{"id":84,"date":"2007-07-31T09:50:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-31T09:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2007\/07\/31\/tote-couture\/"},"modified":"2007-07-31T09:50:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-31T09:50:00","slug":"tote-couture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=84","title":{"rendered":"Tote Couture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my <a href=\"\/blog\/660000266\/post\/1250012525.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">previous post<\/a>, I mentioned the <em>Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows<\/em> totebags that Scholastic was giving away this year at BEA, ALA, and San Diego Comic-Con. Made from a material resembling &quot;plasticized paper,&quot; they are shiny and bright and a bit more prone to&nbsp;coming apart&nbsp;at their cloth-taped seams than their fabric-made cousins.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a front, back, and side shot of the bag:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/articles\/blog\/660000266\/20070731\/HARRYbesttote.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/>&nbsp;&nbsp; <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/articles\/blog\/660000266\/20070731\/HARRYtote3.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/>&nbsp; &nbsp;<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/articles\/blog\/660000266\/20070731\/HARRYtote2.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And here on the right of this unflattering photo&nbsp;is&nbsp;me in the&nbsp;skirt I wore to our recent Harry Potter celebration, alongside Elizabeth Wolfson, our summer intern, in an apron you just might recognize:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/articles\/blog\/660000266\/20070731\/hpapronandskirt.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Look familiar? Yes.&nbsp;As is the&nbsp;case with Elizabeth&#8217;s apron, my skirt&nbsp;was once a totebag. Two, actually.&nbsp;I happened to have two <em>Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows<\/em> totebags that were each coming apart a bit along one seam.&nbsp;Being without wizard garb and in need of festive HP7 launch party apparel, I took the bags&nbsp;apart&nbsp;and reassembled them as a skirt using a whole lotta patience and&nbsp;three magical tools &#8212; scissors, self-adhesive Velcro, and black duct tape. During our party, my skirt received numerous compliments,&nbsp;all from people who were shocked to learn it was a totebag in a former (earlier that day) life.<\/p>\n<p>I will give you five words of caution, though, if you&#8217;re thinking you&#8217;d like to sport one of these little totebag numbers: plasticized paper does NOT breathe. I repeat: it does. NOT. breathe. Fortunately I was able to spend most of&nbsp;our HP7 evening in the relative comfort of our air-conditioned store, but even then, let me tell you, my hips have never been hotter (literally, that is &#8212; figuratively, I&#8217;m not the best judge of that).<\/p>\n<p>Despite the heat, I wore my hot, hot HP7 skirt until the end of our long but lovely evening. As proof, see the photo of me casting a spell of &quot;orderliness&quot; over our late-night, line-forming crowd in &quot;Image 3&quot; of the great event pictures that ran this week in the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.townonline.com\/wellesley\/homepage\/x1813294658\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wellesley Townsman<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately I didn&#8217;t think to take photos of each step of my skirt&#8217;s assembly, but I&#8217;ll list the steps I followed in my next post and hope they&#8217;re sufficient for anyone interested in following them with some plasticky totebags of their own. Perhaps you&#8217;ve got one of those plasticky Captain Underpants bags you could adapt and wear, making a VERY entertaining first impression. (Can you imagine seeing someone wearing a skirt boldly emblazoned with the words &quot;TIME FOR NEW UNDERPANTS!&quot;??&nbsp; The very thought of it sends me into a fit of giggles.)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my previous post, I mentioned the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows totebags that Scholastic was giving away this year at BEA, ALA, and San Diego Comic-Con. Made from a material resembling &#8220;plasticized paper,&#8221; they are shiny and bright and a bit more prone to&nbsp;coming apart&nbsp;at their cloth-taped seams than their fabric-made cousins. Here&rsquo;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}