Make-Up Mess

I bring you today an off-weekend post. Surprise! Recently, my bottom had an unfortunate "how do you do" with the pavement of my driveway (darn black ice!) so I'm taking it a bit easy this week. Luckily, "taking it easy" is synonymous with "more time to post projects".

For this project, I've decided to problem solve. What is the problem, you ask? For that answer, I have to take you into my bathroom...

This is the issue. This sandwich lunch baggie has been the holder of the make-up for just about 4 years. It started at the end of college, while I was packing up. That was December 2008. It followed me through the renting of my first apartment, my first lay off, my first live-in boyfriend, a year and a half engagement, our first house, our wedding, our honeymoon - I think you get the picture. This sucker has held right on there. However, now that I'm a mature adult (stop laughing) I think it's time to up the ante on my make up bag.

On that note... there's no way in heck I'm spending more than a few dollars on a make-up bag. I barely spend a few dollars on the make-up that goes inside, so there is no way I'm investing more than $5 dollars on the bag to hold them. This is obviously the thinking that lead me to the sandwich baggie in the first place.

So in my cheapness, I looked around to see where I could find a cheap bag. My first stop was Macy's - they're always giving out free crap with purchase, most of which is in a flowery bag. I went, I looked, I remained unimpressed. I was being cheap here, so I wasn't going to buy some sub-par bronzer for 29.95 just to get a free bag. That sort of defeats my purpose. So this brought me to WalMart, as all cheap thoughts tend to do. Even at WalMart the bags were 10-20 dollars or more.

What was a girl to do? Then it hit me... DUH! I make cheap clothes all the time, I'm sure I had something in my refashion closet that could be some sort of bag. Voila! I found... this.

This dress wasn't too bad... up top. The tank top cut was pretty cute. However - it was a stretchy, form fitting fabric that made me feel like a sausage. And not only that... it was see-through (I have sweatpants and a tank top underneath this so it doesn't look see through in the picture, thankfully). To sum it up - it was a hoe dress.

I decided to fold it sideways, along the back zipper, and cut out (through both sides of fabric and right through the zipper) a rectangular piece. Unfortunately, my phone decided to delete all my pictures that I took of this process, but it wasn't really all that exciting. You just kind of chop it up into a semi-straight line. Then I sewed around the three open edges. I also sewed right through the zipper where I had cut it, so that the zipper pull had a place to stop. The most important thing I learned was to do this inside out... I didn't the first time. The second go-round though, I had it all set. So I sewed up the three sides and through the zipper (again), and turned the whole thing right-side out.

... and holy crap on a cracker it worked! I had myself a new make-up bag with a zip top! Check it!

 

Pay no attention to the "semi" rectangular shape that it ended up in. Apparently my "just wing it" cutting process wasn't exactly as perfect as I thought it was. I did have a small fleeting thought that I didn't put some sort of liner on it. Then I realized - it's totally washable! Any sort of spill or mark that I get on it, I will just follow the washing instructions on the tag of the dress! Thankfully, it's machine washable... not that I actually pay attention to that all the time. Hand wash? That means gentle cycle... right?

 

Are you wondering what it cost me yet? It cost me a whopping 25 cents. The dress was one of the garments I picked up at the "Fill a bag for $3" thrift store. Score!