For Christmas, Uzi and I exchanged gifts that were relevant to the advancement of our skills or, in his case, talents. I got him a book about the Dada Movement in Art. He got me loads and loads of Japanese craft magazines.

I love them so much. Have I mentioned that I love sniffing paper? Whenever I go to a bookstore, I would open a book I like and sniff its pages. Of course, I do this in a deserted area because other shoppers might get freaked out.  

The magazines inspired me to create zakka-like bags for my shop. I came up with simple totes made of very thick canvas. I added about 4-inch strips of Lecien linen on the front middle part of the bag. I then sewed felt appliques, the designs of which were inspired by the prints of the Lecien fabric.

This one has prints of a city grid, dogs, buses, a few buildings, and paw prints.

The felt applique I made was a red paw print.

And here is another with the same linen strip.

And the wheel-less bus applique. I couldn’t find dark brown felt, unfortunately.

These bags were a lot of fun to make and they flew off the virtual shelves of my shop (thank you, guys!)

A friend of a friend asked me to customize hers by adding Katakana characters of the name of her favorite Japanese band.

Sensing a pettern here?

I will probably make messenger bag versions of these. I also plan to make loud and huge bags for summer. Hopefully those would be well-received, too.