Calabash Handbags Anyone?

I do like to push the boat out a bit so please bear with me!  On my recent visit to Sierra Leone I was very interested in making handbags with different materials.  I met a skilled 26 year old man who made beautiful bags with coconut shells.  The only problem with this was that the bags were really small because it is very difficult to get a a very large coconut shell.  It got me thinking and I then thought about making the same bags but with 'calabash' as they come in different sizes. Calabash basically grows on a tree and then it gets treated, chopped in 2 and then used by African women to wash rice amongst other things.

This is what the calabash fruit looks like after the green casing has been taken off.










After this stage they were then cut in two and polished a few times to give it a good shine.  They were then drawn on using an indelible maker and polished again.  The inside of this fruit is quite porous so it needed quite a lot of polishing as it kept absorbing it each time!  Below are the finished 'Calabash Handbags'.  I wanted them to look quite african so I drew different African Village scenes on all of them.

They all have a zip that goes all the way round the bag.  They also have a braided raffia handle so you can clutch the bag.  I thought it best to use a natural material like the raffia/straw because the calabash is quite natural too.  This bag is big enough for a standard mobile phone, credit card, money and a lipbalm!  That's all we need right?