We’ve had a summer of fun with our beloved bumbag, but after being our trusty hands-free protector of keys, phone and purse at festivals and nights out a-plenty, it could do with a facelift.
Fashion house Marni reins as the king of embellishment. We’ve been pretty obsessed with their sparkly offerings for a while now – who can forget their fabulous Fall ’09 embellished socks?
This season is no exception. Marni has upped the bum bag game and given the usually casual accessory a grown-up autumn/winter spin.
But, at a pretty price of £600, and even at half price in the sales, you may be able to save to buy the bag, but were betting you’d have no money left to actually put in it. Not ideal!
If you need any more convincing that bum bags are here to stay, just look to the latest Fashion Weeks. At Maison Margelia’s MM6 SS 16 show, they showed an amazing sequin bumbag across the chest of a model (you may be so proud of your DIY that this would be the new way to wear it?)
While at Kenzo, bum bags in all their glory were tripled up and moved up to the waist.
So, with all that said, why not get ahead of the fash pack and DIY yourself a bag that you’ll be wearing well into next season.
How to
Take your bag (we used this fab structured number from ASOS) and lay flat on a surface.
Remove the belt by sliding it out of the buckles. This is just to ensure a flat surface for easy crafting, you can re-attach it later.
To start, we made an abstract pattern with heavy patches of sequins, dotted randomly around the bag. With your glue, spread a generous amount in an abstract circle-like splodge to your bag.
Take a large handful of black sequins and sprinkle generously over the glue, then pat gently to help the sequins stick.
This is a super quick way to get an effective sprinkle of sequins, rather than sewing each one on individually. But don’t worry, with this glue, the sequins won’t be going anywhere.
After a couple of seconds, tip the bag and shake the excess sequins off.
Repeat this in random, spaced out sections of the bag (copy our picture if you’re unsure where to place them!).
Once you have your sequined ‘base’, take your 12mm gold studs. These are claw back, and would usually be pierced through fabric, but since our bum bag is leather, we folded back the claws with our fingers, making the stud flat and able to be glued.
The gold studs look great on the edge of the sequin areas. Add a small circle of glue, then place the stud on top, and lightly hold down for a few seconds. We glued six on our bag to start, but you can always add more later.
Next, take your two varying sizes of square black gems (1.5mm and 4mm) and glue these in any gaps on the bag, scattered and in varying directions.
We love the colour these silver sticky back gems give to our bag. Even though they have a small amount of glue on already, fix them onto the bag, dotted randomly, with the Glu & Fix glue, for extra strength and durability.
At this stage, our bag was beginning to look Marni-tastic, we added eight plain silver sequins to give even more sparkle. The rich embellishment and mix of silver, gold and black really gives the bag an expensive feel.
We added eight of these fab little cone studs, putting a tiny dot of glue on the back, careful to not make the glue spill out and be visible.
Using the same gluing technique as with our sequins, we filled in any sparse sections of the bag, spreading our glue then sprinkling these gun-metal coloured Bugle Beads only in any areas that didn’t look as bling as we’d like!
At this stage, look at your bag and decide if you’re happy with the final result, or, if you have a favourite element of embellishment, go in and add anything in a few more bits, until you’re happy with the final result.
We loved the look of the gold studs, so placed seven more across our bag until it was sparkle city!
There you have it, a Marni-inspired bum bag for a fraction of the price.
Like this? Then you might also be interested in:
6 Really Aweseome Bags That Will Improve Your Day-To-Day Life
Follow Jenny on Twitter: @JennyBrownlees
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.