DIY Tote Bag: Chicago Neighborhood Map

Canvas tote bags are the new black. The environmentally conscious urban dweller would rather be caught dead than stroll out of Whole Foods without their reusable shopping bag.




The explosion of the tote bag market has brought some rad city map renderings on canvas. So you can represent where you were, are or want to be. Maptote has an awesome Chicago and Pittsburgh version.

As cool as they are, I wanted to make something more personalized as a gift for my mom. So I sketched a Chicago map of places my parents and I visited on their last visit to Chi-town.



After I was happy with the image, I took the JPEG file to FedEx Kinko's and asked them to make it a transparency.



Then we took the transparency and exposed it to a screen in Rich's printing studio.



This is the almost-final result. I hated the straps on the original canvas bag, so I removed them and sewed something a little more stylish on.