Summer Wearable DIY #1

Summer is by far my favorite time to do WEARABLE DIYs. This includes many things- t-shirts, sneakers, and, of course, a summer favorite... (drum roll, please) ... FLIP-FLOPS!

I decided to start of my Summer Wearable DIY Section with a

simple, easy, and cute craft that anyone can do!

To do this craft, you will need:

• Flip-flips. I recommend going cheap. Mine were $0.98 at Wal-Mart.
• Ribbon. Again, cheap isn't always bad. My ribbon was all Offray brand, which you can buy 6 yds of at, once again, Wal-Mart.
• And last, but never least, scissors!

To start this craft, cut a piece of ribbon of your choice about 8 inches long. 

Then, fold it in half and put it underneath the strap with the fold facing the inside of the flip-flop. 

Next, put the two ends of the ribbon around the strap and through the folded part of the ribbon, as shown below.

Tighten it.

And continue, alternating colors if you want. Do whatever you'd like. This flip-flops are ALL yours!!

Once you're done, your flip-flops should look fun and fringe-y!

Some ribbon is slick, so the ribbons will come undone. If this happens, just re-tie them or glue them with hot glue to the rubber strap.

Valentine's Day Decorations For Your Room

A fun fact about me is that I love Valentine's Day... which is weird considering I've never had a Valentine, and I've never been a Valentine... but still, I really do enjoy the teddy bears and chocolate!
Since I love Valentine's Day so much, I decided to decorate my room, and what better way to do it than to DIY it?

You know, I just love chocolate, but my second favorite Valentine's Day candy is (drum roll pleeeease) conversation hearts! I wanted to make a few paper versions of this loved candy, but I wanted to make it special. I decided I would make scrapbook paper conversation hearts! 

To do this, you will need:

• Scrapbook paper (preferably pastel to match the colors of the actual candies)
• A cut out of a heart
• A pencil
• Scissors
• and a Sharpie

Start off by tracing the heart pattern onto a sheet of paper as many times as you can. Trace it on the white side of the paper, I only traced it on the color side so you could see it.

 Next, cut out all the hearts.

I made a list of my favorite conversation heart sayings so I could write them on the hearts.

Use all the colors you have, and make sure you make A LOT.

You could just put these up in your room as they are, but I also have some extra crafts involving these hearts!

To make this you will need:

• Your conversation hearts
• A flat piece of cardboard (I used a pizza box lid)
• and a hot glue gun (well, and the glue, obviously)

First, trace two hearts, one inside the other onto the cardboard. 

And then cut them out. (Make it easy on yourself and cut a sthrough the heart to get to the middle!)







Prepare your glue gun, and set it somewhere
so it won't get glue everywhere. Glue where you cut through the middle. Remember, the cardboard doesn't have to be perfect, you'll be covering it up soon.


 Afterwards, slightly bend a heart into a taco shape, not creasing it. Use hot glue and glue it onto the cardboard heart, as shown below.

 Keep gluing the heart tacos until you've covered up all the cardboard.

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For this craft, you will additionally need some ribbon, yard, or string. I chose heart ribbon. Glue your conversation hearts down approximately one and a half inches apart.

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EXTRA SPECIAL CRAFT!!

Think these crafts are just too silly for you? Then I have the craft for you!

Grab some camouflage scrapbook paper, and cut out some hearts like the ones to the left.

Then, cut out a bigger heart on a different sheet of paper. (I used yellow.)

Glue the separate camo hearts onto the bigger, colorful heart.

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My stuff looks great all together on my wall now! 

Reindeer Game Crafts: Part II

Today, as you can see, I have the last craft of the Reindeer Game Crafts. This craft is fairly simple (in my opinion, it's so much easier than the last craft). You will need:

• Two different brown/yellow/black/etc. papers (I used dark brown and then a tannish color)
• Shoe
• Hands- I hope you don't need to look too far for that one
• Pencil/Pen
• Scissors
• Googly eyes (optional)
• Marker or pompom (for nose, both optional)

First trace one shoe and both your hands onto the paper (preferably shoe on darker paper and hands on lighter paper as shown). You may need help tracing your dominant hand. I did. I got my little sister to trace it for me, so you will see the hands look drastically different.

There we go! I outlined my outlines with marker, but you don't have to. I did it just to be able to capture the trace lines. (Pencil doesn't show on my phone camera, especially light marks on brown paper!!)

Now, cut all the pieces out.

Next, glue the hands to the foot.
The hands are the antlers and the foot is the head. For the eyes I used googly eyes, and for the nose I just drew a circle with my Sharpie marker. You can also draw the eyes or use a pompom for the nose.

Reindeer Game Crafts: Part I

Today I will start on the first part of my "Reindeer Game Crafts", which, as you could probably guess, are all crafts that have to do with reindeer. It is that time of year you know! 

Here's what you'll need:

• Brown or black yarn
• A shower ring (could be replaced by any small circular object)
• Scissors
• Sharpie (optional)
• Pencil (highly recommended)
• Glue

You'll need four arms-lengths of yarn. Here's how I measure it.
Put a piece of yarn in between your fingers, close to the ball (or bag or whatever) of yarn. Pull- keeping your fingers in the same place- the end of yarn up to your shoulder, then reach down and pull it up again. Pull it up to your shoulder four times. Ta-da! Four arms-lengths of yarn!

I used a basic white shower ring, (shown to the right) that is usually used to hold your shower curtain up.


 What you're going to want to do is tie your yarn onto the shower ring close to the place where it clips (sorry, do it closer than it is in the picture to the left, try to get it all the way to the edge). There will be a little tail. Hold the tail down and start wrapping the yarn over it as shown below. Go in the direction away from the clip.

Keep going around the ring... 

                   And around...

 And around....

Until you get here:

 

( as you can see, I moved the yarn closer to the edge)

Once you get here, you'll need to wrap over and over where the shallower part it, so that you can't see that it was skinnier there. It should look a little like this ------------->

Since I had a very long tail, I made a star-ish type thing across the middle. You don't need to do this if you don't have a long tail. If you do, though, make sure you tie it like this. Wrap it around a different string and tie a knot. I did it twice to be extra secure. Cut off the tail, if you have one. 

Yes, I just used scissors.

 Next, I cut out my reindeer head, I'm not a perfect drawer so I just looked at a picture of a cartoon reindeer and kind of based it off that (not exactly of course, but I'm sure you know what I mean). To the right is the paper I used. It's scrapbook paper and is supposed to look like a map. (It kind of reminds me of the wall at Subway!)

Here is the reindeer head all cut out.

 Next I had to cut out the legs. I made them a little chubby. To size them I just set the head out next to it, sort of in the way it would be on the ring and drew them. They look like pants right now and that's because I made them super long and the top so I could cut it down perfectly by setting it behind the ring and drawing a pencil line on the edge (shown to the right)

 To glue it, I just used Elmer's Glue-All which is available anywhere (yes, Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreens, and maybe even H-E-B- haven't checked yet).

 

Make sure you put the glue on the ring, not the paper. 

Once you glue the legs on, you're done! Remember: You can turn this into an ornament just by putting another piece of yarn on.