Tuesday, June 18, 2013

New Embroidered Bags

I love, love, love upcycling the Military bags I've been using for embroidery. For me, they are the perfect mix of function, durability and style. Unfortunately, they are sometimes hard to obtain. Once I have a bag both I and my customers love, I scour the internet looking for them and buy in big quantities.  Even so, it's bound to happen that I will run out, and this has been my problem lately. I currently have about 20 or so of these bags left at the time of posting. This is because I JUST found more! The constant issue of having to source them has had me rethinking if I shouldn't go to a more easily accessible bag.

These are the new Canvas Rucksacks now available at Owl Say Designs. I love them! Maybe I'm just tired of looking at Olive Drab, but I am LOVING the new gray color. I love the matching strap. I love the easy turn closures on the flap. The colors really pop on the more neutral smoke gray which means I'm able to offer more color options for single color embroideries. 


For instance, here is a customer favorite design, the Deep Sea Helmet. It was previously only available in brown on the military rucksacks, but it's shown here in Navy Blue. You also have the choice of 16 other embroidery colors, all of which pop nicely on the gray canvas field bag. 


The new gray bags are also one main open pocket, which has been frequently requested. It has one long adjustable strap that can be shortened to carry on your shoulder, or lengthened to carry the bag across your body (like a hip bag). It's large enough to fit an iPad or any eReader. Smaller laptops and books will also fit. Perfect for a necessities only diaper bag too. I love its durability and that it can span functionality across a lot of different customers. 


Here's an example of the customer who chose the Wordy Bird design embroidered in Hunter Green (as opposed how it's listed in Black embroidery). I wouldn't have thought to use Hunter Green for this design, but the color pops quite nicely on the gray bag. This is also a good time to mention that I use my embroidery software to digitally put the embroidery on the bag - meaning, the pics I have listed show a bag with 'virtual' embroidery. The downside of this, is the color and design are so much more vibrant and intricate once it's actually embroidered. But another post on this later...


My next most requested item is a dedicated laptop and/or messenger bag and I love these! I'm not gonna lie, I wish these were offered in gray! But I DO love the light khaki color of these bags. Same options go for these as for the gray field bags, all of the one color embroidery designs are available in 16 different embroidery options. These do fit up to a 17" laptop. They are medium-weight cotton canvas, so you'll probably need a neoprene sleeve on your laptop if you use this as your dedicated laptop bag. I'd like to point out that if you purchase a padded laptop bag from a big box store, it would never look this cute!  

Like the Smoke Canvas Field Bags, these have an adjustable strap allowing you to carry it on your shoulder or across your body. They also work great as book bags for school age or college kids and as diaper bags. In fact, I'm trying to narrow down the design I want to put on the bag for my 14 month old!