Kiehl's bags, the making of

I've already told you all about the Creating with Kiehl's for a Cause project. Well, the bags I created for Kiehl's will be part of the exhibition that has already started in Attica department store (details at the end of this post) so it's finally time to reveal my creations!

The concept was really simple and based on the purpose of this initiative.I chose to use plastic bags.

Plastic is a material that is light, durable, cheap and hygienic. Yet, over the years, it has collected a very bad reputation as a pollutant of the environment. My goal in this project was to highlight the fact that it's not plastic that's bad for the environment, it's the way we use it. Most objects made of plastic are wrongly considered as worthless, disposable and meant for a single use, when really they're not and shouldn't be, considering how much energy and non-renewable sources go into its production.

For the first tote, I used the plastic bags as brightly coloured panels sewn onto the bag in a way that they let the brand's logo show through in colour.

For the second bag, the method I chose was a lot more painstaking. I cut the bags into very narrow strips, rolled them into thread and used it to embroider the logo in black and fill in the rest with colour.

This technique was chosen to symbolize how much time and energy is consumed to process plastic that is thrown out to be buried or recycled, and at the same time, to remind people that it's up to us to use it responsibly. We can chose to treat it as garbage or we can look at it as something that's still useful, even potentially beautiful.

Ok, enough with the talk. Here come the pictures!

Here's how the sewn bag was made:

And the procedure for the embroidered bag:
Ready and signed in plastic thread.

Now you know what you have to do if you want to enter the draft in order to win one of them:

Head over to Kiehl's in Attica, just off Syntagma Square, get photographed with your favourite bag and leave your contact info to be eligible for the draft. Hurry up though, you only get one week, as next Thursday June 2nd there will be a huge finale party where all of the artists, bloggers and Kiehl's people will be present to hold the draft and announce the winner for each tote.


And don't forget to check out Kiehl's in Greece on Facebook and visit all the participating blogs for exclusive photos of each artist's work.

See you next Thursday!