So, I was trying to think of something I could make as party favors for Rose’s birthday. Money is tight (though it always seems to be at this time of the year) – so I was trying to do her birthday on the cheap. And since her heart’s desire was to have a couple of girlfriends sleep over and watch Mary Poppins, the party wasn’t going to be spendy.
I looked at a great book, One Yard Wonders, for ideas, because I knew I wanted to make little purses for them. And I have two bins of fabric remainders (even after donating five plastic grocery bags full of scraps to the kids’ school for art projects they were doing). So I figured I could scrap some purses together for the six girls at the party. I found the perfect thing in the book, and then just scaled it down a little to be more of a kids’ size. I cut a pattern out of a paper grocery bag by drawing a circle that was an inch bigger than what I wanted for the purse, and then extending the line off the side and flattening the edges. I got Charles to pull apart some links off a chain for the metal connector, then made the purse straps to fit through the chain link, which wound up being a little wider than one inch.
I picked out some fabrics for the outside of the purse, and a contrasting color for the lining. (After doing tons of fancy gowns over the years I have so many satins to pick from, which make a lovely lining.) If you want more detailed instructions, comment or message me, and I can break it down a bit further, but it wound up being really easy to put together, so you could probably just fake it. I gathered the bottom of the purses a little to scrunch them up a bit more, and the tops don’t really close, they are just held sort of closed by elastic. But I like the scrunchiness of the bags, and I think they turned out super-cute.
I also attached a little flowery flair to some of them (a la my crafty fundraiser post, just minus the hair elastics) to spice things up a bit, and they were pretty and simple to put together in a couple of evenings.
Best of all, I had a party favor that the girls loved, and I didn’t spend a dime on! We threw in some Mardi Gras beads that Aunt Jackie sent Rose a huge box of, and a fruit roll up, and a couple of leftover hair gadgets from a prior project, and called it a day. And Rose’s party was awesome. The cake that her Nana Joyce made her was really amazing as well. I can’t give you tips on how to do it, but there is a picture here.