Vintage Spring Altered Handbag

I love vintage things, but I like a fresh contemporary feel to them.  I had this vintage handbag lying around, and I just knew I would alter it someday.  Tim Holtz's Tattered Florals Challenge seemed like just the right time.

I began by die cutting some coordinating fabrics, cheesecloth and lace I had on hand, using the Tattered Florals die.  I soaked them in Stiffen Stuff by Beacon, which would probably be easier to use if I could spray it on like the directions say, but the spray mechanism never worked. Then I dried them with a heat tool, while shaping them.   I sprayed some Dylusions ink and misted that with water on my craft sheet and dragged them through the mess. I took a piece of seam binding and dragged that through the remaining puddle and wadded that into a ball, then sprayed it with the water mister so the color would blend.  I allowed that all to dry.

In the meantime, I sprayed some coffee filters with Dylusions ink  in turquoise,  yellow and green and misted them with water.  I crumpled the green one.  All air dried.  Next I sent them through the die cut machine to make yet more flowers. (Those are my paper drawers in my craft room in the above photo--oops!)

When my fabric flowers were dry I assembled them and used fabric glue to glue them together and shaped them some more by pinching them at the base.

I glued the coffee filter flowers to the fabric flowers and added a piece or two of the inked seam binding, which was now flattened out somewhat. I sprayed all the flowers with Perfect Pearl mist. I hot glued a few pearl buttons as centers to the larger flowers. I inked some stamens I got  from the baking department at Hobby Lobby, and hot glued this all together to make 6 eye-popping flowers with a vintage flair.  I cut some leaves freehand from the remaining green coffee filter.

I needed a wide something to mount the flowers on, and much to my luck, ( it was St. Patrick's Day weekend, after all) I found this wide teal ribbon at a yard sale. I think it goes with the flowers perfectly.  To bring it all together, I added a strip of self adhesive drywall tape to the ribbon.  I used hot glue to add the assembled flowers, leaves and the tiny stringed pearls to the ribbon and notched the ends of the ribbon to make a banner.  I used adhesive backed Velcro to adhere this to the handbag.  I did this because I have plans to make other decorations for this handbag for the different seasons.  I can remove this and add something else later, appropriate to the season.

I thought the purse looked nice, but still not enough bling.  I looked through my stash of costume jewelry and found a dragonfly pin that went nicely and stuck that on.  Also a pair of dangle earrings without the hooks.  Since this looked so spring- like, I thought I'd take it up a notch, and I added some letters which spell out "spring".  It's hard to get those little letters to stay in order!  I used jump rings to attach them to the beaded strands. I had to use alcohol ink to make one of them match the set--can you tell which one?  Love those inks!  They save me every time! A final touch was to add Tim's "Life" key, since spring brings new life. I fastened this to the purse with my last piece of inked seam binding.  Waste not, want not. Here's a better picture of those letters.

I kinda like my first-ever altered purse,  and my 14 year old daughter thinks it's cool.  The highest compliment! Can't wait to get started on the other seasonal decorations for this handbag, but I wish spring would last forever.