Fabulous Friends Wednesday - Sonia from Kosmic Chai Crafts!

Welcome dear friends to another FABULOUS FRIENDS WEDNESDAY!  We are so happy to welcome Sonia from Kosmic Chai Crafts today!  I found Sonia's blog a while back, and I have to say that I just love her mind when it comes to recycling and re purpose projects.  There are so many things I want to make from her blog!  I'm sure you'll love what she has to share with us today, so stop by her blog today! 

Hello dear crafters, I’m Sonia from Kosmic Chai Crafts. I’m a new blogger,
 and so excited that Nicholette and Vanessa are having me as their guest today!
 I’ll be posting here something very exciting today, but I guess a brief
 introduction about me is in order.

I’m 24 years old and married for more than a year now. I have a passion for

crafting, and can hardly seem to keep my hands off it, even as I'm into a full-time job as account manager in a national radio channel. I love reading, dark chocolate, pastas, tea or ‘chai’, glass gems, sea, shades of blue, and everything colorful; and I’m sucker for recycling projects. My mind just can’t seem to stop whirring when I want to repurpose or restyle anything.

Here are some of my earlier creations. Click on the links if you wish to check them out!

Springy Summery Bracelet

Butterfly Glass Gem Mobile

Beautified Flower Pot

Crystal Chain Necklace

Birds on Branches Mobile

Fall Inspired Candle Holders

There are so many other creations of mine too, which you can check on my website: Kosmic Chai Crafts. I'm looking forward for your visits over there!

Okay, now with today's tutorial: Plastic Bottle Purses- such an exciting recycling project! Here's what I came up with:

Could you have imagined these were made out of plastic bottles? These plastic purses can be put into multiple uses, such as coin box, or for storing keys, craft tidbits, beads etc.- almost anything! At the same time, your being a socially responsible person and holding some plastic off the hazardous landfills. 

These are super easy to make, too! You will need:
Two similar plastic bottle bottoms (soda/bottled water bottles)
Sharp Scissors
Cello tape
Two zippers
Sharp-edged Screwdriver (for piercing holes)
Needle
Fishing line/ Nylon/ any strong thread
Acrylic paints of your choice

Now lets get started! Heat and old kitchen knife, and with it drill a hole slightly above the bottom area of the bottle. Insert your scissors into the bottle from the hole and snip the bottoms off the soda/water bottles. This is very easy! Two bottoms make one purse; take note that both are similar in shape and size, or the purse wouldn't look proper. I made two purses out of 4 bottoms: two of the flat kind, and two from soda bottles.

You must have noticed the sharp edges of the hence snipped bottoms, and we don't want bruised fingers every time we touch them, do we? So cover the raw edges with the help of some cello tape. Next, lay them bottoms up for a good coat of acrylic spray paint. I chose silver. Wrong Choice. Choose carefully!

After the spray paint has dried, take your sharp edged screwdriver and pierce holes in regular intervals along the edge. Later on, I found that even a large needle would do the trick!

Bring in those zippers! I wanted to finish this project with everything on-hand, hence I salvaged some old zippers from hubby's unused trousers and jeans. You can do the same; ransack hubby's cupboards. Take care that they're of the same length as the bottle's circumference. Mine were shorter and came only half-way, but I used them anyway!

Now place the zipper along the edge of the bottom. 

Thread your needle with nylon/fishing thread and secure with a knot. Start securing the zipper to the inside of the bottom by stitching it in and out from the pierced holes. This is very easy, really so don't get confused. Here's the bottom half finished:

Now start stitching the upper half of the purse by securing the other side of the zipper to another bottle piece.

Once stitched, close the zipper. Ta Da, you've done it!!

Here's how it looks when open:

Trim the unwanted threads of the zipper, and you're done! The zippers I used were shorter, hence I can zip these only till half the way. Use the zippers of exact length for better results!

Ideally you could have stopped here, if you had the colored it right. I hated the cement-colored look, so started to alter their look. I painted some floral designs on one of the purses, so that the base silver color doesn't show much. The second one however, I re-painted totally white, and coated it with some matt Mod Podge so that the silver doesn't show. I then made small brush strokes with the colors of spring, and outlined them in black. Done!

Pop in your small change, keys, or paper clips, whatever!

Here they are, all zipped up!

I love these- good recycling, great for storage! What do you think? Let me know by visiting my blog and leaving some comments!

Thank you Nicholette and Vanessa, for having me here! Ooh, I had such fun!