Pin 204 & Pin 205: Wristlet Key Chain with Hand-stamped Charm

Original pin:

http://prudentbaby.com/2010/11/hot-mess/accessories-hot-mess/how-to-make-a-wristlet-key-fob-2/

A wristlet keychain tutorial from the ladies over at Prudent Baby.

As I mentioned a  few weeks ago, I was putting last minute details together on Teacher Appreciation week. Like last year, I was in charge of putting together gifts for the whole preschool. Since I am on a super tight budget, I am always looking for inexpensive gifts to make for the teachers. Since I have to put together so many, they have to be quick and inexpensive. These keychains seemed to be perfect. I also was able to tie the whole luncheon theme together with the keychains. As I am sure many schools experienced this year, our preschool was entirely rekeyed with strict implementation of renewed security measures. All the teachers are having to carry their keys everywhere. We made keys the theme of our lunch.

I found a super deal on the webbing and picked up some matching ribbon. I had to order the key fob sets from Amazon because I could not find them anywhere locally. Click the picture to see the kit I am referring to:


I used the one inch width.

I brought all these supplies along on my girl's crafting weekend last weekend and went to work.

I actually skipped the step on fusing the ribbon to the webbing. I was feeling a little lazy. Instead I just held it in place and sewed along. Not much later I had this big pile of ribbons and webbing.

Time to start trimming!

I discovered a severe miscalculation at this moment. I needed 21 keychains and had somehow purchased and sewn enough ribbon and webbing to make nearly 80!! I only had hardware for 25 at my retreat so I packed the excess up. Guess I'll be giving a lot of keychain gifts in the near future!! I clamped up the 25 sets I did have and went to work on step two of my project.

Original pin:

http://happyhourprojects.com/jewelry-stamping/

Metal stamping is something I have taken up fairly recently (I asked for my first alphabet set for Christmas last year) and I kind of jumped into it blindly. I need all the help and tips I can get and this tutorial had some good advice. I picked up a few new tricks and learned that some of what I was already doing was on the right track.

I wanted to do some hand-stamped metal name charms to add to my wristlets. Lucky me! My friend across the crafting table at our retreat had some cuter stamping letters than mine so I borrowed hers and went to work.

In metal stamping, it always takes me a few tries to warm up to good stamping. Here was my first attempt at a charm that night:

I was talking and twirled the L without thinking! oops.

Just like with exercising, I must always warm up my stamping fingers before getting down to the serious stuff!

The rest went much more smoothly.

After my names were all stamped up and stained, I used a jump ring to attach them to the key fob hardware.

My busy, busy work station:

All the important supplies: stamping bench, pliers, nylon hammer, glass of wine. . . 

Once they were all put together I had these little beauties ready for all the teachers!

So cute! And fit right in my budget. 

Total cost: Prudent Baby put hers together for less than $1 each, but since I added the charm, mine were closer to $1.50. Still a pretty good price. I found a comparable wristlet selling for $9.99 without the personalized charm!

Total time: These were much faster to put together than I anticipated. Again, however, due to my sweet, sweet crafting scene, I wasn't much paying attention to time. It probably took around one hour to sew all 24 yards of webbing and ribbon together. With clamping and stamping, I would estimate another 2 1/2 hours or so. . . its fuzzy--there was pineapple lush cake involved in there somewhere. . . 

Final verdict: I love the way they turned out. They were so easy! I ordered some additional hardware when I got home from my trip to put together the rest of the wristlets. Hate to ruin the surprise, but if its your birthday. . . or anniversary. . . or if you are graduating. . . . or lonely. . . you may be getting one of these!

Pin 203: Coin purse upcycle

Original pin:

No source available

What a clever way to reuse denim! Since there was no link available, there was no tutorial available either. I had to just wing it.

My friend gave me these shorts from her daughter that had been stained but had really cute pockets. She thought maybe I could find something to do with them. I had been holding on to them a long while when I saw this pin and knew it would be perfect.

I started by laying out the shorts flat and cutting outside the large seam around the pocket so I ended up with these two pieces:

I hemmed the top edge and then pinned right sides together. I stitched around the rounded edge. After trimming flipping right side out I stumbled across a small problem (like I tend to do when sewing without a pattern and/or plan. . . )  The hardware could not be attached in this way because I had sewed completely up the sides. I had to then rip out the side stitching an inch or so.

