Back to School Craft: Pencil cases and more!

Some more fun makes using one of my favourite materials – juice pouches!

Clockwise from top left: Apple flavour mobile phone sleeve; small pencil case; shoulder bag with red straps; Tropical & Orange pencil case; Autumn fruits pencil case with red zip; Safari Animals juice pouch pencil case; Orange Fruit Splash mobile case; Sun Shots & Capri Sun pencil pouch with yellow zip.

I love using these foil juice drink packs for several reasons:-

1. It’s saving them from going into landfill – sadly, Capri Sun pouches are not currently recyclable and as they contain both foil and plastic will take a long time to degrade
2. They are brightly coloured and fun, appealing to adults and kids alike. I find it’s always a talking point when I use my juice pouch lunch bag!
3. They are great fun to work with as a material as they are already cut to a standard size (at least most brands are, more on that in a moment) but also they can easily be cut and manipulated to use for other purposes.

The only down side to using them is firstly sourcing them (as I don’t allow my children to drink these kinds of drinks every day) and secondly the cleaning and preparation before use. They are easy enough to slit open and clean but take an age to dry. That’s the only tedious part of the process! As for sourcing them, I have a great supply at the school where I work with a couple of dedicated dinner ladies who get the children to collect up used packs during the lunch break 🙂

These pencil cases are a fun Back to School item, I really enjoy making these and they’re a popular item in my shop

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I even made one which is four juice pouches wide (so 8 in total) for a friend’s son, who wanted to fit his 30cm ruler inside. I will definitely be making more of those!

These Fruit Splash mobile phone sleeves are a new adventure in juice pouch upcycling! At first I was a bit miffed that they are bigger than the standard sized Capri Sun et al packs and therefore I couldn’t use them with other brands. However, I realised they are virtually the same exact size as my felt mobile phone sleeves. So I lined them with soft felt, added some velcro and hey presto, mobile phone cases made from juice pouches 😀

Finally, I got around to completing a shoulder bag – a bit of a longer task, but very satisfying when I see it all come together. My other tote bags sold a while ago and I kept meaning to make more but life got in the way! I’ve also stitched the front and back for another tote bag, this one featuring Orange and Tropical juices with a yellow strap.

Can you tell it’s the Summer Holidays and I’m not at work..? 😉