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Dave Blumenthal is a (mostly) regular man who works in finance and tries to manage the ups and downs of fatherhood during his free time. At night, Dave works as a cartoonist. Under the nickname "Sandwich Bag Dad," Dave combines his love of art with his love of wordplay and dad jokes.
Sandwich Bag Dad's tale began in 2012. Dave's older daughter, Sharni, had only begun school a few weeks after her younger sister was born. To make Sharni feel unique and appreciated throughout this upheaval of events, Dave's wife began carving small love hearts and other forms into her school sandwiches. After a few days, Dave took over the sandwich carving duties, and things quickly spiralled out of control. As the daily sandwich cut-outs became more and more complex, Dave began to receive new carving requests from Sharni's friends and instructors.
For weeks, the daily sandwich carvings persisted.
One day, as he was preparing to begin a new sandwich carving "masterpiece," Dave noticed a marker pen on the kitchen worktop and had an idea. Why not have him sketch his patterns on the sandwich bag instead of carving shapes into the bread? According to legend, the rest is sandwich bag history.
After then, drawing on Sharni's lunch bags became a daily habit. Over the next five years, Sharni's classmates, instructors, and school administrators grew to appreciate Dave's lunch bag art. "Your daughter is doing great, but can we talk about your lunch bag paintings a little more?" Sharni's teachers would frequently begin parent-teacher conferences with.
After much pushing from Sharni's professors, Dave eventually joined the world of social media in 2016, creating his "Sandwich Bag Dad" profiles on Instagram and Facebook to begin promoting his work.
When Sharni's two sisters, Tia and Milly, started school and demanded their own individual sandwich bag paintings, Dave's daily lunch bag job grew and then doubled over the next four years. He continued to post his work on social media networks and acquire a large following throughout this time.
In the year 2020, Dave's peculiar habit became widely known. Sandwich Bag Dad has been featured in a variety of publications and entertainment websites throughout the world. His lunch bags were even given their own exhibition at Australia's National Cartoon Gallery.
To this day, Dave continues to design lunch bag pictures for all three of his kids every school day. The bags are usually made at night, and depending on their complexity, each one takes between 10 and 30 minutes to sketch. When Dave is finished, he photographs and stacks his work on social media for posterity. Every morning, the Sandwich Bag Kids pick their bags from the stockpile before emptying their sandwiches inside and heading to school. Although Dave's lunch bag is hung on the classroom wall on occasion, the vast majority of the bags are crumpled and tossed in the recycling bin. Dave, on the other hand, is unconcerned with the situation. He knows the bag performed its job by bringing a smile, an eye roll, and a meal to lunchtime.
Sandwich Bag Dad provided all of the photos for this story.