Cigar Box Storage

I loves cigar boxes!  

I picked up 16 cigar boxes at a garage sale that interestingly were all the same brand.  

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them at the time.

But, I love cigar boxes.

On the workbench.   

A crate from another garage sale and boards scavenged from my mom and dad's basement.

DONE!

Today, was Junk Bonanza in Shakopee, MN.  

It's a junkers paradise. Hundreds of booths of junk.  

Some just waiting to be repurposed and some already altered.  

There was a lot of "fixin's" as one vendor called their knobs, brass numbers, game pieces, stamps, etc.

 I have had it on my calendar for months to take the day off from work so I could go this year. 

I scored 8 porcelain knobs that were just perfect.

Cross Body Purse

Have fabric, scissors, sewing machine....go.  

Walking around a summer craft fair I saw numerous cross body bags and begin to check them out with interest.  I wanted one.

I went home, dug out some coordinating fabric and started eyeballing a pattern.  The biggest challenges:

1) Determining dimensions of the entire bag.  I held up various other purses to my hips and tried to find a size that wasn't too big or small.  "Does this size make my hips look too big?"

2) How long do I make the strap?  "If it hangs here, does it make my hips look too big?" LOL.

3) Matching up the strap to the curves at to bottom.  I should have marked the centers, but in the end I just cut the strap really long. didn't fuss with matching and just cut it off where I wanted it to stop.

4) Interfacing and strap innards.  I wanted the body of the bag soft and not too stiff.  I sorted through my stash of interfacing and came up with one that felt just right.  For the strap I used a stiff webbed strap inside the fabric.  It's not bunching up on my shoulder yet. 

Love IT!