July 6, 2012

"Keep Your Ear on the Ball" Custom Book Purse

Here is the final product that I made for author Genevieve Petrillo.  As you remember, she asked me to make a shoulder bag out of her own book!  It was a very cool experience.


She told me that she loved stripes and the colors red, yellow and blue . . . a perfect palette for a children's book, in my opinion.  I came across dozens of striped fabrics but they didn't quite fit the book.  Finally, I found this fabric on Etsy.  The reason I chose this fabric was because the stripes were a bit wavy and looked like saturated watercolors.  The pictures in the book are all watercolors and so I thought the style of the fabric matched the cover.


I always try to do something unique for the button clasp on all my purses.  I struggled for awhile with this purse.  I thought of doing a button that resembled a ball, but that was too plain.  Finally, as I was looking at the dust jacket I realized something.  The jacket cover featured a Moonbeam Children's Book Awards seal on it . . . but the seal wasn't on the actual book.  So I cut out the seal and mounted it on a piece of wood.  I painted the wood gold and added a strip of gold adhesive beads along the edge to jazz it up.  Several ModPodge coats later, I had this:


I'm really happy how it came out!  That award is a big deal so I'm glad I was able to showcase it on the purse.




Thanks so much for trusting me, Genevieve!  Enjoy it!

2 comments:

Genevieve said...

You have no idea how much I'm enjoying it! It's a real eye-catcher. In Dunkin Donuts last week, a woman said, "That's a great bag!" Because I'm a total dork, I said, "Thanks! I actually wrote the book." And she said, "I actually HAVE the book!" OMG! That was fun! It made my day.

BiblioBags said...

Thanks so much Genevieve! That made my week! : ) BTW, you're not a dork . . . you should be super proud for writing such an awesome book!