I had a little joint crafting day with my gal Sonya Nimri and we created some fun projects inspired by a few things we became obsessed with from Anthropologie. This $128 clutch was one obsession and we were determined to DIY it with things we already had in our clothing and craft closets!
We started with this vibrant bag from Thailand because we wanted something bold and with a detailed pattern to mimic the beaded diamond shapes at the bottom of Anthro's clutch.
This piece will make a perfect clutch base! We went to some gold leather scraps next...
...to mimic the gold leather "flakes" (that's what Anthro calls it!) from the inspiration clutch. We used a Cuttlebug die cut machine along with a leaf print cutting die to make our gold leather bits. We cranked about 35 through the machine...
...and got a pile of these guys!!
I love how pretty they look! We trimmed slits through the lavender sides of the bag to open the piece up and make it flat. This is just going to make it much easier to sew these leaves in place.
We tested out location for the shapes before we began to stitch. We decided to have three rows of the leaves, so we started with the bottom row first and stitched the leaves in place.
We put the next row down, stitched it in place, and then did the same thing for the final row.
With the leaves stitched in place, we folded the clutch in half, wrong side out, to stitch the sides together and then added a zipper at the top.
We took a rectangular leather section about a foot long, and folded and stitched it to create our wrist strap!!
The elbow grease was in full effect as we hand stitched the strap to the clutch with a ridiculously large/thick needle.
I couldn't have been happier with the outcome. It's done, it's done!! I love that it really embodies the essence of our inspiration clutch!
I'm obsessed with it. So obsessed that I wore it out immediately for a movie night with my pal RM.
We were starving and running late so we grabbed paninis at the Barnes & Noble Café. PS, I was completely unaware that they served anything other than coffee and muffins/cheesecake slices!! I wish I took a better pic, but on the table that we sat, someone left their reading materials which included a Running a Food Truck For Dummies book.
You can see a smidge of the yellow and black striping on the cover!! I mean, they have a Dummies book for everything!
We scooted next door into a screening of For A Good Time, Call and got a super fun parting gift...a phone!
Well...a phone handset in pink that matched the ones used in the movie. Guess who's got two thumbs, wearing a blue shirt, and already on the party line?
You guessed it!! Oh, and don't think Call Me Maybe jokes/YouTube reenactments didn't start flowing immediately...
Happy Friday friends!!
