What I'm Making Monday: Decorative Spring Tote Bags

So, I'm new to this whole 'What I'm Making Monday' thing, but when I saw the idea on Baby Makin(g) Machine's page, I felt inspired to join.  Not to mention, I've always been a super crafty and creative person.  Plus, I was a Fashion Merchandising major.  I thought this is a good way to network and share a different side of myself with my readers.  By the way, I'm sure that I have some silent blog stalkers out there. I just want to say that I appreciate you all checking out my blog, but feel free to leave comments and follow.

Anyways, this past Christmas I was looking for a way to avoid spending a small fortune on gifts because we have such a large family.  My mom comes from a family of 13 and my dad from a family of 8.  Then you add on their children and the grandchildren and it's well over of 50 people right there.   So, I decided to make gifts instead for all of my aunts.  Well, the lapel pins that I made for them were such a hit, that I was motivated to try my hands at making other projects as well.

At first  I was a little cautious because my skills had gotten kinda rusty. But standing in the Arts & Crafts section of our local Wally World aka WalMart, a pack of canvas totes caught my eye. Immediately, the fashion designer in me started to see all kinds of possibilities.  So, I bought a few, then a few more and now I have my own Etsy shop.  And now that I've booked my first public selling event, I've been busy making tons of them.  People really seem to be taken with my spring totes and they're not that hard to make.

All you need is:

A canvas tote

 

Some decorative fabric

Iron on adhesive

An Iron

Ribbon/Trimmings (optional)

1-You want to iron your decorative fabric to your iron on adhesive.  Make sure your iron is nice and hot.  Otherwise the fabric will not stick.

2-Once the adhesive has cooled down for about 30 seconds, trim out the pieces you would like to use and then arrange them on your bag.

3-Once, you have placed the pieces where you want them remove the wax paper from the other side of the adhesive and iron the pieces permanently into place.

4-You can finish off your bag/tote by adding some ribbon around the opening.  You can either use iron adhesive or hand sew the ribbon on.

Your finished product should look something like mine below:

These little totes will make perfect gifts and you can personalize them any way that you want to.  Check out the my Etsy store on the right to see (and hopefully purchase) some of my other one of a kind totes.