What’s in a bag? If you’re an architect, have a seat and let me give you the low down.

A typical day might begin in the office (at home or otherwise). You might think because you have meticulously planned your schedule for that day, you will have several uninterrupted hours to finish up some drawings for the week of design meetings ahead, make phone calls and answer a few emails. Suddenly, a wrench is thrown in your path. A phone call and two texts into your “typical” day, you are needed on the job site and oh, by the way, you say to yourself, can you squeeze in an unscheduled site visit to a new house the longtime client you adore is thinking about purchasing and renovating? Because of course, today is absolutely the only day it’s open to view and ..... that typical day unravels from there.

For years, before heading out the door, I would fill my tote bag with several job site notebooks, my sketchbook, my lap top computer, at least two rolls of drawings, my beloved digital measure, business cards, my old school tape measure, various sketch pencils, pens and markers, a roll of trace (for sketching out ideas during meetings), scales, and my water bottle. Some days it might take two trips to get all of this to the car. My rolls of drawings would be spilling out the top of my tote bag that, when I first purchased it, guaranteed it would fit a lot of stuff. Here’s the thing: It was just a big bag with empty space. That large storage area with all my stuff piled high became a heap.  I would end up digging – that sound of digging, yes it has sound, I’m sure you’ve heard it – is emblazoned in my brain, and it is not pleasant.

My idea for an architect’s bag has been alive and well for many years. The sketches and detailing stored in my brain would vividly emerge each time I started digging into my bag until one day, I took pen to paper and started making it real. My sketchbook that was usually filled with building designs had designs for my architect’s bag that I knew would be my new best friend, a bag that had a place for my tools and my drawings and could stand up to the beating it would inevitably take on a job site while looking great as I headed into a client meeting.

Designing the bag has been much like the process of a building. I started with the big idea, refined, redesigned, ironed out the details, found the right artisans and the concept was born. My gift to me and to you is The A Bag. A is for Architecture but also for Artisans and Artists and Anyone who is creative. The A Bag is for you, the creative who needs the right bag with the right storage for your tools so you can make space to create remarkable things.

Long live the creative Arts!

Christine Kelly, Architect and creator of Crafted Bags