Creative Tote Bag

A cute little tote for my Linnie Blooms projects

Several days ago, I received my Creative Reps kit from Linnie Blooms. It was FULL of wonderful canvas product pieces, some fabric glue and a couple of bottles of spray ink. I can't tell you how excited I was to receive this package! I couldn't wait to get started, except a cold stopped me in my tracks. Oh the post holiday blues!!!

One of my Fly Tribe friends told me about a great canvas tote that she was using to paint designs on and I jumped at the chance to get a few of these for myself. I have a similar one from one of my paint suppliers, so I knew this would be a perfect place to keep all my Linnie Blooms supplies and its a great Grab-N-Go bag.

I started out picking lots of pieces of Linnie Blooms canvas cut outs to place on my tote. So many to choose from! I came up with a couple of design layouts that I liked and I got started on it a few nights ago. I had good luck with drawing on these pieces before with my fine tip Sharpie markers, so I went with that.

I like the fine tip markers best for this product. I am able to get great colors, fine lines and tiny details ~ or I can go big and bold. Very versitile! I started out with my little banner on these triangle pieces to declare my bag a creative place.

Next, I started with the tree and leaf designs and created lots of leaves, textured bark and just played around. I wanted both large and small tress to depict a design with distant and foreground items. Linnie Blooms has good pieces to choose from that offer versatility, making creative ideas easy.

I like how the large tree came out and I had room to add a hollow hole and plenty of leaves in several shades of green. I also played around with the 2 sizes of butterflies and created 2 with playful folk art styling.

A flower became my sun with contour following lines in an ombre color pattern.

My favorite is the arrow piece which I like to turn into a sweet little cottage. I have used this twice so far and each one looks cuter than the last. I like a gingerbread style of house. Maybe I will have one like this some day.

After a dry fitting to be sure the pieces were placed just right, I used Fabric Fusion to glue them into place. It took a bit more glue to make them stick than I first thought, but I like how this glue didn't seep through, discolor the tote itself or become hard and stiff. A little gentle coaxing was all it took to get them to hold in place. Pretty easy and very little mess!

This is the first side I like to call my Creative Home. I want to go back and add more details onto the tote itself and create a little still life. I think some rolling hills, a path to the house and maybe some flowers along the path.

This is the Creative Side of my tote. Again some more details are needed, like antenna for the butterflies, some more Linnie Blooms hand dyed ribbon and maybe even a bit of glitter. A work in progress, and oh so much fun!  I will be proud to carry this around with me!

Check back again soon for updates on this Creative Tote on my blog.

Best wishes,

Linda Kay

Be sure to visit Linnie Blooms for more Mixed Stitch Media products and ideas.

Linnie Blooms ~ www.linnieblooms.com

Linnie Blooms blog ~ www.linnieblooms.blogspot.com

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