Make It Amazing Handbag Tutorial

I love trying new craft products, so you can imagine my excitement when this box of goodies arrived at my door:

Scotch^® Australia and New Zealand are hosting the Make It Amazing competition (with a chance to win an iPad Mini by creating with Scotch^® Expressions Tape). The pack I received was very girly – pinks and purple with a roll of green thrown in the mix. Looks like I have to make something for Little Miss Pink here.

I’ve been feeling a bit guilty that I promised to make Celeste a handbag when I made this birthday present. Once the idea was in my head, I just had to go with it! So here’s the Scotch^® Expressions Make It Amazing Handbag:

I seriously love the print on this. I’m almost tempted to make another one for me! I didn’t use even half the roll of tape!

Let’s see how I made it (and get more details of the Make It Amazing Competition at the end of the post):

Materials

1 roll Scotch^® Expressions Packaging Tape in Pink Baroque
1 roll Scotch^® Expressions Packaging Tape in White with Pink Polka Dots
1 roll Scotch^® Expressions Tape in Pink
1 small cardboard cereal box
Scissors
2 sheets white printer paper
Glue
Small button or brad

Instructions

1. Open up the cardboard cereal box by carefully pulling apart the glued sections.

2. Draw the handbag shape, tracing a small plate or other circle for the curved section. Make sure the front and back are the same height and leave a long, skinny rectangle above the centre of one of the curves for the bag closure.

3. Cut out the bag shape.

4. Carefully place strips of Scotch^® Shipping Packaging Tape in Pink Baroque over the bag, extending slightly off the top and bottom. I started at the centre of the front piece to avoid having a seam in the centre of the bag, although the pattern is quite busy and hard to spot the seams.

5. With the overhang of the tape stuck to your bench, holding the bag in place, place place additional strips of Scotch^® Shipping Packaging Tape in Pink Baroque, lining up the pattern. I found if you changed the orientation of each strip, the patterns lined up reasonably well.

6. Keep going until the bag is covered.

7. Trim the excess tape around all edges of the cardboard.

8. Flip the cardboard over. This was the printed side of the cardboard for me, which showed through the white background of the polka dot tape. I grabbed a couple of sheets of printer paper and glued them onto the cardboard with a glue stick.

9. I then repeated the previous steps applying strips of Scotch^® Shipping Packaging Tape in White with Pink Polka dots. Unfortunately, this pattern of this tape doesn’t join nicely, so I ended up alternating strips of pink Scotch^® Expressions Tape between the Polka Dots. I still thought the stripes and spots was a funky look!

10. Trim the excess tape around the edges of the cardboard.

11. Place small strips of pink Scotch^® Expressions Tape over the top edge. Small strips work best to get a nice smooth curve, without too many wrinkles.

12. Place border strips of pink Scotch^® Expressions Tape along each edge of the box and along the long strip for the closure (on both sides)

13. Tape the cardboard box back together, placing tape inside and outside the bag for extra strength.

14. For the strap, place a long strip of pink Scotch^® Expressions Tape sticky-side up on your table (approximately 40cm). Take another piece 5cm smaller than the first piece, and stick it to the first piece, leaving 2.5cm at each end.

Stick the two end pieces to the inside of the handbag, and reinforce with a small strip of tape on the outside.

15. Lay a 4cm piece of pink Scotch^® Expressions Tape sticky-side up on your table. Carefully place a 2.5 cm piece of tape over the top leaving sticky sections on each side. Place this on the front of the bag for the closure to slot into.

16. Most normal people would stop there, but I decided it needed a small flower to cover up the closure. Stick two approximately 5cm pieces of pink Scotch^® Expressions Tape together.

17. Cut 5 petal shapes out of the strip of tape.

18. Make a small fold in the bottom of each petal (see photo above).

19. Stick the petals to a small piece of tape.

 

20. Glue a button or brad onto the centre of the flower.

21. Glue the flower over the closure on the bag.

And there you have a cute, waterproof, wipe clean bag for a sweet little girl. You really wouldn’t know it was made of tape and cardboard! Celeste is very please with her new bag!

For your chance to win an iPad mini, enter your project using Scotch Expressions Tape at Make It Amazing. There are 5 iPads available in Australia and 2 in New Zealand. Winners will be selected by a combination of votes by users and a final assessment by 3M. Voting on creations also gives you the chance to instant win products.

Come back soon for a giveaway to help you along with your entry… Updated: enter the competition here

Disclosure: I received free product and compensation for my time from Scotch^® Australia and New Zealand. All opinions and projects are my own.