Painted Tote by Judi Kauffman for The Queen’s Ink

Many years ago I made and sold dozens of appliquéd denim totes with straps made from off-white cotton webbing. I bought it wholesale by the roll.

You know where this is going...I ended up with a lot of extra webbing so I decided that one good way to use a LOT of it would be to sew it side by side to create sturdy, thick fabric. I made two totes this way and I’ve used them for at least 20 years. But after a while they started to look sad and discolored so, you know where this is going...I got out the acrylic paints (bottles for brushing on, dimensional with fine tip for final embellishment).

I tucked the straps inside and turned the tote upside down on a trashcan so I could rotate it and paint all sides and the bottom all at once.

The first round of paint is a mix of dark blue, medium blue, yellow, teal and black.

The yellow started to look garish, the surface seemed too bumpy to stencil, so I did another round with copper metallic paint, and after that dried I got busy adding graffiti-like marks on one side with dimensional paint in purple and dark blue.

Am I done? For now, yes. But I think at some point I’m going to need to add some black shapes or some pompoms or...SOMETHING, though I don’t yet know what.

YOUR TURN
Buy or make a heavy canvas tote. If you start from scratch and like the look of vertical lines, stitch a few pieces of cotton webbing or seam binding to the canvas or machine-stitch vertical lines using satin or zigzag stitch.

Using three or more acrylic paints and a wide brush cover the tote, but not the straps, with vertical strokes. Change the look with metallic paint or another layer of acrylics.

Option: Using dimensional paint (as shown) add texture with graffiti-like scribbles and doodles. Instead of random marks, write a quote, a date or your name, keeping the effect scribbly and complicated!

Allow the tote to get stiff (as shown) by using paint straight out of the jar. Alternatively, use fabric medium mixed with the paint for a softer bag.

Option: Glue or sew on charms, pompoms, or other embellishments.