It's in the bag!

I’ve seen a few posts about different ways to recycle old books recently, but one of my favourites has to be the recycled book bag. That’s a book recycled into a bag, by the way, not a bag for recycled books.

I wanted the bag to close securely
which is why i used an elastic loop
rather than ribbon.

The button is attached with
ribbon threaded through the
cover and glued on the inside.

I made the bag as a birthday gift for a friend and she’s got quite a quirky sense of style so I wanted to go for something a bit different. I also wanted quite a large, wide bag and this dictated the size of the book that I eventually chose. Most of the tutorials on the net use normal-sized hardback books, but the width of the finished bag is only the same as the width of the book’s spine so you need to bear this in mind. Use a narrow book and you end up with a bag too thin to put anything in, and what’s the point of that?

I chose a Robert Sabuda pop-up book that I found in my local charity shop. Several of the pages were damaged, so the pop-ups didn’t work, which was great as it meant I felt no guilt about ripping them out (I have this thing about destroying perfectly good stuff to make other stuff). I bought the handles from a craft shop but everything else I already had lying around at home.

The interior of the bag was made with fabric covered card glued into place with a glue gun. Hooray no sewing! The entire project only took a morning to complete.

This was a test piece, but I had an awesome response to this bag from friends and family, so I will be making some more of these and I promise to take some pictures of the construction process and post a proper tutorial. Provided that I don’t glue my hand to the camera by accident. Watch this space.

The sides of the bag were reinforced with cardboard. This makes them stiff enough that they automatically
fold inward when the bag is closed, rather than flopping outwards and looking odd. 

You can't tell from this picture, but the ribbon used to fasten the handles and button in place is the exact same
shade of purple as the strip on the edge of the cover. Sadly I couldn't get purple elastic for the fastening loop.

Say it with Skulls

Okay, so I said I'd never bake again, and yet here I am with another cakey offering. But I did stick to my absolute refusal to use icing ever again - this time it's chocolate. Serious chocolate. Seven pounds of chocolate to be exact (that's just over 3 kilos for you metric people). In total the cake weighed 21 pounds. Yes, 21 pounds (nearly 10 kilos) of chocolatey goodness. I shudder to think how many calories were involved.

This is a 21st birthday cake for my son. Originally I was just going to make a guitar cake, but I wanted to do a full size one and, as we live in the same house, I couldn't work out quite how to manage something of that size in secret. And I wanted to do something a bit different. Let's face it, there are loads of guitar cakes out there, but you don't see many cakes with skulls.

Hmm. Can't for the life of me think why.

Needle-Felted Zombie Rabbit

When Jake first discovered music and did the whole teenage band thing my once-lovely ceramics studio got overrun with a seemingly never-ending selection of guitars, amps, drum kits, microphone stands and assorted heavy metal paraphernalia. Faced with the knowledge that clay does not mix well with soft furnishings - or food for that matter - I packed away my glazes and looked around for another material that could be used in the house to create 3D objects while minimising the mess factor. Enter needle felting and I was up and running. 

I don’t sew or knit - though I can, sort of - so I’d never really considered anything textile related, but hey, I’ll try anything once, so having bought a starter pack from eBay (always my default setting for purchasing new craft materials until I find a reliable supplier), I began to look round the net for inspiration.

While there are some very talented people out there, the proliferation of needle felted teddies and cute critters weren’t really my cup of tea........

The Zombit (or Zombunny, if you prefer) was one of my earliest creations. He was inspired by a character in a book called Zombie Felties - a collection of hand sewn felted creations. I made him bigger, kept the bits I liked (the rough facial features and the overall body shape) and reworked the bits I didn’t like (the arms and ears) and he's much larger than the original. I think he’s rather sweet in an undead sort of way.

Funky Wallpapered Desk

Never make the mistake of thinking that teenage boys treat furniture with respect. By the time that my son had outgrown his desk it was chipped, scratched, ink-stained, missing half of the drawer knobs and sticky (and no, I don’t really want to speculate on the cause of the stickiness, thanks). I, on the other hand, was fed-up of sitting on the floor to do my make-up in the mornings so I jumped at the chance of repossessing said desk, which had been mine in the first place anyway, and converting it into a dressing table.

Let them eat cake!

My one and only attempt at cupcake decorating. It seemed like a great idea at the time as a cheap and easy alternative to a shop bought birthday gift. I was soooo wrong! They ended up costing more than a store bought present and took forever to get right. And because I had to make them upstairs in secret I managed to block the bathroom sink with buttercream and destroy the study. Those tiny hundreds and thousands really do get absolutely everywhere.......