That’s hot. Seriously. Hot, fused plastic. Tote.

Man, I haven’t posted in a loooong long time.. I had to brush the dust off of this thing before I started this post! Haha.  I apologize, I don’t even have a real good reason, but I’ll try to make it up to you with this post.

I was trying to get myself out of this no crafting deal I had been having for a while by flipping through some of my old magazines for inspiration.. when I found just what I needed.

I saw this bag on the right, and I knew I had to make one.  That bag, from Keen Footwear is actually made from woven rice paper, but I decided to do mine with fused plastic.  I used a tutorial from the Etsy Labs on how to fuse the plastic bags.  After that I just made a basic tote.. with some woven details.  Here’s what was created:

I apologize for the kind of crappy pictures, my nice camera is out of commision for the time being.  Anywho, that’s the bag.

Here’s the back of it.

Here’s some detailing..

Some more details.

The insides.

The zipper..

I usually just kinda put in the zipper without thinking about it too much.. which resulted in some not-so-pretty zippers.. but I found this wonderful tutorial on how to install zippers so they look oh so pretty, so now I use it all the time!

And that’s it!  I will probably be making more of these, it’s a great way to recycle plastic bags.. You could also make some reuseable grocery totes with this technique.. I saw some that they were selling at target… way over-priced for me though, considering I can make some myself!