I had to rip back until the top of the flower patches.

Attaching the hardware was not easy. The type of hardware I had purchased required hand sewing. I had to borrow a thimble to hand stitch the hardware through the thick denim hem. No tears, but quite a few curse words later the hardware was attached. I had to re-sew the side seams by hand as best as I could. Phew, finally complete!  Thankfully, I was returning this to the original owner, a sweet little girl who will never notice a couple of flaws.

Don't look too closely at that hardware stitching on the end there. . . 

Total cost: A few dollars in hardware

Total time: Maybe two hours?? I did this during my crafting retreat last weekend and the time just drifted away. . . 

Final verdict: A cute idea. Next time I will try to find some hardware that isn't hand stitched on. And I will also know to leave the sides open until after the hardware is placed.

Pin 180

Original pin:

http://www.bluelacehouse.com/2011/05/make-your-own-camera-bag.html

A tutorial to make a camera bag insert to use in a purse and avoid the standard black boxy camera bag.

My birthday was earlier this week and I got myself a really fantastic birthday present! I have been saving my money a long time to get myself a fancy schmancy new camera! I am so excited. I have been wanting this camera for ever!!

I never even considered that I would need a place to store it. But as I waited in line at the camera shop to pay for it I was eyeing a bunch of really cute bags that were way, way out of my budget. I knew Pinterest could help me out here. It only took a few minutes to find this simple tutorial. Time to go shopping.

I hit up a discount clothing store and picked up this cute bag:

 

 

It has a large zipper-top opening and deep side pockets with a handy little zipper pocket on the side.

 

I swung by the craft store for some foam and some fabric--I needed something colorful to jazz this up. After I put the littles to bed, I started drawing out my plans.

I did this in the completely, absolutely wrong order. I should have first taken my bag home and measured both the camera and bag before buying the foam and fabric. But since the discount clothing store and the craft store are neighbors, I thought I could just estimate. I was a little short on foam. I had to compromise.

Foam core board to the rescue! This particular board has been in so many projects, but this was the last bit of it. I wrapped these in batting to substitute for some of the missing foam!

Then, I was short on fabric as well! So I dug out this t-shirt remnant that sort-of coordinated with my fabric.

I tried to follow her directions, I really did. They were simple and easy to understand, so its not her fault. I was just adjusting as I went. 

Halfway through, I decided to forgo as much Velcro as possible. Starting with the middle divider, I decided to sew it on. I just felt like it would be more stable that way. However, I could only easily sew the bottom part of the middle divider on.

So, then, I had to sew Velcro on to each side of the divider panel. (Note to self: sew the Velcro on first). Another step out of order.

I fully sewed each end on the insert. I couldn't sew the Velcro on for anymore dividers at this point. All Velcro should be sewed on before assembly! This is what happens when you sew as you go.

Here is the finished product. Its a little sloppier than I prefer. There are too many visible seams, the topstitching isn't tight enough to the edge so the edges look a little loose and sloppy to me.

The non-Velcro-ed divider slides in perfectly though--this is one of the ones with the foam core board.

All aside, this goes INSIDE a bag so really the only person to see these little details is me. So how does it look inside?

Not too bad. It adds a nice pop of color. It fits all my things perfectly. I'm not sure it could withstand just a whole lot of jostling, but I'm going to put some of that extra foam board & batting I covered underneath and on the ends for a little more stability.

Total time: Not the one hour she had!! I had a few trouble shooting moments to take care of. I spent about four hours all together on it.

Total cost: $24.99 for the bag and around $10 for not-enough fabric and foam. (That's not including the money I spent on other fun goodies at the discount clothing store while I was in there.)

Final cost: While it is not super pretty on the outside, it is doing its job nicely. It fits in the bag, it fits my things. I could do it a whole lot better next time. But I'm going to stick with this one for now. A great idea to save some cash!

Pin 175

Original pin:

http://styleawip.blogspot.com/2009_12_01_archive.html

Isn't that scarf beautiful?? I couldn't locate any details about who makes it, but the link mentions that it is $1,100!! Wow.  I had it pinned to my "I could make that" sewing inspiration board. Yesterday was gloomy, snowing, and cold. I took myself to the fabric store to create my interpretation.

