Fit For Me – Making Up My Makeup Bag
From all the travel I’ve done the past couple years for work, my makeup bag has taken a real beating. It was a tri-fold brush bag I purchased from Mary Kay that of course held my Mary Kay makeup brushes. It was ideal for travel because it had a couple pockets to store my makeup, disposable contacts and some odd things I need when I traveled.
This makeup bag lasted longer than a couple suitcases in this time period but it was clearly now time for a replacement. The slots for the brushes had holes so the brushes would poke out the bottom. The zipper compartment had torn so my items would slide out everywhere. The bag had seen a lot of miles, hotel rooms and served me well. Go in peace good solider.
Since I’m with a little more free time these days, I recently organized my fabric stash and have been on a quest to find ways to use up remnants and leftover pieces. Of course I have at least two Pinterest boards full of cute nifty ideas to help in this area!
One of my favorite things to make with scraps, remnants and smaller pieces are bags. Tote bags, trick or treat bags, shopping bags, library book bags and in this case makeup bags!
This is the pattern I followed, and modified: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/54746951691984232/
My Modifications
First, I made my bag slightly longer. The pattern makes a 19 by 9 inches bag and as you can see it was made just for brushes. My bag measures 22 by 9 inches so I could include room for 8 brushes and 2 decent sized pockets. This way I could get all my makeup in one bag along with my brushes for traveling. Keeping things together and compact is key to packing in this day of expensive luggage fees and carry-on restrictions. Plus let’s face it, I’m much less likely to lose something this way.
I checked with a couple friends and asked how many makeup brushes they have and what they use to travel. Most were anywhere between 4 and 8. I settled on 8 slots because I have 8 brushes and if I make these as gifts it gives my friends opportunity to adequately fit for their needs.
I followed the pattern including rounding the corners using the template. Next time I make these I’ll use a square corner instead. The rounded corners just seemed to make the binding a little more challenging to fit and I like the look of a sharp mitered corner better.