April 22nd is Earth Day…in the spirit of the day, I am repurposing the brown bags I have accumulated from my Terrain purchases to use them in some fun and beautiful ways.  If you aren’t lucky enough to have a Terrain near you, any brown bag will do!  The Terrain bags have one up on the traditional brown bag since they are embellished with some beautiful floral designs.  You may have other stores you frequent that use brown bags with some type of design that would make your creations more interesting…Trader Joe’s, as an example.

Once I got started with this, I realized I could create a number of posts…I had so many ideas!  But, I limited my creations to seven.  Here is the bag I started with:

This first item I made is a place card.  I used a piece of cardboard from the bottom of the bag and glued some of the bag onto the front and back.  Then, I rounded the corners and stamped a name onto the front of the card.  Anchoring it into a piece of driftwood gave it the perfect finishing touch!

Wrapping paper is an obvious use for the bags and here I used a bag as wrapping… in combination with some pretty forest green ribbon and a natural twig pencil (both from Terrain):

Cutting a bag into strips and weaving the strips together suggests a wealth of possible items…here, I created a basket with some woven strips.  I also used the handle of the Terrain bag as an accent on the edges and shredded (in my home shredder) some of the tissue to create the filling.  I was even able to utilize a piece of Terrain ribbon that was used on one of the bags I received from the store.

For the next use, I created a pretty utensil holder using a bag, a bag handle, and a paper punch:

If you read my Valentine post, you know I made Valentine treat containers…I love to make treat containers for any occasion.  Here, I printed this beautiful vintage rabbit image I found on The Graphics Fairy onto the bag…I cut a piece of the bag and fed it through my home printer.  Then, I used my sewing machine to create a beautiful treat container.  This one contains jelly beans…the container needs to be ripped open to discover the contents!  Fun, right?

Here is another Terrain bag…notice the green stitching on the bottom of the bag and the cut out handle…

I was able to utilize the stitching and the flower description on the back of the bag in creating a couple different variations of a bookmark.  The one with the stitching also utilized the handle from another bag:

I embraced the style of bag for the dry erase board I created.  I simply framed the bag.  I love how the opening for the handle serves as a place to write ‘notes.’

So, these are some of my creations made from repurposed brown bags…a great way to serve the environment.  I hope you will be inspired to create some repurposed projects of your own :)

Thanks for visiting!

Remember to take pleasure in simple things, Jackie

I am sharing at Little Red House, Pinch of Joy, Craftberry Bush, Common Ground,  The Shabby Nest, and Coastal Charm.