Sunday, August 2, 2009

"Bedazzling" a commercial bag to make it YOURS

I just submitted a couple of photos to a readers' photo gallery connected to a Seattle Times article about reusable shopping bags. One photo I shared was of one of my knitted plastic bag bags, and the other was of my favorite Trader Joe's bag that I blinged up with beads and eyelets, just to make it MINE. Thought I would share the photos of the Trader Joe's bag here for fun.



I really loved this bag to begin with, maybe because it has my favorite green on it, but mostly because I love its crazy collection of images. It was a bargain at $1.99. And it was crying out to be embellished.

I was flat-out sick at some point after I bought the bag and needed something to do while crashed out on the couch besides knitting (what?!). This bead sewing extravaganza is what resulted.



I sewed beads around the name on both sides of the bag -





And I added beads here and there where the design called out for them -







I added these cool little eyelets where there was a funny grouping of little circles in the design -


There are some similar red circles that I bought red eyelets for but I never got around to adding them. Hmmm...


Here is a link to the article on the Seattle Times website: