
-colored foam picture frames with magnets (I plan to take their pictures at VBS on the first day and send home the picture frames with their pictures on the last day)
-brown foam crosses (not sure what to do with those yet)
-a couple of sizes of wood crosses, a lot of the small wood crosses in packs of six (some of these will be used in Sunday School for Holy Cross Day in September-the rest I have several ideas of projects)
-cross necklaces to color with markers
-stand up wood crosses
-foam ABC letters (this could be used any time of the year for lots of different kinds of projects)
-foam nametags with supplies to decorate them and wear them
-2 different kinds of shells, one is foam and one is felt
(I'm not sure what project to use these for, but they seemed to fit baptism well and looked nice. We have a family at church that plans to baptize their children soon so perhaps when that happens our Sunday School will have a baptism celebration and use these.)

Believe it or not, I controlled myself and this was only a fraction of what was in the spring/summer/VBS 80% off aisle.

When I paid I found out that Hobby Lobby will give a 10% discount (even on top of sales) if you pay with your church or school or other nonprofit credit card or check. I paid for this out of my own pocket as it was so cheap and I don't have to deal with being reimbursed by the church. But I'm going to make sure that the preschool teachers and director know this and keep it in mind if we have a big supply order.

I was happy to support Hobby Lobby. They are building another store in our area, when that is completed it may be dangerous for me to have 2 stores tempting me in both directions that I usually shop!

After VBS I'll post photos of the completed projects for you to see.