Dress Up Suitcase!

Let's Play Dress Up!
Perfect cute storage for all of your Halloween costumes, so your kids can play dress up all year long.  

My kids love to play dress up! Not just at Halloween but all year long.  But somehow dress up clothes end up in every room in our house! I thought it was high time I upgrade the cardboard dress up box in the closet. So I headed to the thrift store and found these beautiful.... well okay kind of stinky, kind of old, hard plastic suitcases. At $2 a piece I couldn't be more excited!

I decorated two suitcases one for the boys and one for the girls... I have to admit I had a lot of fun *blinging* out these suitcases! I just love the circle pattern, and the ribbon edging! I couldn't stop at the outside, I had to make sure the inside was bright and fun too!

I made my little boy a cowboy themed suitcase, complete with rope trim, a denim luggage tag, and hanky lining ~ Yee-Ha!

My kids love it..I could not get through the photo shoot without them wanting to dig in and play!What else could you store in an old suitcase?

This was my Thrift store entry for SYTYC, do you want to know how to make one?

Items Needed:
Old hard plastic Suitcases
Kilz primer
Krylon Spray Paint
Lining material
Luggage Tag Material

Step 1: Paint
First because these suitcases are plastic, you need to prime it so that spray paint can adhere to it well. You can buy special spray paint for plastics but I find this works better.

Tape off any part of the suitcase that you don't want painted such as the outer edge and handle. Spray with primer, I always use Kilz.


Once it is primed, and dried, add your base color of spray paint, for the girls purple, and for the boys tan.
Then add your design to your painted suitcase. For the girls I created a design on photoshop, and my good friend Holly from Vinylize It created a stencil, using some of her extra vinyl. She was so great to work with, and her prices are so reasonable.

For the boys I created diagonal stripes using painting tape.
I then coated the paint with some clear spray paint to add protection.

Step 2: Inside

Now for the inside. If possible tear out the old lining, in my older suitcase the lining was pretty gross. I then cleaned the hard suitcase.

My newer suitcase the lining was alright, so I just left it in place. I used scrap material I had to cover the inside of the suitcases.
Using Spray adhesive spray the inside of the suitcase, and cover with your material.
To help it stay in I used hot glue, and lined the suitcase with spare ribbon that I had.  You can see the brown ribbon in the picture above?

Also on the outside of the case their was room to put fun ribbon.  For the boys suitcase I even used some old rope I had lying around!

Step 3: Luggage Tag
All that is left is the luggage tags. I just made these on the fly. I cut out a strip of material, and fusible fleece 3.5" x 11"
 

Iron the material and fusible fleece together.  Fold in half wrong sides together and clip the ends, at a 45 degree angle.

Place the vinyl and lining over one side of the material/fleece and sew it on how you would like it.  I used bias tape for the edging, I sewed one side of the bias tape on to the vinyl, where you want the pocket to be.

Then I  placed the bias tape around the vinyl on the tag, and sewed it to the tag... I am sure there is a more precise way of doing this, but I was having a tough time working with the vinyl.

Make the strap for the tag, sew one end of the strap to the top of tag.  You can then put a snap on the back of the tag, so you can take it on and off.  I cheated because I knew I would not need to take it off, so I just used some hot glue to secure it on.

With wrong sides together fold the material/fleece and top stitch around the edges.
Then just add whatever details you would like.
This was a more involved project than I thought, but it was also a lot of fun.  And all the dressup clothes........ now have a fashionable home, and are out of my sight, YEAH!

Most importantly my kids can not get enough of them, these suitcases are lugged all over the house!

Okay one more before and after shall we?

BEFORE

And AFTER

Fffewww, I am glad to have this project, and post done!

I like to party at THESE places!