Almalauha is a one-woman business run by me, Alex. I design and make fashion accessories, art, and organiser accessories.

My love for art and design developed from an early age, first by colouring, drawing, and kids’ crafting, and then in my teens by teaching myself how to design and make clothing and costumes. A year at art school helped me further develop my artistic abilities.

Whilst in art school I needed to commute from my tiny student room to school on my bicycle. For this I needed a strong bag that could hold a lot of stuff, yet I could easily carry on my shoulder (alongside a big backpack). I used a piece of painter’s canvas I bought at the local fabric market to make a very simple tote bag with the aim to use it on my commutes and travels. This bag has gotten so much use yet is still going strong today! My love for bags grew out of this simple but very effective bag and realising that bags can be used irrespective of your body shape or size, meaning you can hold on to your favourite bags for life.

With Almalauha I want to offer beautifully-made bags as well as organiser accesories handcrafted by myself.

For the bags, I mostly use materials already here such as pieces of fabric and haberdashery I find at charity shops as well as second-hand clothes that I upcycle as opposed to buying all my supplies new. This way I try to reduce the footprint of what I make as well as create something truly unique as many of the materials I use are no longer available in shops. I never make two of the same bag, so any bag you will buy here is one of a kind.

I love bright colours, tapestry and upholstery fabrics, quirky embroidered patches, and to create items that are useful and durable. This is what I work to achieve with the bags I create. Using materials sourced second-hand I want to give a new life to a piece of material or part of a garment that otherwise may have been turned into rags or sent to a landfill. I want to value what we already have by getting the most use out of it.

Since mid-late 2023 I got really into orgnisers/planners and I want to share this with others. So for the organiser accessories/inserts, I sometimes use paper and craft materials I found secondhand, in an effort to use what is already here. I am also working on improving my skills at making the organisers, too. I hope to soon be able to create ring-mechanism organisers as well as traveler's notebooks. I've held on to all my diaries for a long time and the same goes for my sketchbooks. I want to create useful, beautiful, and long-lasting organisers that people can enjoy for years if not longer.

All the work is done by myself, here in the North of England.