DIY Padded Camera Bag Insert

Ever have the issue of want­ing to take your big, DSLR cam­era with you, but don’t want to carry two bags? Want a bag that can fit your cam­era, your ipad/laptop, plus you’re other purse essentials…but can’t find one for less that $100+? Well, then this post is for you!! With just a few sup­plies & a lit­tle bit of time, you can trans­form your favorite purse or tote bag into a cam­era bag too by mak­ing you’re own padded cam­era bag insert!

This post is LONG over­due! In fact, I made this last July, right before leav­ing for our Dis­ney­land and BlogHer trips! The inspi­ra­tion came from Sara, the Clever Pink Pirate, and her DIY cam­era purse tote! I had long been eye­ing JoTotes and Epiphanie Bags, but had a hard time decid­ing to shell out that kind of money if I wasn’t sure I would like the bag. So, when I saw Sara’s at an event just before BlogHer, I knew I had to make some­thing sim­i­lar! I bought a large black bag at TJ Maxx and, with the help of my mom (who has all the sewing skills), we came up with this great insert to put inside. 9 months later, it’s still awe­some and it will be trav­el­ing with me to SNAP this week! The bag with the padded insert is per­fect for con­fer­ence trav­el­ing because I can fit my cam­era with an extra lens, wal­let, iphone, busi­ness cards, pen, notepad, and lap­top all inside!!!

DIY Padded Cam­era Bag Insert Tutorial

What you’ll need:

• 1–2 yards of your fab­ric of choice (amount depends on the size of the fab­ric & of your bag)
• 1″ High-Density Foam ( I used pur­chased by the yard at JoAnn’s or this would be great too: http://bit.ly/qtZwpC)
• Vel­cro (I didn’t mea­sure the amount we used, but you’ll prob­a­bly need about a yard)
• Scis­sors
• Sewing Machine
• Hot Glue (*Note: You could actu­ally prob­a­bly do this project com­pletely no-sew if you wanted, or you could sew the whole thing. We did a mix of sewing & hot glue. )

Direc­tions:

1. First, decide how big you want your insert to be. Because I wanted to carry so much in my bag, I wanted an insert that didn’t take up the entire inside of the bag (and I wanted it to be a true insert and eas­ily remov­able). Once you have a feel for your dimen­sions, then start cutting!
2. Start out by cut­ting two equal-sized rec­tan­gles out of the foam (mine are 13″ x 6″).
3. Then, you’ll need to cut your fab­ric to encase these foam rec­tan­gles. Make sure that you leave about an extra inch on each side, plus a lit­tle extra to attach the bot­tom. If you wrap the fab­ric around the foam, then you’ll only need to sew (or hot glue) the bot­tom & the sides. Plus, you’ll have no seam show­ing on the top. For the sides, stitch the fab­ric right along the point at which the foam stops and then around the out­side edge (so the two fab­ric pieces close together). Basi­cally you’ll then have an open case on the bot­tom with two approx­i­mately 1″ flaps on each side.
4. Once your pock­ets are ready, you’ll need to add vel­cro. You’ll want to add strips of the loop (soft) side of the vel­cro to the flaps of one pocket. Then, on the oppos­ing pocket flaps, add strips of the hook vel­cro. This way, you can attach your two foam rec­tan­gles together, giv­ing you the basic insert shape. Then, you’ll also want to run two strips of vel­cro (a cou­ple inches apart) along the length of each pouch (this is to attach your dividers to). Because the cam­era equip­ment might come into con­tact with some of this vel­cro, use only the loop (soft) side for this.
5. Now, you’ll need to basi­cally repeat steps #3 & #4 to make dividers for the insert. This will cre­ate the sep­a­rate areas for the lenses & cam­era. You’ll cut two small pieces of foam (the same size). We mod­eled mine after the inserts in my “offi­cial” cam­era bag, so they ended up being 4.5″ x 3.5″ with an extra 1.5″ flap on top.  You don’t need the extra flaps of fab­ric on the side for these. So, cut the fab­ric, leav­ing extra space for your top flap and just enough extra to close up the sides and bot­tom. For this, you’ll cut the foam so that there is an addi­tional flap at the top and actu­ally carve the foam down (so that the top 1.5″ isn’t as thick). Then, you’ll stitch right along the tran­si­tion between the thick & thin­ner foam, cre­at­ing padded flaps that the cam­era can be set on. Once all that is set, you’ll put hook vel­cro along each side of each divider.
6. At this point, go ahead and stuff any pock­ets with foam that you haven’t already. You should have 4 total, but all open at the bot­tom. The eas­i­est solu­tion for this was just hot glue!
7. Once every­thing is glued, then vel­cro the pieces together and you have an insert! And, really, at this point you could tech­ni­cally stop if you wanted. It would look like this: I decided though that I wanted it to have a padded bot­tom as well! We had extra foam & some plain black fab­ric, so why not?! Just extra pro­tec­tion for the cam­era equipment!
8. So, for the last step, we cut a piece of foam in that foot­ball shape to sit at the bot­tom of the insert. Then, we cov­ered it with some plain black fab­ric, just hot glu­ing the edges. Since it wouldn’t be seen it didn’t need to have nice look­ing seams! That’s it! Then you’ll have an awe­some, padded cam­era insert to turn your favorite bag into some­thing that can not only hold your “fancy” cam­era, but other good­ies as well!

The beauty of an insert like this is that if you don’t plan on car­ry­ing your cam­era, you can just take the insert out!  It’s been a great solu­tion for me! I can’t wait to take it with me to SNAP this week!

Linked to:  *Tip Junkie, *Today’s Cre­ative, *Not Just a House­wife, *Oopsey Daisy, *Flamingo Toes, *Lil’ Luna