You could call Julia Ventresco a bag lady – she wouldn’t take offense.

In her One Woman Studio in Ellsworth, she creates one-of-a-kind purses and totes from paper sacks that were destined for the recycling bin. Her philosophy is simple: Recycling is good, but reusing is better. And if it looks really cool, so much the better.

“I’ve always been into graphics, and I hate to throw anything out that I can re-purpose,” Ventresco said on a recent morning as her 18-month-old niece, Ava, scrambled around her loftlike in-home studio.

Her day job at a natural foods store means she has loads of grain and flour bags at her disposal. But she’s always looking for more. And she’s always developing new ideas. Lately, she’s been turning castoff wallpaper sample books into unique stationery. She transforms thrift-store shirts into stylish aprons. Plastic-bag “flowers,” which from a distance resemble hydrangeas and peonies, bloom eternal in a window box attached to her garage.

“I love to construct things with wood, fabric or paper,” she said. “It’s very intriguing to me to take a flat piece of material and make it into something that’s either a structure or a piece of clothing. The end result never ceases to amaze me.”

A Boston native, Ventresco moved to Deer Isle when she was 12 with her seamstress mom and potter dad. Her grandmother also was a potter, while grandpa was an artist and inventor. Julia wore many hand-stitched clothes as a girl, and she learned to sew at her mother’s knee. Her eye for design came naturally.

“I’m totally self-taught,” said Ventresco, who is now 41. “I grew up surrounded by artists. Really, it’s in my blood.”

Though she has been involved in creative pursuits most of her life, she founded One Woman Studio in 1998. She started out making painted furniture from reclaimed wood, but at the time, other stores were selling similar-looking imported items for much less money. Last year, she changed her focus to paper totes and shoulder bags, which she sells under the name Twice the Bag.

“I was trying to make something more unusual, but people still wanted the price point a little lower,” Ventresco said. “A $15 bag – people can definitely afford one of these.”

And people are definitely buying them. At J&B Atlantic in Ellsworth, co-owner Jon Hutchins wasn’t sure how his customers would react to a paper bag, but he’s had to reorder a bunch of them since the store started carrying them several months ago.

“They’ve sold really well,” he said. “The reactions vary from people thinking they’re ridiculous to people thinking they’re really cool. … Now, every time one sells, I hear about it.”

They appeal to shoppers on several levels. For starters, a lot of people love recycled items. Plus, the bags are a unique alternative to a traditional purse. When Ventresco started carrying her first Twice the Bag, people stopped her in the street to ask where she bought it. Now that they’re more widely available to the public, the response has been equally enthusiastic among the eco-chic crowd.

“I think people think they’re really stylish,” Hutchins said.

Besides, anything “green” is hot right now. Ventresco admits it’s a good time to be in the recycled-goods business, but the concept is nothing new. She compares what she’s doing to the resourcefulness of her forebears, who turned old clothes into quilts or actually fixed a broken tool rather than replace it with a new one.

Ventresco can’t think of a single thing in her wardrobe that’s new; she adores hunting for treasures in local thrift stores. And she has decorated her home with simple yet elegant recycled items – a cluster of decorative glass bottles in the bathroom; in the kitchen, a wood cupboard she made from the remnants of a broken-down packing crate, using bent spoons for cabinet handles.

“A lot of people are looking to become green and recycle,” she said. “There’s so much we could be doing to recycle and reuse things. … I know it seems trendy and the ‘in’ thing to do, but it’s how I live.”

Twice the Bag products are available at J&B Atlantic in Ellsworth, The Green Store in Belfast, Bella Colore in Blue Hill and Studio on the Hill in Freeport. Ventresco also will have a booth at the Bay School Winter Fair in Blue Hill on Dec. 1.