Our Perfect Holiday #markwarnermum Part 2.

Earlier this week, I published a poem as part of my entry to be hopefully be chosen as a Mark Warner Ambassador for 2016, under the ‘Creative Writer” category. I wrote about my Perfect Holiday and what that entails. 

Bloggers can enter under a few different categories including ‘The Style Guru’ (never going to happen!), ‘Adventure Junkie” (I used to be in the past for sure but Rheumatoid Arthritis has put an end to all of that!) and others. I chose to enter for a second time, under ”Crafting King or Queen’.

Now, I know I am no crafting queen! We love to craft and do it often but that is the category, I didn’t give myself the title! On with our make…

I decided to make an Ultimate Beach Bag for little man. 

My props.

• A towel
• 2 long zips
• Scissors
• Webbing
• a Strap Buckle
• Ribbon
• Snaps and applicator
• material off cuts
• Sewing machine

I started with an old swimming towel – perfect for the beach as it will get filthy and washed many a time over a 1 week holiday. It’s also a little bit of recycling too.

I lay the towel out flat and folded the bottom up, leaving about an eighth of the towel unfolded. 

I pinned and sewed a zip on either side, to create a bag. I folded the top quarter down and used snaps to close it. That is a basic beach bag, done. However, it is too big for little man to carry and so I had to think of how to make a full size towel, into a little man-sized bag.

I folded the bag in half again, top to bottom and then brought each side inwards, as if you were folding puff pastry….

I used the strap buckle and some webbing to secure the bag in this smaller square size and then used the remaining webbing to make two straps, turning the bag into a back pack. Whilst making this, I was mindful of where I was attaching things so that the towel wasn’t lumpy and uncomfortable to lie on and so kept most additions to the outside edges. The strap buckles when open, will lay on the sand.

Now it was time to make it fun. I added two pockets on the corners, using snaps to close them. These could house sunglasses and sun cream etc and also cold be filled with stones or sand if it was a windy day at the beach. Finally, I made a Tic, Tac, Toe grid out of ribbon. It will be soft enough to lay on and if little man becomes bored, we can come the beach for shells and stones to use as play pieces. We had a quick game – the first time we’ve ever played it, and he got the idea of the game, really easily!

So that’s our Ultimate Beach Bag. I know it’s very ‘homemade and not the most glamorous of bags but little man likes it and it will be very useful. It holds lots as well. In our video below, I just put a rash vest, swim shorts, hat, sunglasses and sun cream in but it would definitely hold the same again if not more. 

Good luck to all entrants!

Love