The kid is a non-stop art machine. We are literally drowning in art, which comes home from school in totebag-sized loads, and which has transformed every box that passes through the house. [My printer cartridge box? Now a duplex dollhouse with a slide into the pool made from the egg carton-like protective packaging. It's stacked on top of the shoebox zoo cages.]
Then she and some of her preschool classmates hit a pretty intense fashion phase, and she began bringing home paper dresses and, this, the most elaborate of her paper purses. It has three kinds of tape holding the red and pink construction paper together, a pipe cleaner handle held in place by pom poms, and then more pipe cleaner embellishments.
She gave it to her mother, though I think she may have executed something of a takeback when she decided to add some more stuff. Either way, she wasn't ready to let it go to the archive, it would never hold up to any use or abuse, and it was pretty awesome as it was, so I quickly decided to preserve it another way.
So I snapped some photos and started surfing around for someone who could translate the purse from paper into something more permanent. Early on, Andy had suggested Doinky Doodles, an outfit run by Xin, a craft artist based in Singapore.
After much unnecessary etsy surfing, I realized that Xin's appreciation of the nuances of a kid-made aesthetic, her own handmade originality, and her use of repurposed fabrics was really perfect for the job. Also, she was really nice and her quote was very reasonable. So reasonable, in fact, I ended up commissioning two bags, one for the wife, and a smaller one for the kid.
They are both stoked by the bags, which turned out awesome. update: here are pictures of the tote bag.
That is a whole lot of fabulousness.
are you kidding me?? those are amazing!
That's Love right there. Without a doubt THE coolest thing I have seen all week. The fabric version is almost as nice as the original.
That's awesome. What I really want to see on your Flickr stream is some of the kid's paper dresses though; I can totally see my daughter doing that if she had the raw materials...
they're more of a paper apron at this stage. Like Khan, her patterns indicate two-dimensional thinking.