Have you ever had one of those days? I’ve had one of those months, my vacuum bit the big one when the plastic connection where the hose and the body of the machine meet up cracked and there was no fixing it. I can’t afford a new vacuum at the moment though, luckily my mother said my grandmother has a spare because she was gifted a lighter one (my Grandma is no spring chicken and her new lighter vacuum is great for her) so I’m to be given the old one since mine is now happily doing it’s thing with the big carpet in the sky.

Until my mother gets back from Michigan with my new vacuum I had to borrow one from my (in all but on paper) mother in law who doesn’t use it anyway because it’s so ancient that the sound bothers my wonderful sis who lives with her ( she has flare ups with her lupus because of the sound), they just use one of the sweeper ones, not as great but it works for most tasks.

Anyway so I’ve got this used vacuum that I’ve already had to replace the belt on by guesstimate because really, it’s old, and now I need a bag because the one in it was not only full but it tore to boot so there is no emptying and reusing it :::sigh::: What’s a girl to do?

I made one darn it! It’s not pretty…well, ok, it is kinda pretty because of the fabric I used which was leftover from a project, and I might have put in some velcro at the top so that I could reuse it if I had any on hand, but it works and that is what matters huh?

Ok, it's kinda pretty since it's pink, lol.

To make this wonderful useful, and in your case washable therefore reuseable in a jiffy in desperate need of a vacuum bag now bag you will need to either

A. Take the measurements from your regular disposable bag or

B. Take a guesstimate from your vacuum.

Supplies:

fabric keep in mind you’re going to want something with a tight weave (no holes)
Scissors
2 Elastic Bands (like for hair) that will fit snugly over your attachment area
Coffee Can Lid (you can cut a larger one down to size if you need to)
Marker, pencil, pen, whatever
Way to sew it all together

Directions

Take a coffee can lid and trace the opening hole where the vacuum attached to the bag. I had to stack some books under mine because the vacuum hose thing doesn't come out. If yours doesn't even move you'll have to get creative Don't forget to cut out the hole!

To get started you're going to go ahead and take measurements of how big this needs to be and cut your fabric appropriately.

Why do we need the coffee can lid? So that the area where the bag attached is stable and doesn't blow off when you power up the vacuum! Now you're going to cut 2 extra squares of fabric that are the width of the bag and big enough for the lid so that you'll have a couple of inchs around the lid area for sewing.

Take your two smaller pieces of fabric and mark each with a circle in the middle. I used the pre cut coffee can lid to do this. Sew hair elastic around hole with zig zag stitch. When done cut out inside of hole being careful not to cut any of your new stitches. Do this with each smaller piece.

Sew up 3 sides of smaller piece then tuck prepared lid in and sew up last edge.

Then sew round the lid (but not the plastic itself) so it's secure.

Almost done now! Sew the smaller piece to one of the main body pieces at the end. Don't mind if it's now too long for your vacuum it will still work and I'm really not going back to do this all over again since I've already vacuumed, lol. If you don't want it to be too long then cut off the extra. Then all you have to do is sew round all the edges and you're done!

Attached to the machine

Now if I’d had any hook and loop tape (velcro) then I might have put some along the top instead of sewing it closed, but it is what it is and it works and that’s the important thing because Gus is shedding getting his summer coat and the other vacuum won’t be here at least another week!

Personally I love coffee, you could call me an addict and I’d be ok with that because it’s true, lol. Coffee is my love first thing in the morning and after dinner too, and Dave (my other half) is just as bad as I am, we simply do not function without coffee.

Our love of course leads us to the issue of what to do with all those coffee cans! I of course use many of the empty ones because I’m all for recycling even though we don’t have pickup in our area. Up until now I’ve used them without decoration simply because I wrote on the side what craft supplies I had in them and had some that hold my cereal tucked away in the cabinets because I wasn’t sure HOW I wanted to decorate them because there are so many many ways to do so.

In this series Titled Recycle Those Coffee Cans we’ll be exploring various ways to use these wonderful storage units that we get along with our daily dose of java.

As you can see from the above photograph I have refurbished 2 coffee cans. These cans were being used as kitchen storage so I of course waited until they were empty and then washed the cans out by hand before this project. Even though these cans are now decoupaged on the outside (never do the inside if they’re for storing foods and such) they should still be washed by hand for the inside and gently wiped clean on the outside, they are not dishwasher safe.

Directions for Decoupaged Coffee Cans

Supplies You’ll Need

Coffee Can(s)
Decorative Paper (I used scrapbook paper but you can use whatever you like even wrapping paper)
Some kind of cutting tool such as scissors or paper cutter if you want neat edges
Paint brush or sponge brush
Mod Podge

So here we have our clean blank can ready for some lovely paper. I decided to use a couple different types of scrap booking paper that I found interesting.

There is not a precise art to what I did to these cans because basically I cut the paper as I went along as I didn’t want my cans to be exactly alike.

For the first step I cut a strip of my brown paper to use along the top of my first can. The can was of course larger in inches than my paper but that is alright because if I wanted the brown to go all the way around I could have just cut another piece to fit that area.

One of the great things with using this decoupage technique is that you really do not need to be precise in your measurements because you can always layer your papers.

To get the paper to stick well to the can it is best to apply your Mod Podge to the paper itself before placing the paper on the can. Here I used a sponge brush to apply it to the blue paper.

As you can see in the photo to my right I have applied the blue paper to the can and placed a rubber band around it for it’s initial drying due to the fact that that little hand you kinda see in the bottom corner of the picture is my youngest daughter trying to help me, lol. It only takes a few minutes for the glue and paper to set well enough so that another layer can be added.

I really was random in how large or small my strips were and just chose to place them wherever they seemed to fit on the can, even over paper that was already there. Precision was not the key to this project, color was, I started laying things out and then looked at it holding up papers until something looked good to me. That’s a big thing that a lot of people forget when they’re doing a project that they’ve seen or read, you should do something so that it looks good to you even if it isn’t exactly like what someone else did

After all the paper layers were glued into place I let the whole can dry for 15 minutes before applying my first layer of Mod Podge to the entire outside of the can over the paper.

To seal the paper and keep it pretty I followed the directions on the side of the MP container by putting 5 layers of MP on with a drying time of 15 minutes between each layer.

After it was dry I put the original coffee can lid on the can and viola! The finished can.

The Manic Crafter™

I craft therefore I can

Category Archives: Coffee Can Useage

Quickie Cloth Vacuum Bag

Directions

Recycle Those Coffee Cans..Decoupage