craftgrrl | Spiffed up purse from Target.

Target had these adorable reversible purses in the "teen" department that were priced pretty cheap (yay, Target!). They had them in several colors but I went for this black and white checkered one and jazzed it up to give to the lovely

cadette for her birthday...

Before:

Cute, right? It's got a great shape and the strap is long enough but it is rather plain.

The final product. I'm contemplating making one for myself.

The purse, as you can see, just had a ribbon to keep it closed but how inconvenient is that? Especially for someone who lives in the big bad city. So I decided to replace it with a much more practical magnetic snap.

After the snap was in I just cut off the ribbon ties and it was already a whole new purse.

This time (unlike last time) I got smart and cut out the "patch" I drew on plain muslin with a pinking shears and then ironed it onto the bag. It made it a lot easier to fray the edges (and more importantly, not over-fray them).

Sewing on the patch. It actually wasn't too much trouble to hide all my stitches in-between the lining so they didn't show (and be very very ugly) on the inside. The purse could have still been reversible if I hadn't put the snap in.