Transforming evil plastic bags into a cool handmade journal

Journal cover made from plastic bags
Plastic bags are evil. We know that. They mangle sea turtles and choke seagulls. They'll survive in landfills for thousands of years.

But that doesn't mean you can't make cool stuff with them. Like a journal cover.


To make this cover, I fused 9 plastic bags together with an iron (highest setting, no steam). Each layer had to be ironed separately. The top layers are semi-transparent, so you can see several bags at once.
Journal cover made from plastic bags


Here's the inside of the cover. To make a straight edge, I folded over the edge and ironed it to the inside. (Thanks, John, for teaching me how to do this.)
Journal cover made from plastic bags



I added several pages of watercolor paper inside and used a simple pamphlet stitch to bind them to the cover.
Journal cover made from plastic bags

Here's the finished journal...well, almost finished. Stay tuned.
Journal cover made from plastic bags



Comments

  1. What fun. As much as I try to avoid getting plastic bags from the store it still happens as I sometimes forget to put my reusable bags back in the car before heading to the store. Of course my bags are pretty much all the Fred Meyer tan ones.....nothing fun.

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    Replies
    1. Yep, those Fred Meyer bags are pretty ugly! Thanks for commenting.

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  2. I love that toadstool bag in the tutorial so much!!
    (And your journal is super cool too. ;-)

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  3. This looks like such a cool project; thanks for showing it off!

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