Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Are You Ready For Some Footballs.....

Ok, first of all, I want to let everyone know that I am sorry I have not blogged in a while. I have been very busy with school and have been trying very hard to keep my GPA up so crafts have been put on hold.

Now you may think that I am going to talk about the sport of football, but this post has nothing to do with that(sorry, if you clicked on this to read a post about football). In fact, this post has more to do with plastic shopping bags than anything.

I know that many of us have started using re-usable shopping bags, but I also know there are still some out there that are not or some that still wind up using plastic bags due to not having enough re-usable bags. My husband and I had quite a few of these bags sitting around the kitchen and they were taking up way too much space. I friend sent me the idea of making the bags into footballs for easy storage so I thought I would share the pictures and steps with all of you!


Plastic Shopping Bag Footballs


1. First start out by laying the bag out as flat as you can. I found it easiest if you straighten the bottom out and then worry about flattening out the bag.


 









2. Fold the bag in half and then half again as shown in the pictures above. Remember to flatten the bag out as you go because any air in the bag at this step will just become an annoyance.

 








3. Fold in the left side corner and continue to fold the plastic bag like you would fold a paper football. You will end up with an opening at the top of the triangle with an inch or so of the handle still left untouched.

4. Fold the handles in so that they will fit into the opening at the top of the triangle. I fold my handles down into thirds and then fold in the corner(you will want to fold this corner on the same side as the slant of the triangle.) Then fold the handles into the opening and Ta-Dah you have a football!


This picture right here has 30 plastic bags folded up into the footballs. And to let you know how big that is compared to a normal shopping bag, I placed all these in a shopping bag for storage and still have more than half of the bag left!

Now that the bags don't take up space, they are not only easier to store, but are also a ton easier to throw in your bag for an extra trash bag in the car or anything like that. Also, it would make taking these bags back to the store to recycle a million times easier!