Recycled wallet made with fused plastic bags

How to make a organising wallet out of fused plastic bags

This tutorial shows you how to fuse plastic bags together and then using this technique, make a small organising wallet out of resealable sandwich bags. The finished product is really practical, and it is so easy and cheap to make!

Step 1: Fuse the plastic bags
To fuse the plastic bags together, all you need to do is iron several layers together between two sheets of greaseproof paper. Make sure you do this in a well ventilated place. The thinner types of plastic bags work best. Cut off the top and bottom of the bag to leave flat sheets of plastic, which you can cut and arrange in the patterns of your choice. I used about 5 sheets of plastic. Make sure the iron isn’t too hot, or the plastic will warp.

Step 2: Cut the fused plastic
Next, cut your fused plastic sheet to the right size. It needs to be just a little bigger than your resealable sandwich bags, so you have about 1cm extra around each side of the bag.

Step 3: Prepare the wallet by laying out your sandwich bags
Line up about 6 resealable sandwich bags on your fused plastic. Alternate the opening side of the bags on the left and right.

Sewing the plastic bags together

Sewing the plastic bags together

The plastic bags sewn together

Step 4: Sew the fused plastic and the bags together
To sew the wallet together, you need to sew just one line up the middle of the plastic bags. I used a zigzag stitch over a piece of ribbon to give the wallet a little extra strength.

Step 5: Open the closed sides of the resealable bags
Once sewn together, there is half of each resealable bag that becomes completely inaccessible. You can either cut this half off completely, and keep only the resealable ‘pages’, but I decided to cut these open at the top of the wallet to leave extra little storage sleeves. I simply cut few millimetres of plastic off the top of each bag to open them up.

Adding the button and ribbon to close the wallet

The ribbon, sewn with a machine

Sewing the button onto the wallet

Step 6: Attach a button and some ribbon to close the wallet
Finally, we need to sew on a button and add a loop of ribbon to hold the wallet closed. I sewed on the ribbon with a sewing machine. I also rounded off the corners of the fused plastic to finish off the wallet.

Step 7: Organise!
You can use this wallet for sewing equipment, for collections of buttons or beads, or simply to keep all the small items in your handbag well organised!

This project is based on a tutorial I saw on the website practicallyfunctional.com

This is a winning tutorial on the website ouiaremakers.com