How to Make Craft Bags: Creative Ideas Using Recyclable Materials

Making craft bags with scraps, recyclable materials, and various accessories is a practical and resourceful way to express yourself and exercise your creativity. Making them is also an opportunity to bond with children and friends. Some even turn the hobby of creating bags into successful businesses. Environmentalists also encourage people to make craft bags to turn old materials into new things that can serve better uses.

More Arts and Crafts Ideas:

How to Make Keychains Out of Old Film Prints

How to Make Your Own 3D Photo and Viewing it with Anaglyph 3D Glasses

Waterproof Craft Bag

Thin and flimsy plastic shopping bags work well for this project. Decide how big you want your bag to be and cut the plastic bags accordingly. You'll need six to eight layers of plastic for each side of the bag. Lay a piece of parchment paper larger than the plastic pieces on your ironing board, lay the plastic pieces on top, and lay another piece of parchment paper on top of the final layer of plastic.

Set your iron on low heat and run it over the layers of paper and plastic until the plastic layers are fused together. Keep the iron moving constantly to avoid overheating the plastic. Let the layers sit for a few minutes. Iron more if the plastic layers aren't completely fused, and then remove the parchment papers. Once you've created enough fused plastic pieces, you can machine-sew them together. Attach a handle made of the same material or another material such as fabric, rope, ribbon, or nylon.

Braided Magazine Tote Bag

Instead of throwing away an old, glossy magazine, use it to create a braided magazine tote bag. Cut two long strips from each page. Fold each strip to about 1 to 2 centimeters in width. Depending on the size of your intended bag, make each one long enough by attaching extension strips. You need many strips (using up the whole magazine or even more) as these shall comprise the primary material used in making this type of craft bag. Get three strips, glue the top parts using glue gun, then start braiding them. Close the bottom parts as well. Do this with the rest of the strips. Once you have enough, create a skeleton for the bag using thin, bendable wire. Shape the wire according to the size of the tote bag you want. Doing this is like drawing a 3D perspective of an actual shape fitting the bag you want.

Make a handle by connecting a long braided strip at the sides of the bag's skeleton wire. Secure each end of the strip around the wire using glue gun.

By positioning the bag's base to face you, attach each strip horizontally from the wire skeleton of the bag's base (in the same direction as the bag's handle). Fill the entire space on the bag's base with the horizontal strips. Doing this also covers the initial vertical set of strips needed on the left and right sides of the bag. Each end of the strip must extend long enough to reach beyond the bag's upper part where the handle was secured in.

Do the same thing to fill the wire skeleton with another set of strips, this time, running in a vertical direction from the bag's base (criss-crossing horizontal and vertical strips by attaching each vertical strip alternately over and under each horizontal strip). Each end of the strip must reach more than the upper portion of the bag's skeleton (the same area where the handle was secured in).

At this stage, the base of the bag must be fully covered by the criss-crossing strips already. Do the same thing on the bag's body. You actually had the initial vertical strips for the body already as these are connected strips that comprise the bag's base. Attach each new strip horizontally from the bottom part of the bag (just above the bag's base) by criss-crossing each one over and under the initially placed strips in the bag's base. Wrap around each strip accordingly until each one completely encircles the bag's skeleton wire. Close each strip from the inside of the bag using glue gun by criss-crossing under the vertical strip one more time. Repeat the process to cover all the sides of the bag from the bottom, going up.

Cut the excess of each vertical strip's end on top of the bag to the same size. Put an allowance of a few inches beyond it, according to your preference. Fold each strip's end downwards into the inside of the bag and close each one using glue gun.

Scrapbook Gift Bag

Turn old paper bags into new decorative gift bags for your next gift-giving endeavor. If you don't have old paper bags, you may just need to buy the inexpensive gift bags in stores and turn them into your own artworks. Putting a personal touch to a gift bag adds value to what's inside it.

Treat it like a typical scrapbook page where you can cut out and paste fitting designs and embellishments. Photos can be readily attached as well. You can protect the photos by using plastic covers (preferably acid-free and photo-safe plastic commonly used for scrapbooks), then outlining them with craft accessories. This craft bag is quite easy to do as the actual paper bag is ready-made. It's a matter of creating designs that suit the kind of gift you will put inside it.

You can also save money by using leftover gift wrappers and wallpapers to create the designs for your gift bags. Even old magazines that are commonly thrown away for taking too much space in the house can be used for such designs.

"Decorative Gift Bags," Kaboose.
"How to Make a Photo Tote Bag," Little Everyday Things.
"Long Overdue Fusing Plastic Bag Tutorial," Etsy Labs Archive.
"How-to Braid & 13 DIY Tips, Decor It Yourself," Thread Banger.