Bags Bags Bags

Now that Christmas is over, I can finally share this great project! I could not resist making these cute tote bags for everyone and did not resist. I saw a great tutorial on V & Co a few months ago on making wheat pillows with freezer paper and spray paint, and I was hooked. Unfortunately I didn’t really have a place for them in the house, plus there is that whole “no sewing” thing that I try to stick to. So I decided to see if it would work on these tote bags, and luckily it did!

I printed this wheat stencil from Vanessa’s site, traced it onto some freezer paper and cut out the leaves.

I arranged the leaves on the bag and ironed them down. Luckily, they peeled off easily and could be re-ironed on if I changed my mind about spacing or whatever.

I taped off an inch at the top of the bag because I wanted to keep a beige rim, and then spray painted it with two light coats of paint.

When it was dry, I just peeled off the freezer paper and was done!

It turned out so great! The freezer paper sealed really well so the paint didn’t bleed at all, and the stencil lines looked really sharp.

Once I saw how well this turned out I had to make more! For this brown bag I followed the same steps as for the blue one, and just spray painted the whole bag, including the handles. It turned out great, but took forever to do the entire thing and used most of a can of spray paint. But I still really like it.

I thought that a quicker way to make a bag like the one above would be to just start with a brown bag and spray paint the stencil area white, but this just didn’t work. The paint just soaked through the bag and didn’t show up at all. So I used a few leftover scraps of linen from my cheater pillow, taped off little squares, cut out leaf and tree stencils with the freezer paper and spray painted those.

I then went against my no-sew policy and hand stitched them onto the bag. I was reminded why I don’t like to hand sew-it took forever!! But the end result was perfect and I was really happy with it. The spray paint did bleed a little into the leaves on the linen, but it wasn’t that noticeable and still looked good.

The finished product.

I made another brown bag with this blue leaf stencil that I hand-sewed for my sister, but since I finished it the night before we left I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of the finished product! Crazy, I know!

Everyone seemed to like their bags, and now I get to make one for myself! My brother and sister-in-law kept telling me that I should try to put some of this stuff on Etsy, but I think that once people see how easy it is to make, they would just do it themselves, right? I don’t think I’m ready to dive into Etsy yet, but it is fun to think about.

Next week I will be back to let you know what I ended up doing with these fun blocks.

From Windows Live Writer

I’m linking up to the Girl Creative, Metamorphasis Monday, Make It For Monday, It's So Very Cheri, A Soft Place to Land, Today's Creative Blog, Blue Cricket Designs, Shabby Chic Cottage, Somewhat Simple, Thrifty Thursday, Creative Cats and Funky Junk Interiors.