DIY: Reworking a Vintage Bag Part II

I love painting bags.  And I love when I see an old vintage bag that is plain because I instantly think of it as a blank slate--my mind just starts coming up with the millions of possibilities that could be, and should be, on the bag.  Now, I know some of you are reading this with your mouths dropped to the ground wondering how I could take a paintbrush to an already seriously gorgeous vintage bag...  However, the couple of vintage bags that I have painted were bought specifically with this intention, and I plan to do it again and again. :)

So, if you enjoyed Part I where I painted the Louis Vuitton Hello Kitty bag, are you ready for Part II?

Things you will need for this DIY: a vintage bag with a lot of room to paint (I chose a vintage Coach bag).  You will also need Acrylic paint (make sure that it's opaque so that the colors paint on thick and so that you won't have to paint multiple layers).  You will also need a couple of brushes- one larger and one small should do the trick.  And lastly, you will need masking tape unless you plan to not use stripes.

So let's begin!

1. Gather your materials.

* Make sure the paint is opaque and not transparent.  This will save you a lot of time!

2. If you are going to do stripes, PLEASE READ this: make sure the leather on your bag is not too soft and that the tape won't damage it.  I did not check this beforehand and when I took off the top layer of tape, some of the leather had rubbed off with it.  I then had to add another white strip at the top (see Step 5) by freehand to cover up my mistake.  If the leather on your bag is really soft, you may want to do something other than stripes OR freehand them.

3. Begin to paint the areas.

4. Finish painting the stripes.  (Notice that I didn't tape off all the sides- you might want to do this if you are worried you are a messy painter...to be honest I'm too impatient and was only worried about the top lines..)

5. Add any extra stripes/details that are needed.  (This white stripe is the extra one that was added because of the leather rubbing off on the tape.  This one was done by freehand because I didn't want to put any more tape on the bag!!)

6. Begin to add the final details.  Using your small paintbrush, paint little dots across the bottom row of the bag.

7. Work into the next row continuing to paint the small dots.

8. Finish all of the rows.

It's complete!!

9. Enjoy your "new" vintage bag! :)

Thank you so much for reading!!!

I can not tell you how excited I am for next week!!

I have more than one exciting thing coming up on my blog next week so please make sure to check back!!!  And if you follow me in Instagram (@a_fashion_files) then you might already know one of the exciting things!!

Have a great weekend!!