Tis the season for purses?!!!

I make baby food. Many of you know this from looking at the baby food recipe blog I wrote. One thing I’m not sure if anyone ever noticed is that I haven’t done many crafts using the empty can’s I ends up with from making some of the baby food! So, I sat there looking at these cans thinking, what in the world can I do with this? I can toss it in the recycling like usual, but I feel like I should at least try to find a use for it in my home. At this moment, I was given the gift of uncanny inspiration! One of the kids came up to complain, yes the complaint from a child inspired my genius! The complaint was that they were pretending to go shopping and had no purse to dress up and pretend!









Supplies:

Hot Glue Gun
Felt
Needle nose pliers
Nail
Hammer
Can with lid removed on one end
Ribbon
Any decorator items desired
Contact paper (optional)

Start with the can; use the pliers to press down any edges left sharp from removing the one end. Now using a hot glue gun, glue felt around the cans exterior and make sure that part of the felt will fold over about 1 inch into the inside of the can. Using hot glue, glue down the one inch into the can to cover the lip in case the edges could still snag. Allow this to dry.

Once dry, give to the kid to decorate with whatever they want! Buttons, fluffy balls, feathers, stickers, markers, scraps of fabric, whatever they want to just make sure they use lots of glue so everything stays. Allow their creation to dry. Now, go through with your hot glue gun and secure anything loose so the purse will last longer. Let this dry.

Find where the front will be and mark the felt on either side of that so the front will show when the purse hangs. Remember the holes need to be directly across from each other so that if a line were drawn between each hold it would be the circles diameter. Take your nail and hammer and hammer in a hold where you marked on both sides. To avoid bending, if you have it, put a piece of scrap wood handing off of a work bench secured with a vise. Slide the can onto the wood and hammer in the nail. If not, just be careful!

Measure how long the ribbon needs to be by using the kid as a model. Start at the kids shoulder and measure down to where you want the purse to hang. Double this length as the ribbon will be doubled and add an inch for shoulder thickness. Thread the ribbon through the holes in the can. Tie your ribbon off and you can now hand the purse to the child for their own shopping pleasure! If your kid is young like mine you may want to put contact paper over the exterior of the purse so nothing falls off and presents a choking risk!

This may be a good excuse to do some shopping yourself or knock some items off that Holiday list? After all what good is a purse without a store to take it to? In closing, shopping can be a lot of fun, but creating something out of nothing is an accomplishment! Look to accomplish something before you allow yourself the gift of shopping and you may find the fun comes to your home instead of being in a store.