Last year I made a purse out of a leather jacket I found at a Goodwill. It’s pretty big, which is nice sometimes but lately I’ve been wanting a smaller purse to carry essentials in and not have to worry about stuff getting lost in an abyss. Naturally my first instinct was to go to Goodwill and find a leather jacket that I could use, and just my luck, I found exactly one leather jacket in the whole store. It was meant to be!
I’ve been craving a leather purse recently, but they’re always too pricey for me, and I would feel too bad about buying a brand new leather purse when there are plenty of used leather things sitting at thrift stores just waiting for a new life. While browsing through clothes at a Goodwill while I was out of town last week, I found a jacket that I was convinced would work perfectly for the type of bag I wanted to make. My boyfriend thought it wouldn’t be enough material, but he was wrong – he should know by now not to doubt me. 
So here is the jacket I bought. A nice deep brown leather jacket. $13. Perfect.
I’ve actually been lusting over a specific purse, so I thought to myself that it would be good to use that bag as a rough blueprint for the purse I was going to make. Here is that purse:
The Lucky Brand Abbey Road messenger-type bag. It’s convertible. You can use it as either a cross body bag or you could tuck the longer strap away and use it as a hand held bag with the smaller straps.
And it’s $178.
So that was my mission, to make a similar bag with the jacket I got.
In the days before my friends bachelorette party I searched high and low for a semi-cheap black clutch or wristlet or purse to carry around with me. For some reason this task was impossible, so a few hours before I had to leave the house I had the bright idea to make my own. I had everything I needed here anyway, or so I thought. I had a zipper, I had a tupperware full of fabrics I could use as a liner, I had some length of chain that I could use for the strap, but low and behold, I didn’t have any suitable black material. After the quickest trip to the fabric store that I’ve ever done, I was ready to create.
And here it is, my cute little black clutch/wristlet thing.
So, many of you know that I make cassette tape wallets.. After a few weeks of using mine, I found out that they’re not ideal for storing lose change. It slides out of the sides when you unzip it causing you to scramble around on the floor to collect your change. Or maybe that’s just me. In any case, it inspired me to make a coin purse version of the cassette tape wallet. I wanted a metal purse frame clamshell thing as a closure instead of a zipper, but I didn’t want to pay 5+ bucks for one (yeah, I’m cheap) so that was really the only thing holding me up from making one. However, after cleaning my room the other day I found an old wallet which happened to have a coin purse attached.. perfect! The wallet was already falling apart, so I just ripped the frame out and got crackin’.
These are my materials:
a cassette tape, a metal purse frame (I’m not sure of the size because I just ripped it out of that wallet) and fabric.
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:
A few days ago I posted about my cassette tape wallet and how it’s held up over the past 10 months, and I promised a tutorial. Well here it is!
First you need to get your hands on a cassette tape. Continue reading
Sorry I haven’t posted in a long time! It’s been a busy few days. It’s also been a while since I’ve said I was going to do the makeup bag tutorial, so I put it together today! For all of you who don’t remember, or who haven’t seen, my first post was about a travel set that included a makeup bag. I kinda had to wing it on the bag because I knew the style I wanted it to be, but I couldn’t remember where I had seen a tutorial for it a long time ago. I promised I’d make a tutorial for the makeup bag according to how I made it, so here it is!
All the pieces.
About 10 months ago I made a cassette tape wallet after I was inspired by some that I saw online. They were on sale for $43 and the first thought in my mind was, “I can make that for less!” So that’s what I did. Here’s some pictures of it when it was freshly made.
Summer is approaching, so I thought I’d share a project I did a while back which would be used at the pool or beach. Basically it’s a beach bag, but it’s also a towel! It folds up into itself (much like a quillow) but it has handles that make it into a bag. You can throw in your sunscreen, flip flops and other goodies you’d bring to the beach and/or pool.
Here’s mine:
This is my first official post since this blog was created, and I’m oh so excited. I hope you guys like it!
I decided to make a travel set the other day after being inspired to make a straightener cozy by gatheringtwigs over on Craftster.
Here’s everything together:
Forgive me for the dirty mirror, I was too excited to take pictures that I didn’t think to clean it up first!
