Day 7 - Sandwich wraps

I'm feeling pretty proud of myself for making it to the end of week one of this challenge! I'm not sure I could keep this up if I was working full time but for now its still fun! I just might have to cheat a little at the weekend when I'm away. I really shouldn't admit these things... :)

So today I finished off my fused plastic bag projects and made some sandwich wraps and snack bags!

I got the idea for the sandwich wraps from Chica and Jo's blog here:  http://www.chicaandjo.com/2010/02/01/fused-plastic-sandwich-wraps/ They are super easy to make and pretty useful! :)

If you're not sure how to make fused plastic (or have no idea what the hell I'm talking about!) have a look at what I was up to two days ago - http://beinginspired-blog.blogspot.ie/2012/08/day-5-fused-plastic.html





Make a square of fused plastic about 12" x 12". (Mine ended up being a bit smaller and it still fits a sandwich so don't worry if your melting plastic has other ideas!). Then cut a piece of fabric about 14" x 14". Put your plastic on the wrong side of your fabric and pin in place around the edges. Fold it over twice so you hide the rough edge.









Sew around the edges.

Then pin a 2" piece of fuzzy velcro on the plastic side at the top corner (12 o'clock) and a 2" piece of rough velcro on the plastic side at the  3 o'clock.










And pin a 1" piece of rough velcro at the bottom corner (6 o'clock) and a 1" piece of fuzzy velcro at the left corner (9 o'clock).

Then sew them on to secure them!

Make a sandwich and try it out! :)

I also made some little snack bags with some smaller pieces of fused plastic. I got the idea for the snack bags over at Owen's Olivia:  http://owensolivia.blogspot.ie/2011/08/olivias-snack-bag-tutorial.html

Oh but word of warning - if you're using fused plastic for your lining like I did then either use a stretchy jersey material (like my purple bag) or cut the fabric pieces bigger than the plastic so you turn them the right way out more easily! I ripped a seam or two on the little leaf one... :(

Things I've learnt:

- Don't try to sew self adhesive velcro with a sewing machine! It does not like it and may break multiple needles in protest!
- Blogging is way less fun when you have to put the photos in via html. ugh. Can't get my pics and text to line up properly. :( Hope Blogger gets fixed soon!!
- Plain white bread and butter ham sandwiches are delicious. And way under-rated. Yum. :)

Day 5 - Fused Plastic

So today I decided to try and make some fused plastic. Pinterest seems to think it's easy and useful and who am I to argue??

First collect up some plastic bags. This process takes a lot of trial and error so you'll definitely need to practice!









Prepare your bags by cutting off the handles and the bottom. Depending on the size of the piece of plastic you need you might cut the bag open.











Lay a few pieces of plastic on top of each other.










Put some baking parchment on your ironing board, place the bags on top and layer with another sheet of parchment. Apparently ordinary paper works too but I didn't test it.

Turn on your iron and iron over the parchment. Make sure not to iron directly onto the plastic or you'll have a sticky mess on your iron that will be no fun to clean off!
Peel up the parchment and see how its doing!

There seems to be a lot of different opinions on the number of layers and heat of the iron so I can only suggest doing what I did - try and see what works for you! My first attempt had a lot of holes in it which could have been because my iron was too hot or I didn't have enough layers. I found that a about 5 or 6 layers worked best but it depended on the strength of the bags.






You can cut letters off other bags to write messages on your plastic or cut up bits of plastic to make your own. Place another bag on top of the letters to prevent them from peeling off later.










But watch out for static ruining your fun!!

Here's my final products. Not quite perfect but good enough for a few projects I have in mind! This stuff is pretty strong and you can sew it and make all kinds of things! :)






Things I've learnt:
- Making fused plastic is not as easy as those videos look!
- Using the same type of bag works much better than just putting all the random bags you have together. Well worth buying some bin bags or something.
- This would have been way more useful/green/cheap a few years ago when we didn't have to pay for plastic bags in the supermarket!
- But... melting stuff is fun! :)


I've recently found a great blog where someone is doing pretty much the same challenge as me ... times 12!! I've linked up to her blog and you can to by clicking the button below!