I was looking for an easy replication that did not require hand sewing. I bought a quarter yard of lace and a quarter yard of some super soft knit fabric. In retrospect, I didn't do this in quite the right order, but I am trying to tell you what I think a more appropriate order would be. The pictures may not match up exactly to the directions. I measured off two cuts of eight inches of lace and applied some fusible web to the top two inches of each.

I trimmed the top along the lace pattern just to have a prettier edge than a straight line.

Then I removed the backing, and ironed it onto the bottom two-three inches of each end of the scarf.

Next, I sewed along the edges of the lace overlapping the fabric, just to secure it in place. I did not stick right along the cut lines.

My stitch line--more like an approximation of the edges.

The final step was to add a rolled hem to the edges of the scarf.

 

All done!

 

 

Time to wear it out to dinner with the girls!

Total cost: $5. Wow! I saved $1,095! Wait until my husband hears how thrifty I am.

Total time: 45 minutes--even with doing things a little out of order. I bet this could be done in 20-30 minutes next time.

Final verdict: It was sooo soft. It was fairly light weight too so it didn't feel bulky. I am not a fan of winter wear, but this didn't bulk me up and feel too wintry at all. It is very versatile and can easily be paired with lots! I am happy with the outcome!



Pin 174

Original pin:

http://mollykaystoltz.com/t-shirt-shag-rug-tutorial/

T-shirt rag rug tutorial

As promised, I am wrapping up unfinished projects. As some of my friends can attest, this one has been a looooooong time in the works. I started in in APRIL!! I worked on it pretty steadily April-May, dragging my bag of supplies to craft nights and work days. We got rid of all our carpet in May. I was making this scrap rug for my older son's bedroom. Right around that time we stumbled across this brand-new-in-the-package rug at a garage sale that is the one with the roads and buildings printed on it. He fell in love with it and I picked it up for $2. No need for this one so it was rolled up and put away. It took up a lot of space on my "craft shelf." Haha. I don't have a real crafting area in my home, so I randomly find space to cram my crafting stuff and this found its way onto a shelf--where it repeatedly fell off!

Let me rewind back to April. . .

I wanted this to be larger than the tutorial--which is the size of a t-shirt. So I bought fabric remnants to use instead of gathering a wardrobe's worth of t-shirts. All of my fabric came out of the remnants bin so it was fairly cheap. I chose a large piece of denim for the base because I thought it would be sturdy. Since I was not using knit for the scrap pieces, I cut all the fabric strips using my pinking shears to prevent some fraying. HOURS later, I was suffering from my first real pinjury!!

 

But now that I had all my strips, the real work could begin. I followed the tutorial to cut the base and weave the strips in. My base was so large I could only do about three rows an hour. Days and days later I made it to this point, at which it was rolled up and stashed away for nearly nine months.

 

See how close this was to actually being finished!!!

Yesterday, I pulled it all out and finished the puppy up in about 45 minutes. Seriously, why couldn't I do that earlier?? Here is the finished product:



I didn't go in with a specific pattern plan, it just worked out that I used up all my colors early on and was left with a lot of blue. I started in the middle and worked my way out to each edge. I did the center row and then did one or two above and then one or two below, then back to the top for a few, and so on. . .

Since this doesn't really have a destination in my home any more--thanks to the much COOLER manufactured rug, I just kind of left it lying in the middle of the room where I finished it yesterday. When the boys got home from school I asked them "where do you think we should put it?" secretly hoping they might fight "my room! my room!" but the only answer I got was from super-cool L, "uh, how about on the floor."  They did play on it a little and pulled out a strip or two. Maybe its best NOT to put it in their room because I just may find one of them in a pile of strips with a holey swatch of denim one day as they deconstruct it.

Total cost: I am pretty sure I spent around $17 on fabric remnants

Total time: I am just going to have to do some math here . . . at three rows an hour and 41 rows plus the hours spent cutting strips, I am going to say all together I probably spent somewhere between 18-20 hours on this one.

Final verdict: Its a homeless little rug for now. I am glad to have it finished and off my craft shelf because it took up a lot of room. It was easy enough but I'm not convinced it is going to hold up to a lot. And I am a little worried about washing it and having to rebuild! Time will tell. . . To create another rag rug I would probably find a better way to secure the strips--tying or stitching or something. But I will start much smaller for the first trial.