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I have been slowly revamping my creative space. One of the banes of my creative existence has been my scrapbook tote. It has served me well, as an amazing gift from from my best friend, years ago, but frankly, I had beaten the hell out of it. We'll just say it had been well loved.
I wanted to continue to use it because it functioned well, aside from a few torn pockets and busted zippers... it just looked like it had been used and abused (which it had). I tried cleaning it off, but it seemed to only get worse, and that did not remedy the broken zippers & ripped pockets issue. I really couldn't take it to a crop without feeling self conscious either. I'm hard on my equipment, apparently.
So, in the spirit of revamping my creative space, I decided that I needed to give my tote a makeover. Take a deep breath... here's what it looked like before:
I feel bad... truly. Its a good tote - and one of the biggest things that has lasted for me year after year. I'm a bad tote-mama.
To redeem myself, I went and picked out a pretty upholstery style fabric. Can't beat the price either at $2/yd!
Then I sewed and sewed and sewed....
After many long hours of sewing, hot-gluing, and cursing a little bit (I have a few blisters), here are the results:
Isn't she beautiful? I made a huge pocket on the front, double-seamed for durability and with plenty of give for storage. There are NO ZIPPERS on the outside pocket. On one side you can see that I sewed a couple of elastic strips on as well, that I use to store my pens & scissors for easy transport. As a little something extra, I stuffed dried lavender blossoms between the fabric and the tote itself so it smells wonderful, too.
I love that this beautiful tote won't wind up in a landfill somewhere, and that I was able to revamp it for less than $5 worth of fabric (seriously took less than 2 yards of the $2/yd fabric!). I have enough of the fabric leftover that I may make a tote or two that coordinate with it to hold extra scrap goodies for crops!
