Sea Bags: Musings from Maine

Image via: SailMaine.

We’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with SailMaine to create a scholarship fund to introduce and encourage students ages 8-18 to learn the sport of sailing.

Individuals who drop off a sail to Sea Bags will receive a complimentary Sea Bags accessory, or, they can donate their sail to the “Sea Bags Scholarship Fund.” We will then donate to SailMaine, made as a quarterly donation. The program started in 2007 and has just been enhanced by this commitment to work together. 

SailMaine is a non-profit organization formed to support sailing in Maine at the grass-roots, community level. SailMaine connects people of all ages and abilities to the coast of Maine through fun and affordable sailing education, recreation, and competition, stimulating individual growth and creating community.

“We know that all children should have the opportunity to sail and we’re thrilled to be a part of these efforts,” said Hannah Kubiak and Beth Shissler, co-owners of Sea Bags. “Partnering with SailMaine is a perfect match for our business and we’re extremely proud to support our local community.”

Sails can be dropped off at Sea Bags located at 25 Custom House Wharf in Portland, ME. For further information about the program, call Sea Bags at 1.888.210.0744.

For mine, I played hooky from my normal responsibilities at work and played all afternoon. Hannah and I went back to the “old days” and played on the design floor. Looking at the old funky colored sails with their beautiful colors was like opening a bunch of great presents. The colors reminded me of ice cream and sprinkles on a cake–the end result was delicious! See them in our Freeport Store while they last. Like birthdays, they won’t last long!

If you received your issue of Better Homes & Gardens last week, check us out on page 40! The article explains that blue is the ultimate crowd-pleaser. “Nautical blues express simple truths: honor, strength, purity – what we’re all looking for this year.”

The magazine features our Custom House Gull tote - a new addition to our website. It can be purchased for $145.

July’s issue of Marie Claire features a feel-good fashion page, which includes our Wine Tote! We’re in good company with other great summer finds to make your vacation one to remember. It features a TO – FROM label at the back to record the names of all the gifters and giftees on its way around the globe, eventually begging the question, “Where has your wine bag been?!”

Marie Claire says, “Reduce your carbon footprint with eco-friendly Cape Cod style: It’s how Jackie O would hit the Vineyard today.”

Our Wine Tote can be purchased through our website for $29. It also makes a great hostess gift!

Alaina in her screen printed shirt with her pink anchor bag!

Meet Alaina Harris, one of our amazing kitters and designers of our tote bags made of recycled sail. “Lane” is currently finishing an art and entrepreneurship degree at the University of Southern Maine and designs and screen prints her own T-shirts. Alaina’s most memorable experience was her high school adventure living in Thailand for one semester. When asked what she’d like to be stranded on a remote island with, she answered her journal, bible, sketchbook, and most importantly, her best friends. We are lucky to have Alaina as part of our Sea Bags team!

Kate from Black Dinah Chocolatiers living her dream job!

Oprah recently did a show on dream jobs. We want to know what your dream job is?  I was lucky to spend the day with a French film crew doing a documentary on Maine. They clearly were doing their dream jobs–the quite famous host, Girard Klein was full of personality showing their viewers in France cool things about Our State. Every angle and shot was thought provoking. We shot my friend Kate, who owns Black Dinah Chocolatiers. Kate and her husband, Steve have built a great gourmet chocolate business living on the island they love to call home.  We shot the Inn at Isle au Haut where Diana has used her amazing decorating and culinary talent to create a quaint Inn.  I left a great Corporate Career to do Sea Bags with my business partner, Hannah. I was inspired by my sister, Linda whose dream job is to swordfish. I’m lucky to get to create a company where we work with amazing talent and we recycle beautiful sails into great, functional and sometimes funky totes. We give back to causes we believe in. I live in a gorgeous place, get to travel to great places, and love the people I work with from our team, to our customers and our vendors.  Yep, its a dream job. What’s yours?

Beth Shissler, co-owner, Sea Bags, Inc.

