The Global Styler: DIY Backpack Decor

It’s only a week until my big kid starts 1st grade. On one hand it will be great to get back into the swing of things but the girls have had a great summer and I feel like they grew closer so I’m going to miss hearing them play all day.

If you’re new around here, on the first Monday of every month, I get together with A Designer at Home, Up to Date Interiors and Casa Watkins Living, to bring you global inspired tips or tutorials.

 Because school starts soon, this month’s Global Styler posts are all about back to school goodies. Nickerbean 1 (that’s my first born) and I decided to makeover a plain backpack with some mudcloth designs and cute little tassels.

She loves a good crafting session and we did this project together so if you see tiny hands with no vains, those are most certainly not mine.

For this project we used: *this post contains affiliate links*
this backpack
3 packs of embroidery thread
pom poms from the dollar store
scissors
string
hot glue (I’m sporting a painful burn as I type this)
a fabric marker (I was going to use fabric paint but that’s way too time consuming..)

First, we made the tassels. I let her pick out the colors she wanted and we made them so easily. We kept them in their little paper sleeves and found the center where all the thread was looped together.

We used a short piece of thread and tied each side at both ends.

Once both sides were tied, we took off the packaging and cut in the middle to get two tassels with very little effort. After the fact, I thought about folding the whole thing in half and tying it there so that the tassels could be really short and chunky. How cute.

Then big kid tied knots near the top of every tassel for secure them a little better. Once these parts are double knotted, just cut off the extra thread.

We loved the tassels as is but obviously we had to capitalize on our crafting time so we picked pompoms to add in the mix. If tassels are good, pompoms and tassels are better. It’s science.

She laid out the poms and wanted some up by the tie and some down near the bottom of the tassel.

Cue the scalding of the finger.

I realized, after I burned myself, that holding the pompom tight and putting glue on the other side of it was better than putting the glue on the tassel and letting it squeeze out everywhere…

After that situation, we tied each tassel to a piece of jute string. We tied them so that they would vary in length.

Before we tied them to her backpack, we picked out a mudcloth pattern we liked and I drew some of the designs on the center zipper pouch of the backpack.

This pillow was our inspiration:

via

They definitely look hand drawn but that’s just like mudcloth.

Last thing I did because she’s a little kid and the backpack had to be cinched up to fit, I cut off the extra tails of the backpack straps and melted the threads at the edges to that they looks finished.

She loves her backpack and immediately filled it with tons of unnecessary stuff.

If you aren’t in need of a tasseled backpack, think about these same steps for a pillow or blanket. A couple years ago I attached embroidery string tassels onto our beach bag and it was so cute.

 Make sure you check out these other globally inspired back to school projects!

Up to Date Interiors- Japanese Inspired Pencil Holder

Casa Watkins Living- DIY Beaded Tassel Bookmark

A Designer at Home- African Mudcloth Pencil Pouch

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Thanks for reading, friends.

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