Snack Bags: Redesigned!

My dad takes a ridiculous amount of vegetables to work every day to snack on. My mom packs them in plastic baggies (the fold-top kind) and he, sadly, throws them away every day. (I know. It hurts me, too!) My mom said she’d bought him some re-usable containers and he complained that they took up too much space and thus wouldn’t use them. So, for Father’s Day, I decided to take it upon myself to make my dad a reusable snack bag.

My old design was alright - but I really don’t like velcro. Why?

  • if you pack a snack with crumbs, it gets all in embedded in it
  • it closes when you don’t want it to
  • it’s hard for little hands to open or keep open
  • it’s loud
  • it’s irritating to sew, and lastly
  • it’s a plastic product, and I’d like to be able to make these out of completely non-plastic supplies

So, I took to the internet and checked out various designs. I adapted some of what I saw and came up with the following - keep in mind, it’s a large bag … I’m planning to make some more soon that aren’t quite so big! The bag is two layers of cotton with ripstop nylon in between to give it some water resistance.

The bag closes by folding over both layers of cloth and securing the flap to the body with a button and a loop of cotton yarn - yay for renewable resources! (Yes. The button is plastic. But it could be wood!)

This snack bag measures around 20cm x 30 cm on the smallest setting - 20cm x 40cm on the largest.

I hope he uses it every day and loves it! When I make my next one, I’ll do a tutorial :D

Comments (6)

Trees of life - How to create a placenta print

On Sunday, we were planning to plant three new trees - a plum tree and two apple trees. On the agenda? Thawing both Gwen’s and Gil’s placentas in order to plant under them and nourish the new trees.

Brad pulled the frozen placentas out of the freezer on Saturday and as I watched the 4L ice cream container thaw, I got a bit nostalgic and, after seeing this onesie, started (re-)researching placenta prints. After a bit of coaxing from Brad to make up my mind already, I decided to go for it - if they didn’t work out, I had at least tried and if they did, I would have some beautiful art. I decided to do the prints on canvas with acrylic paint.

Following is a tutorial (sadly, without pictures other than the finished products!)! Read the rest of this entry »

Comments (12)