The Playful Dachshund Tote-bag

Yesterday I spent zero time in the garden as I was busy crafting a tote-bag and baking cookies for a care package for my good friend who is graduating this weekend and getting her PhD powers.

My friend has two “animals” that she loves, platypuses and dachshunds so I wanted to make her something that incorporated one of those two beings into the design. I began by being too ambitious. Even though I am spreading myself thin with too many work projects I was delusional enough to think I could crochet something brilliant for her, like an amigurumi (with which I have a lot of experience). Then I realized that I didn’t have enough time to finish it so I re-calibrated and went to a craft store to get inspiration. I thought that maybe I could find a dachshund or platypus stencil or cookie cutter and make something thematic with that. Well, after an hour of searching I found NOTHING that related to those things. I’m assuming it is because I live in a lame town where consumers only want to buy generic dog stencils and don’t want to commit to a cool breed like the wiener dog. Yet I digress.

I ended up purchasing a sheet of glitter iron-on paper. The plan was to design my own Dachshund stencil, cut it out of the glitter paper and iron it onto a tote bag. (At this point I didn’t want to just copy a stencil from the internet, then really, where is my contribution?) The gift would travel well and be extra special because it is unique, down to the stencil.

Without further ado, here is how it all went down in pictures:

First, there were some crummy late-night sketches...

... many of them.

Then I settled on this one, our winner:

Then I cut it out of the paper to create a stencil.

I’m really glad, in retrospect, that I went with a larger design since cutting the floppy glitter paper turned out to be the most challenging part of the process. And at $14.99 a sheet, I wasn’t about to mess this up.

I ended up cutting out two glitter iron-ons, mirror images.

Because I wanted to create a “heraldic lion” effect…

My friend is also the proud owner of two dachshunds. So it is extra fancy to match that with two pups rather than one. Overall, I was very pleased with the end product (even though the photography isn't great, just trust me, it looks better in person). The gold glitter patches look fabulous on the black tote-bag and I think the surface-to-dog proportions are visually satisfying. For some reason, it feels very Tina Turner glitzy to me.