Tag Archives: purse

Upcycled Leather Jacket Purse

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.

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Cute Black Clutch Wristlet Thing

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.

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Cassette tape coin purse

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:

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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.

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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:

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