ATLAS HUGGED: How an Old Map Found a New Purpose

Tutorial brought to you by Hold it Right There

Last year, my youngest child was obsessed with geography.  Maps, globes, and atlases added their own topography to our house.  But, like so many others before it, this fascination disappeared, falling into a craggy canyon of my son's childhood.  

Nevertheless, artifacts from this fancy remained. A ragged road atlas settled in our family room after my son excavated it from our mini van months prior.  A smattering of Legos (his obsession du jour), and dust covered it.  Right around the time my house approached its maximum pre-craft show messiness, and I craved some minimum level of order, I spied the old atlas.

I thumbed through it.  Its bent pages plotted our treks to Ohio and New York.   A bedraggled map of Maryland took me back to family trips with our once tiny children, buckled in car seats, chewing on pacifiers, contented by the blare of  "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star".  Now armed with GPS and iPhones, years have passed since we consulted this atlas, or searched for a pacifier.  I shrugged. No one used the road atlas anymore, but I hated to throw it away.

Then an idea hit me:  why not turn its pages into paper shopping bags?  I needed small bags for customers and loved the idea of making them.  What came about was not so much tidiness in my house that day (I had after the craft fair to worry about that!), as fun, cute, easy and quick shopping bags for my customers to fill with my handmade goods.

Hold it Right There

With the holiday craft fair season approaching, I thought other makers would find this tutorial useful. Besides shopping bags, these make great gift bags, too. If you don't have an old atlas on hand, try any over-sized paper:  gift wrap, wallpaper samples, sewing pattern catalogs, large sheets of scrapbook paper to name a few.

etsy.com/shop/HolditRightThereBags

Here's how:

Supplies:

• An old atlas (or other over-sized paper)
• Cardboard 
• Glue Stick

Dimensions:

• The size of the cardboard is 11"h x 6 1/2" w
• The size of my atlas pages are 15" h x 10 3/4" w  
• The finished bags are 10" h x 6 1/2" w

Place the cardboard in the center of the atlas page.

Fold the right side of the atlas page over the cardboard.  Crease.

Now, fold the left side over the cardboard and crease.

Unfold.  Apply glue to the bottom of the page and along the right side.

Refold the atlas page.  Firmly press to be sure the glue sticks.  
Add more glue where needed.  
Fold the bottom edge over 1 inch.  Crease firmly and glue.  

These are so quick and easy to make!  In a flash, you'll have a stack of bags to take to your next craft show, at little to no cost, and you will have recycled an old atlas, or other cast-off paper.