Plastic Bags and Safety Belts

This is slightly different from the usual Doll Stories posts, but I recently find myself straying from my familiar surroundings – but not too far.
It is always very complicated for me to say what my occupation is and what I do for a living. My works not always exactly the same, but at the end of the day, they are all from the same area of art and crafts design, which is also close to ecology and education.
To make a long story short, the project I was busy with during the last few weeks was a customized order to design and create a bunch of messenger bags for the local ecological park education program, which will be used to hold assignment papers the kids receive when they visit the park.
Naturally, the brief clearly stated that they had to be made out of recycled or reused materials.
Here they are all together:





I chose to create them using a mixture of several materials. The back was made out of faux leather car upholstery, the front was made out of scraps of reused vinyl banners, and the flap, which was the most creative part, was made out of plastic bags fused together by ironing.



At first, I tried to make the flaps more efficiently by using an industrial iron press, but I made so many mistakes, including the use of a type of paper that stuck to the nylon, so I ended up relying on my household iron to make most of the flaps.






Another process I used was laser-cutting  (at the local fablab- Fablabil) the strap ring and buckle, based on my own design.

The straps are actually discarded bus safety belts I got from a specialist repair shop.

  

For the lining, I employed the type of plastic used for large roll-up banners.