Handbag Rehab

OK, this is just a super quick one to remind myself that meddling with my hair isn't the only thing in the world. (Dude, it takes actual time! Who knew!??)
So, one super simple handbag rehab.
Here's the before:


Brown, leather, Aldo, free (scored from our laundry-room recyling area). It's not terrible, and I was all "meh, it'll do". But those pocket flaps bothered me a bit. They aren't functional (there's no pokey bit on the d ring) and I think the studs make it look... not awesome. I would have left it well enough alone except I saw a woman in the elevator with a remarkably similar brown leather bag WITHOUT weird hardware that looked completely awesome. And was all inspired to do this:

What I did was, unpick the stitching on the pocket flaps, there was a bit of glue too, but I just rubbed/peeled it off. I was, of course, left with stitch holes in the leather, so I grabbed a needle and some thread. Doubled the tread over and stitched away. When I came to the middle bit I just kept going and joined up the lines, like this:

You might have noticed that my stitching is slightly darker than the before photo. That's because my inspiration bag had dark stitching; and I happened to own a fine-tipped acrylic brush pen in dark brown (I can't for the life of me remember why). So I VERY carefully inked over the stitching in the darker colour (the after picture above isn't QUITE finished).
And lastly I tidied the whole bag up a little, snipped off any loose threads and scuffy bits then gave it a quick wipe down with some leather stuff. Then I stuck all my crap back in it and continued to treat it with wonton disregard. (The fun part about free stuff!)

Oh and I done shared here: