Purses Made From Candy Wrappers
Green living and haute couture have converged to make a colorful candy wrapper purse a fashionista must-have as well as a cottage industry for poor Indians living in Mexico and other areas in Latin America. Any craftsperson can make the same bag.
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What is a Candy Wrapper Purse?
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Craftspeople make candy wrapper purses with bits of folded paper, the size of candy wrappers, that they fold together and weave to form a paper fabric. In some cases they glean the papers from trashcans and even pluck them from the roadway, but in other cases, the papers are misprints that manufacturers sell for this craft project.
Cottage Industry
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In 1987 Grupedsac, an organization interested in furthering the economic conditions of the Indian people of Mexico and South America, began a cottage industry among the women. They were taught how to weave the wrappers into high-fashion bags and purses.
Miami-based entrepreneur Jonathan Marcoschamer began buying the purses directly from Grupedsac and marketing them for up to $200 in the fashion districts of America, Europe and Asia. -
Finding Wrappers
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The resource for wrappers is post-industrial waste. If a label is a misprint, it goes into the trash. Contact candy companies and ask if you can have these mistakes at a nominal fee. Ask kids at school to save candy wrappers for you. Advertise on free websites and you may find more wrappers than you can possibly use. Substitute other similar weight materials such as chip bags.
Getting the Pattern Just Right
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The fold is simple to make. Fold the strip sideways into a ½-inch strip. Fold that in half and then fold each end up to the middle. Link the ends and sew them together, but there is a way to make sure that the right color ends up facing out. Make a paper template and fold it. Put a mark where the center should be. When folding a strip, make sure the correct pattern matches the template pattern so that the center and the template mark correspond. You will get the right pattern every time.
Where to Sell Bags
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Anyone can sell anything on the Internet. Make your own web page and show pictures of your bag for sale. Price them comparably by researching other bags by size and difficulty of pattern. Set up a table at a flea market. Run a fund-raiser at your school or church craft fair. These unique purses always attract attention.
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