"Blast from the Past" bags.

I was organising a hen party for my friend and decided on an 80s theme and, as well as making her dress, I decided to make tote bags for the hens all with an 80s theme. This was, admittedly, a thinly veiled excuse to trawl through 80s TV reminiscing and coming up with cool icons to add to bags. I love to embroider tote bags, I think it is becasue they are practical, very easy to personalise and you can match the technique to the design. I found images online, in old colouring books or by getting my husband to draw them. I discovered that I am not very good at getting the dates right as I wanted to do Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but they were 1990. I filled them with 80s sweets and neon goodies. They seemed to go down well and hopefully will get more use.

Pacman was a 'must do'. This turned out to be one of the larger designs but I loved the hint of colour and how well it fitted accross the top of the bag. 



Pacman tote bag

Smurfs were originally created and published in the 1950s but the cartoon was fully 80's and Smurfette seemed so iconic of the decade that she was also a must. I did a thin black outline and added the lines of colour to lift the design.

Smurfette tote bag

I think Danger Mouse was my favourite design, peaking with Penfold from the bottom corner of the bag. It seemed fun and cheeky and the sketch style was really fun to do. This was using a really dark grey thread. The eyepatch, glasses and nose was filled in using satin stitch.

Danger Mouse tote bag

Ghostbusters celebrated 30 years so I felt it needed a bag. This was all satin stitch with the features added in black. I think this stood out most as it is so bold.

Ghostbuster tote bag

This Walkman is a wild olive design from her old school set. The set was so fun, although I was dissapointed that I could not use the Gameboy as originally intended as that was 1990's. I love the wild olive faces and how fun the designs are, plus they were easy to buy and download. I used backstitch to do the outline.

Walkman tote bag - wild olive design

My little pony needed an outing as I remember my big sister having this exact one and being very envious. Again I used an outline but gave some extra attention to the eye as it was getting lost without it. 

My Little Pony tote bag