Saturday, February 26, 2011

Make Your Boring Reusable Grocery Bags Fun!

There are a thousand tutorials on the internet for making cloth grocery bags, and most of fairly easy.  I've seen some gorgeous bags of coordinating fabric and sometimes even reversible!  My bags, though  take a lot of abuse and get thrown in the laundry with the towels.  Nice fabric and reversible bags are not practical for my needs.

Instead, I bought a bolt of unbleached duck cloth that has given me a ton a bags.  The only down side was that the bags were kind of boring.  Well, they were until I won the ColorArtz Fabric Airbrush Starter Kit from a Chica and Jo blog giveaway!  The boring bags are now:
Fun!  I am loving the, "Made from Recycled Kitty Litter" ones most. 

With no Cricut or Silhouette machine, and being too lazy to do all the cutting for freezer paper stencils, I've resorted to using painters tape and adhesive letters with the ColorArtz Airbrush. 
To make the arrows, I used a small "l" for the center line of the arrows and removed the dot from the "i" and put one on each side for the rest of the arrow.  The ripped part is on top of the "l" to give the outer edges clean lines.  I could have used scissors, but, well, that would require more work.  If you've read my blog before, you should know that the words "quick and easy" are practically my mantra.

I use painter's tape for the lines around the lettering and cover the rest of the bag with paper in case of over-spray.  Be sure to press the edges of the tape and the lettering down to get clean lines.  The airbrush is surprisingly easy to use.  Paint does not go all over as it does with paint cans.  You do want to cover the rest of the piece you are working on, but the paint won't  fill the air. 

Using  scissors or rotary cutters that give a wavy edge would be a great idea for the painter's tape, too.  If you have a fancy vinyl machine, I'm sure there are awesome things that you could do with this. 

11 comments:

  1. I've been wondering how well those fabric airbrushes work. Thanks for the review - definitely adding one to my wish list now!

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  2. Very clever stenciling, Baye. We love the kitty litter one the best, too!

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  3. These are really neat and much better than plain old bags. My favorite's the kitty litter one too.

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  4. what a clever idea i also like kitty litter one i am ur new follower and would love you to have a look at my blog and may be follow it too :)

    http://artscraftsnhobbies.blogspot.com/

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  5. Very creative! Thanks for sharing!

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  6. Those are super cute! Congrats on winning that awesome giveaway. I am a new follower from Craft-O-Maniac. I would love it if you visited my blog!

    Melanie
    youmadethat.blogspot.com

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  7. What a creative idea! The bags aren't boring now. Thanks so much for linking up!

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  8. Great idea & cute designs! Came here from Tip Junkie & would love if you'd check out my blog as well - http://savingmine.blogspot.com

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  9. Such a great idea. I love the idea to stencil them!! Thanks for sharing!

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