Good Morning or Afternoon or Evening to you,

It is snowy and cold outside as I write this but I really can’t complain . We have had a very mild winter so far and March is just around the corner. I have been working on a few projects around the house lately and have not been up to my usual crafty behaviors. Therefore I will share with you the making of a paper mustache purse that I made for one of my nieces for Christmas.

Have I mentioned that my family are always good sports when it come to my crazy gift ideas? Well they are.

I have to admit that the idea in my head for this gift seemed so crazy that I almost switched up the design. After all I was already making a purse out of paper. Wasn’t that crazy enough?

As is turns out the answer is NO.

So I forged ahead with my idea and I have to say it turned out to be  so stinking cute that I wanted to keep it. Now I realize that I am not an impartial judge but I certainly haven’t fallen in love with every project that I have ever made.

Of course at the end of the day you will have to decide for yourself. Would you ever carry a purse made out of paper? Or a purse shaped like a mustache? What about both?

No? Just me then.

If you are thinking that magazine paper, mustache and purse never under any circumstances belong in the same sentence than you are probably completely lost and have ended up on this blog due to some unfortunate link hoping, computer hijacking or just dumb luck. Because quite frankly I should worn you that a lot of what you will find on this blog are similar crazy mash ups.

But since you are here…..

Are you at least curious?

Well lets carry on then shall we.

This project starts with two flat “sheets” of woven magazine paper and a Mustache template cut from old newspaper. For more detail on rolling and weaving the paper you can refer to one of my previous posts on my old blog. A trashcan made from trash. Go ahead and click the link if you dare. 🙂

I cut several “mustache” templates before I got the correct shape. Not too long and weird shaped for a purse but still long enough to look like a mustache.

Once I had a shape that I liked, I traced it on the two pieces of woven magazine paper.

Cutting out the shape is a little harder than you might imagine as the paper is quite thick in some areas and there is a fair amount of glue involved as well. I presume that this is a good thing as I want the purse to hold up to at least a little bit of use.

To finish the raw edges of the mustache pieces I used E6000 glue to attach some brown piping. The rounded edge of the piping was placed right on the edge and the excess the part of the piping that is usually sewn in to the seam was wrapped around the back of the piece and secured with more glue.

The lining was cut from some old brown suede that I had. I used the same paper template and then trimmed about a 1/4 of an inch off all the way around to make the suede pieces a bit smaller than the paper pieces.

Now it was time to assemble the purse. For the bottom I use two flat pieces and more E6000 glue and hot glue to hold the pieces together.

To add support to the purse and to hold the purse handles on I cut two long strips of the brown leather and glued some cording to one side to keep the leather from stretching. The length of each strip was double the distance from purse handle to purse handle running down one side across the bottom and up the other side.

Once both of the bottom / side pieces were glued to one side of the purse I used the leather stripes to attach one of the purse handles gluing the stripes in place to the side and bottom.

Then one piece of the lining was glued on top using fabric glue.

After this step it was a little tricky to photograph and work on as I was working on the inside of the purse. But basically all the previous steps were repeated to attach the other side.

More hot gluing, E6000 glue and fabric glue.

The final steps were to add a strip of piping to the ends and a flat strip of suede to the sides / bottom of the purse. More of all the above mentioned glues. 🙂

And that’s it! Now run along and make your own I know you want to.

Or just run away if you are feeling like you are spinning out of control down the psychedelic rabbit hole of trash.

Happy Upcycling,