Fused Bag ATCs

For the recent Non-Paper/Cardboard ATC Swap, I ended up creating my bases from plastic shopping bags.

I cut off the bag handles and bottoms and ironed the remaining rectangles together to build up a large sheet. (I lost track of how many bags; basically I kept adding one or two until I was happy with the strucural integrity.) I used the iron’s cotton setting and covered the bags with a cotton floursack-style towel I didn’t care about. When I had a thickness I liked, I added some more focal bits cut from other bags to create a bag masterboard. Before ironing:

After ironing:

Then I cut ATC-sized pieces. For the focal points, I cut shapes out of a rejected base experiment where I layered abstract painty elements between pieces of packing tape. (I like that effect as an ATC base, just not for this swap.) A bit of stitching with embroidery floss and they were done.

A couple of individual photos:

Thanks for looking!

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I love mine! It’s such a novel material and really cool execution.

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That stitching really makes these extra special.

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Thanks, everyone! These were a…journey, but I really like how they came out.

Absolutely brilliant. I love everything about them!

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You really thought out of the box and created something amazing.

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These are awesome!

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Thanks for the kind comments, everybody!

What a fun idea for a non-paper ATC!

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:fallen_leaf: I’m fallin’ for this awesome featured project this week! :fallen_leaf:

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the creativity is blowing me away!

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Woohoo! Thank you.

And thanks again to everyone for the comment love.

These are so cool! Love how graphic and bright they are!

These are so cool! Thank you for sharing how you made them. How rigid is the resulting “paper”? This has me wondering if you could use this technique to make “fabric” to sew into something. :thinking:

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I’d say these ended up medium-stiff, but that’s because I kept adding bags to get something that felt comparable to a traditional ATC base. You could definitely get a more flexible fabric with fewer bags. I don’t know how well it would hold up for wearables, a purse, etc. But I seem to remember seeing people make reusable shopping bags out of fused bags, so maybe.

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