Money Bag Tutorial

Here is a quick tutorial to make a handy money bag for using at your vendor shows you may be a part of this Summer.   So come along and join me in this quickie tutorial.

Acrylic paint in two colors, sponge stamp (your choice), two sponge brushes, 3/4" or 1" blue masking tape and as many canvas tool bags as you'd like to create.  I get mine at Home Depot for around .99 each, and love the fact that they already have the square shape already centered and on them.

Tape off around the orange "Home Depot" square with four pieces of blue painters masking tape, and overlap the pieces.  Be sure that you have the inside edges firmly pressed down around the edge, so that you obtain a crisp edge while painting and don't have any bleeding of paint.

Paint entire inside block with your choice of paint color.  I chose a dark brown shade to go with my European Vintage Style displays that I use for the events that I participate in.  You may need to paint on more than one coat, so don't rush to take of the tape. 

Now I have a nice crisp chocolate brown square space which has dried and is ready for the next step.  I have the paint wet on the stamp and ready to stamp on the square.  Be sure that you line it up in the middle of the square before carefully setting it down to stamp.  I was good with this on some, but my first one I wasn't successful with aligning perfectly in the middle.

Shown here is the stamp centered and ready to press down to imprint the stamping onto the brown square painted area.  You can see in this photo that there was some bleeding around the edges and this square isn't as crisp as the stamped square in the previous photo.

The finished product.  Notice that on this one the Fleur de Leis is a bit off centered?  It was the first one I did and I quickly corrected this mistake for the others I did.

My friend, Laurel, and I at the "Flea Market Under Glass" event in March 2011, in which I originally created the the money bag for this event.  

Here are the four money aprons completed and ready to be put into action at the FMUG event that I was a part of in March.  These come in handy for vending and keeping money on oneself at all times.  At another event there was a guy trying to make off with peoples money boxes, so it's always a good idea to keep your money on your body.

Thanks for following along with me.  I hope that some of my followers will find this tutorial useful to them.  You can always revise this project to meet your needs, but for under $2.00 each, I now have four of these money bags for use by my workers and myself at any of my upcoming shows.  Don't you just love useful and easy tutorials.


Linking up with White Wednesdays with Faded Charms link party.  Check out the rest of the blogs and their fun posts here.

*I originally saw this idea from my friend, Julie owner of "The Loft".  She made these for all of us vendors that were part of the original French Flea group to wear while working, and I instantly loved the idea.  There was a very limited amount of large stamp choices at Michaels Crafts and Direct, so I ended up using the same one she used.  She also added some sparkle to the edges of the squares and used black and silver for hers.  Mine are actually a chocolate brown and a metallic bronze color theme, so they are a bit different.