Have you received your June issue of Body + Soul yet? Flip to page 37 and you’ll find the Angela Adams Bird Tote by Sea Bags!

This medium tote is of course constructed of recycled sails, but it’s designed by our Portland neighbor, Angela Adams. The bird design is made of recycled shoe leather and, unlike our other totes, it features a secure metal clasp closure so you can insure that your goodies stay inside. The tote can be purchased on the Angela Adams website.

Our tote bags have been very popular amongst our fans. But we’re adding a new bag into the mix – the Sea Bags Bullet! As with all of our products, these bags are made of recycled sailcloth with hand-spliced rope handles long enough so that you can throw it over your shoulder.

Why do we love this bag so much? Oh let us count the ways…first, it’s perfect for browsing around town when you only want to carry a few things. Let’s face it, the larger the bag the more we stuff into it. Second, it can go from day to night making it totally versatile. Lastly, it comes in our most popular designs!

These bags are so new that we haven’t even added them to our website yet. So if you want to be the first to get one, call us at 888-210-4244 or email amy (at) seabags (dot) com.

by: Hayley Griffin, Designer & Stitcher at Sea Bags

Last Wednesday night I had the pleasure of sitting front row at the Trashion Show at Thornton Academy Middle School. The eighth graders had spent weeks preparing by researching materials and methods for creating their recycled bags.

As the crowd’s anticipation peaked the students walked out in a line, each team modeling their one of a kind bag. After an introduction from the teachers, Amy from our team was invited up to present Taylor with her winning design on one of our totes (see the design below in our previous post)! She skipped up to receive her Sea Bag and with that the show began.

The students strutted their bag down the catwalk with colorful wrappers, men’s trousers with suspenders, and unusual materials of all shapes and sizes. The creativity was inspiring and after the show was over we were invited to go out into the hall where the students had prepared a show with all their research and work. We walked through reading their statements and getting a closer look at their hard work.

The winner of the show was the shrimp net bag woven with canvas strips and finished with a hand spliced rope handle (very impressive!). The winning team’s non-proft organization would be the benefactor of the proceeds from the project.

As I walked back to my car I was already thinking about what materials around my house I could repurpose into a fun bag for spring! Thank you Thornton Academy for a wonderfully inspiring show!

 Winning Bag Statement:

The materials we used to make the bag are blue shrimp mesh, black-grayish rope, and brown canvas. We used these certain materials so it had the strength to carry numerous items and to also think outside of the box by being innovative in using the shrimp mesh. In a way, we made a connection in an in-depth way to modern day slavery that we didn’t even realize. The shrimp mesh can represent that we get tangled up in our lives that we sometimes don’t realize what’s wrong in the world we live in. We need to realize that just because we’re not fully involved, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care.

In honor of Earth Day we thought we’d take a few minutes to educate all of you about how Sea Bags started and what we’re trying to accomplish.  Don’t forget to get involved today, even if it’s something small. And thanks to your support over the years we have been able to continually move forward with our mission to sustainability. Onwards!

Sea Bags Mission to Sustainability

• We make our product out of recycled sails
• We believe in fair-trade practices and all of our manufacturing is done locally at competitive wages
• We buy locally—US Made and Maine Made
• We use any material that would normally go to landfills
• We use recycled paper and our business cards and brochures are printed with earth friendly inks and recycled stock paper from printers that have environmental certification
• We recycle our sails: we give hardware back to sail makers, turn scrap to product, and donate sails we can’t use for shelter
• We look for recycled product or at least recycled content
• Our product hang-tags and envelopes are made of scraps from our manufacturing
• We negotiate less packaging materials with our customers
• We purchase scraps from other companies to use in our processes
• We use eco-friendly soaps and cleaning products
• We use hand-towels instead of paper
• We recycle our ink cartridges
• We keep our heat down and dress warmly for work
• Our displays, furniture and bins were recycled from a New England mill; our table goods recycled from a local restaurant
• We actively contribute to our community to sustaining Portland’s working waterfront

Sailed around the world, recycled in Maine.