Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

Over the week­end, some good­ies arrived all the way from Min­nesota. No, not Prince good­ies. Oh no, these were extra spe­cial, one-off, totally unique good­ies cour­tesy of the illus­tri­ous ‘Splat­girl’. When they arrived, I wanted to kiss the deliv­ery man, not least because I’d been secretly pet­ri­fied of the par­cel going miss­ing in the post and (due to the unique nature of the good­ies) never being able to replace its con­tents. Thank­fully, the par­cel arrived at my house, in one piece, with everything intact and splendi­fer­ous. Squee.

I dis­covered Lara of Splat­girl Cre­ates and Mod­ern in MN fame well over a year ago and was very proud to be one of her very first MOOPocket cus­tom­ers. Since then, she won­der­fully upgraded my MOOPocket back in Feb­ru­ary to a rather fab­ulous leather and striped affair and as a lovely ges­ture for my repeat cus­tom, she also enclosed a match­ing key fob wrist strap:

Gor­geous, aren’t they? I loved them so much that when mes­sen­ger bags star­ted appear­ing in the Splat­girl Cre­ates shop on etsy, I just had to get in on the funky bag action.

I love work­ing with Lara on cus­tom orders (not long after she sent my key fob strap, I was in talks to snag my sis­ter one, too). Not only is her work beau­ti­fully and metic­u­lously fin­ished, but com­mu­nic­at­ing and nego­ti­at­ing a way to your ulti­mate cre­ation is a fun and smooth pro­cess (even when stuck with a poten­tial crisis such as only hav­ing a post­age stamp-sized square of beloved stripe fab­ric left). She does her utmost to come up with a unique design best suited to the style, size and func­tion needed (often work­ing totally from scratch or adapt­ing and meld­ing together ele­ments of the exist­ing designs in her range) and is very open to dis­cus­sion and boun­cing around and try­ing out new ideas.

Work on my bag star­ted weeks before­hand with me win­dow shop­ping and drool­ing over research­ing poten­tial sizes, styles and designs in shops and then decid­ing that noth­ing was as cool as what I’d seen in the Splat­girl Cre­ates shop. Cue me convo-ing sweetly and dol­ing out cus­tom meas­ure­ments and work­ing through the finer details over a series of mes­sages to and fro.

The main goal was to cre­ate some­thing in a brown oil-tanned leather and fantabulous stripes so that it matched my exist­ing MOOPocket and key fob. It also would be “mini” in size; what with me being a Claire-Bear of iddy-biddy pro­por­tions, I was con­cerned that a regular-sized mes­sen­ger bag might drown me. So, a cus­tom size was in order, com­plete with short strap so that I could wear it across the body whilst seated in my wheelchair.

Tech­nical Spec:

• 9″ tall, 6 1/2″ across with a 2 1/2″ depth (i.e. just big enough for a large mole­skine, my keys, wal­let, phone and a pen).
• A fully-lined, fixed-length brown leather strap about 1.5″ wide and 37″ long with metal clip/D-Ring (de)attachments.
• Internal pocket with envelope-style clos­ure, I.D-style win­dow pocket, busi­ness card pocket and pen pocket “under-the-flap”.

“The Mak­ing Of…” Pho­tos © 2008, Splat­girl Creates.

About this time, a range of stun­ningly edible fab­ric cov­ers made to meas­ure for large Mole­skine note­books had also been launched. As you may know, I heart Mole­sk­ines almost as much as I adore match­ing accessor­ies. I don’t even need to say what happened next…

Ta, da! And here they are, a bag and match­ing Mole­skine cover, set­tling in nicely:

See more/full-size images in the Photo Set

The Mole­skine cover is con­struc­ted from the same leather as the bag and is lov­ingly lined with stripes to keep my note­book safe and snug. The cover also fea­tures an ingeni­ous detail on the reverse that styl­ishly accom­mod­ates the elastic band­ing char­ac­ter­istic of Moleskines.

I can­not tell you how giddy match­ing sets of things make me. Look at that set, it’s utterly beau­ti­ful. The leather has a rich and tact­ile fin­ish which, if I under­stand oil-tanned hide right, will actu­ally grow darker and more beau­ti­ful with age, and the stripes just make me go all warm and fuzzy inside.

I am so pleased with how it’s all turned out, I think it’s amaz­ing how someone on the other side of an ocean can make some­thing that looks just like I’d ori­gin­ally envis­aged it inside my head; a feat which is due, in no small part, to Lara’s seem­ingly bound­less tal­ent. And I’m not the only one who’s been impressed. K was so infatu­ated with my lovely new things that we’re cur­rently going through the pro­cess of nab­bing K her very own cus­tom bag and match­ing mobile phone case.

For more “Leather <3 Stripes” good­ness, be sure to check out the post and pho­tos of this pro­ject on the offi­cial Splat­girl Cre­ates blog (my bag looks so much more glam in the swish sur­round­ings of her sprawl­ing abode).

Fancy your own? Why not take a peek at Splat­girl Cre­ates on Etsy?