49-Cent Friday Refashion: Leather Owl Purse

Hiya!

Can you believe that Christmas is only 47 days away? EEK!!!

My family started a tradition (quite a few years ago) of making most of our gifts for Christmas.

The point was not only to save money (although that was a big plus!), but also to force us all to put more thought into the gifts we give each other.

I don’t know about you, but for me, I personally prefer handmade gifts over store-bought ones. There’s just something about knowing that the person giving you the gift took the time (and talent) to create something just for you.

With that in mind, I decided to get started on my gift-making by refashioning something my daughter has been hinting about wanting for a while now.

Luckily for me, this gift consists of all scraps!

I started with some leather scraps from my leather pants refashion, a zipper from my Easter skirt refashion, and some felt scraps and buttons.

Hmm, what are we gonna do with these?

I trimmed a large scrap of leather to a 7″ by 13″ rectangle.

Cutting it down to size…

I thought it would be easier to attach the zipper before sewing the sides of the purse, so I grabbed some paperclips to keep the zipper in place before sewing it down…

Clipping on the zipper.

Once it was perfectly in place, I stitched it down on one side…

Stitchin’ on the zipper.

…and then the other side…

Whirrrr

After the zipper was securely attached, I clipped the sides together…

Sides clipped and ready to be stitched.

And then ran them through my machine…

Stitching the sides.

Looking good ‘eh?

Almost done! 🙂

Now here comes the fun part!
I grabbed my felt stash and cut out all the pieces I needed (and grabbed some buttons too)…

After a considerable amount of consideration on how to attach all of these pieces to the leather purse, I decided to try out this stuff I purchased a while ago, but hadn’t yet tried out…

It’s spray glue. Fun! The bottle did specifically name leather as one of the things that the adhesive would work on, so I thought, “Why not give it a try?”

I grabbed a couple of bricks to hold the felt down while it dried…

All in all I was happy with how well the glue worked. It did have a bad smell, but it wasn’t too overwhelming, and my hands were covered in sticky glue residue, but other than that, I was impressed.

Oh and I learned that baby oil (or mineral oil) works amazingly well at removing glue residue from skin!

After the glue was completely dry, this is how it looked…

My daughter really likes owls (and purses), so I can’t wait for her to see this nifty gift.

Have you begun your Christmas shopping (or making) yet? 

Which do you prefer, store-bought or homemade gifts?

Have a great weekend! 🙂

~Jen