{restyled} tote bag with zipper flowers

Here's a quick project that I wanted to share with you.

I found some inexpensive zippers at the second hand store recently and was just waiting for the right project to make some zipper flowers. There are three great tutorials for making zipper flowers at Craftaholics Anonymous if you are interested in making these yourself.

I thought that I'd make a zipper flower and use it as my starting point to restyle a fabric gift bag.

This is the "before" picture of the bag ... my husband received it as a gift at a business function that he attended a few weeks ago. The bag contained two bottles of wine (I'm assuming that ... since the wine bottles never made it home!) and in need of a makeover.

To restyle the bag, I used a fabric label by Amy Butler (I purchased a package of them from Michaels a few years ago), one of my zipper flowers, buttons, ribbon and embroidery floss.

I started by hand sewing the fabric label to the pocket with embroidery floss so that I could cover up the business logo.

Then I added the zipper flower, ribbon and buttons on top of the label. I wanted to achieve a handmade look to the bag so I frayed the fabric label a bit and left top knots with the embroidery threads on the buttons.

You will find the zipper flower tutorial that I used for my flower here .

Here's another close up of the final design.

I was going to keep this tote bag for myself but I think that I will fill it with a couple of bottles of wine and give it to a friend this weekend.