Need a beach tote? Make your own!

When I first got into Chalk Couture, I had all these ideas to make my own transfers to create more personalize items. I tried to make a few with mesh, and I even bought some screen print frames. It was not easy! Now I know why using Chalk Couture Transfers are so much easier to use. But with life, work, 3 kids, a husband and a dog... things get pushed back to the back burner.  

But this week I was on vacation, so I decided to try it again. I bought this tote bag at Hobby Lobby and thought it would a great beach bag. So naturally I had to put something mermaid on it. I reached through my Silhouette files and found the perfect one called Be like a Mermaid and Seas the Day by Megan Hardy Designs. It's the perfect size for the front part of the tote. 

Want to know how I made it? 

Step 1: Cut your design out with your cutting machine. I use Silhouette. I used some old 631 Vinyl that I had lying around.  Now this is where it gets tricky. You have to reverse weed the design. This means you have to weed out the lettering. Normally you leave the lettings and weed out the background area, but you want the ink to go on the letting area. 

Step 2: Once all the weeding is done, you are going to take transfer paper and carefully place on to of the whole design. Smooth it out and press firmly to make sure it all sticks to the transfer tape. Lift design off the backing and make sure all the small little pieces are coming along with it. Place the design on tote where you want it to go. If you are not sure on where you want the placement, figure this out before. Unlike a Chalk Couture transfer, I don't think you can really move this one around. Once it down, it would be hard to move. 

Step 3: This step is gonna take some time. Take your scraper and run it over the whole area on where you design is. make sure to press firmly, especially on the areas that have tiny pieces. These tend to want to get stuck on the transfer tape when you are lifting it. Once done with that, you are going to carefully like the transfer tape up off the design. This will take time... and patients... lots of patients! Start at the top and start to pull your up. Have the scraper in your hands because the small little pieces like come up with the transfer tape. Once the tape is off, take a sheet of parchment paper (I got mine off amazon and its precut and pops up out of the box) and place it over the design and again, use your scraper firmly to push down on the design. This is just to make sure you are adhering the design really well to the tote. 

Step 4: Place some tape on the side of the design to make sure none of the ink gets on the tote. Open your ink colors and stir them up. The inks I picked are Couture Teal, Couture Coral, and Shimmer Gold. 

Step 5: Time to INK! Set all your inks out so the are easy to reach. Once ready, dip your squeegee into the ink and start your 1st color. Since this doesn't have mesh to keep the vinyl from moving, you have to be careful when dragging your ink around on the design. The ink doesn't dry as fast as the chalk does, so you have more time to work with it. Carefully, but firmly drag the ink around making sure you completely cover the open areas of the design in ink. Any extra ink that you have left on your squeegee can go back into your ink jar. Now you can move onto the next ink color until you have completed all your ink colors. 

Step 6: Take off the tape that surrounds the outside of the design. Now you are going to start peeling up the design. This can be tricky since there is not mesh to hold it together and make it one seamless lift. It took a little time, but I did it slowly so it wasn't too hard. Once you are done lifting the made part of the vinyl, there will be small pieces left. I used a picker to get the other small pieces up without dragging it. Since this is just vinyl, you can throw away the pieces you lift up. 

Step 7: Check out what you just made and be proud of it! And let it dry. I normally let it dry over night. Once dry, place your parchment paper back over it and use your heat press (or iron) to heat set it. With the heat press, I set it to 300 degrees and set the timer for 30 seconds. Since the was a longer piece, I had to do it in 2 sections. 

Step 8: Boom! Your done! Now I have a large beach tote to haul all the shit my family needs at the beach. 

Let me know what you think! What would you put on your beach tote?  

Like this but not sure what Chalk Couture is?!?- Click here to read all about it! 

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Until then...

Sara ;)