How I Got My Groove Back

Hello again!  It’s been too long.  Life caught up with me the last month or so, between the 4^th and our vacation to San Francisco (there will be pictures in another post).  In the mean time, I’ve come up with a fantastic new idea for some totes, so I’m going to talk about that today, in narrative form… Story time!

A little backstory to start:  Ever since we got back from our vacation, I’ve been be fairly uninspired.  Call it a creative slump, heat induced laziness or general mild malaise, I just wasn’t getting much done in the way of making new things for my Etsy shop, or marketing.   However, two things happened yesterday that kick started my creative juices:  I went to Joann’s and found a set of hanging closet organizers that were 50% off, and ¾ of a yard of clear vinyl in the remnants bin.  These items aren’t related to each other, but they both gave me the collective kick I needed.

The fruits of my labor!  A stuffed, but 
organized closet.  Also, I hate proper folding.

Firstly, the closet hangers… I’ve been meaning to clean and straighten our closet for a while.  I like organization, but sometimes I just can’t seem to pick up that shirt from the growing pile on the floor. Our lack of storage space doesn’t help either.  Buying the closet organizers was the perfect motivation to get in there and pick everything up.  The closet itself is huge, so it took me about 2 hours to root around, pull everything out, and then put in the organizers in and put everything back.  Now our stuff is wonderfully neat and tidy.  The cleaning even spilled over into my work space and I tidied that up as well.  As any woman can tell you, cleaning/ organizing something can be great source of inspiration, motivation, mood elevator, well of happiness, ect (am I right ladies?). 

The other kick came from the idea I had when I saw the vinyl.  At first I thought, “$2?   But what the heck would I do with it?”  Then the idea just came to me… I could totally use that to put picture pockets on a tote bag!  How awesome would that be?  It’s a great way to personalize a bag.  I have so many ideas of what they could be used for… school tote bags, friendship totes, a fancy bag for a gift, and so on.  So I got it, and stashed when I got home so I could tackle the closet.

So, when I got up this morning I got to work figuring out just how I was going to put something like this together.  I wanted to frame the vinyl rectangle with fabric, so that I could then attach the fabric frame to a tote.  I went through several ideas before I decided to try bias tape, and this is the result: 

There is vinyl inside the frame, you just can't see it here... cause its clear!

I think it turned out really great! I just designed this little tote bag to go with it, so I’ll post again when I finish it.

Yes, I did sketch my design on the back of an index card.

Moral of the story:  Creative rut?  Go clean something, and all will be well.

The next big post should be all about the vaca, with lots of pictures!


Update:  Here's a picture of how the tote turned out-

I love it!  You love it too?  Check this link and you can buy it.