One of my earliest Mother’s Day memories is my dad taking me to the cosmetics section in the grocery store to choose a bottle of nail polish for my mom. I couldn’t help thinking about that as I constructed this year’s Mother’s Day gift – a small tote for my mom to carry her nail polish and related supplies around the house.

Some time ago, I was showing my mom all of the sewing projects I have pinned on my “Sewing (Someday)” Pinterest board and the Portable Manicure-Pedicure Kit tutorial on Positively Splendid caught her eye, which made it really easy to choose what to make for Mother’s Day.

This is what it looks like folded up – a strap with a Velcro tab keeps it securely closed.

And this is what it looks like opened up and filled with some manicure essentials! There are some little elastic straps in the middle to hold a nail file (or any other equally scary accessory that you don’t want flying all over the place).

There are lots of little pockets for nail polish and things…

One of the larger pockets houses a little folded mat to lay down while using nail polish (no more searching for newspaper or magazines!)

I used some fusible vinyl leftover from Joe’s boxy “man bag” on the top side of the mat. See that magical vinyl shine?

This project was really easy – so easy, actually, that I almost confused myself when I would try to make each step harder than it needed to be. I’m used to constructing bags that require a lot of “right sides together, sew, turn” type of stuff – the idea of putting the final pieces “wrong sides together” and attaching using bias tape seemed entirely too simplified.

However… I did not enjoy working with the bias tape. I’ll work with it in the future if I have to, but I won’t be adding it to projects on a whim. I found it very difficult to make the trim look nice, even after searching the internet for tips and watching some YouTube videos. I used my seam ripper at least three separate times to pull it out and start over again. In the time it took to make the bias tape look nice, do you want to know how many times I could have just sewn right-sides-together, turned, pressed and top-stitched? Lots!

I also stitched a matching card, ’cause that’s how I roll!

This little tote would be great for other little items as well – hair accessories, craft items, toy cars, etc! Just be sure you know what you’re getting yourself into when you venture into the world of bias tape. 😉

PS – As usual, Winnie crashed the photo shoot. Here’s an amusing ‘behind the scenes’ shot!