Altered Straw Purse Tutorial

I am currently waiting to board a plane bound for Colorado and the photoshoot for my book! I will be blogging from the road and have all kinds of things to share but today I have a quick and easy tutorial to start the week.

I frequent the Target dollar section and right now they have a whole bunch of kids straw bags for cheap. At first I passed them by because they were too small for a beach bag but then I got to thinking- with a couple of changes they would make a great little handbag!

I had an old pleather jacket (yes pleather- from my college days) that was really beat up and perfect to use to create leather looking applique leaves to embellish the bag.

I cut out leaf shaped pieces...

that I backed with paper for stability and then stitched the surface to look like leaves.

Once the surface of my leaves were done, I hand sewed the leaves to the surface of the bag- time consuming but a perfect project to work on lounging on the couch watching a movie :)

I have a variety of purse handles and I picked a wooden set that would match my bag.

Next I cut the straw handles off the straw bag.

and then used the straw pieces to sew the wooden handles on,

by hand.

And there you have it- an EASY and CHEAP straw purse!!

(This might be one of my favorite purse projects so far- so simple and chic!)