I’m looking for a certain kind of coin purse; small and slim – just so I can get through the day with change, where I would empty it whenever I get home and put it straight into the “piggy-bank”

You’d be surprised how hard it is to find something like that here… unless I was willing to spend north of 2k from brand-named ones (Mont-Blanc coin purses cost more than 8k!)

So I decided that while I’m waiting for a chance to purchase from Amazon, I’d make my own. I’ve taken the liberty of documenting the “project” in case someone else wants to do something similar.

I figured I just needed to apply the same basic concept from my old Moleskine pen-holder hack to get a decently looking, functional coin purse. So you basically just have to get a “container” you want, then cover that up with duct-tape 😉 Much cleaner that way since you won’t have stray duct-tape adhesive inside.

The Tools

An extremely simple setup is required to get going.

1. A bag you want to use – I chose one of those re-sealable ones so I can securely “close” the purse.
2. Cutting implements – preferably a heavy duty cutter
3. Backing material (as seen on the upper left corner of the picture) I just had a booklet for cardboard, and an old unused CD folder for harder plastic.
4. Ruler (if you want to be anal about the measurements)
5. Other adhesive materials (not in photo) to make life easier.
6. And of course: DUCT TAPE. I use black duct tape because that’s the way I roll.

Creating the “spine”

I wanted the purse to have some rigidness to it – because it’s easier to maintain its shape that way. I decided to go with the harder plastic.

Fairly straightforward process… just cut and adjust until you come up with something like this:

Which you then will put inside the plastic bag to make some preliminary measurements. No need for any numbers, just eyeball the space you need. The only purpose is to give enough slack so that the fastener won’t be hindered by the thickness of the spine.

Spine placement

Once you’re done with that, you can put adhesive on the spine and affix it inside the bag

The reason you should do this before anything else (as well as make sure you have a large bag to start with) is it can be a pain in the ass to align AND place properly from the outside going in (remember, there’s adhesive on that thing). So if all goes well, you should get something that looks like this:

Finalize purse dimensions

Now that you have the spine securely in place, you can finish the pouch. The old adage “measure twice, cut once” applies here. Cut the plastic bag to the dimensions you want.

The next issue you’ll have is since you cut the bag… you’ll need to fold over the edges and “re-seal” them. The trick is to achieve that with minimal adhesive going into the pouch’s inner lining which is to say, the inner part of the plastic. We obviously need to use adhesive on the outside… but to minimize large areas where the coins can slip into, I chose to use double adhesive so I can put it close to the edges while still “sealing” a large surface area:

Close that shit up and you end up with a semi-final pouch like this:

You need not worry about cleanliness at this point, whatever you see now will drastically change in the last step. What you should do on the other hand, is make sure that the coin purse works the way you want it to.

Wrapping up

Now it’s time to put the finishing touches on your purse. Just slap some duct-tape on that bitch! My only advice at this point is pay attention to symmetry! It may be all black, but the tape’s edges will be visible – so try your best to make it look as symmetrical and presentable as possible.

If you did everything right, you should get something that looks like this:

And there you have it! Enjoy your re-sealable, slim, black, duct-taped coin purse!