Making Little Hats! The Return of the DIY Projects!

Hello Kittens!

I hope you all had a good labor day weekend (for those of you in the states) or a good Labour Day weekend (for those of you in Canada) or maybe just a good weekend in general (for those of you elsewhere). :)

I noticed that it's been some time since I last did a DIY post so I figured it was due time for this one!

 
Making Little Hats!

 1) Start with a fascinator base. I bought this straw base from ebay

2) If the fascinator base doesn't come with one already sew on a snap clip or hair comb

 3) Once the snap clip or hair comb is sewed on hot glue it on to reinforce it.

Be sure to apply the glue only to the edge of the snap or hair comb. You will need the snap or comb to be slightly mobile to put it on your head.

 3) The last step is either the fun step or the tricky part... or maybe it's a little bit of both... adding the decoration.

For this hat I added a bunch of fake fruit to make a Carmen Miranda inspired hat! These pieces of fruit are a collection of foam fruit I bought from ebay, Joann's fabric, and the Japanese dollar store, Daiso.

I sewed all the fruit on to the fascinator base then reinforced them all with a hot glue gun. For the cherries I hot glued two piece together at the stem then sewed the stems onto the fascinator base.

And here is the little fascinator in action!

The Chicago, the Ft. Lauderdale, and the NOLA

I had so much fun making my first cat sweater clip a couple weeks ago that this last week I made a couple more. 

These sweater clips are relatively easy to make and just require a few supplies from Etsy, Joann's, and a hot glue gun and they take only a few minutes to make.

Because each of these sweater clips seem to have their own personalities it got me thinking of what I would name them if I were to name them after a particular city they feel like they should have been born in.


The Chicago is a pink and white cat cameo or cabonchon with pink pearls. I think of Chicago in the 1950s when I see this sweater clip
 

The Ft. Lauderdale is a super colorful green, blue and pink cameo with flamingos and palm trees with shiney pink transparent beads... who wouldn't think of Ft. Lauderdale in the 1950s when they see this fun sweater clip!

The NOLA is a black and ivory cat cameo with a dark silver chain. This sweater clip is much darker than the other two and makes me think of the New Orleans of Anne Rice's books. It is just like my previous sweater clip from Cat Got Your Chain except the cameo is smaller and darker having an ivory colored cat rather than a white cat... even though the chain and style of cameo are exactly the same, this slight color difference in cat makes such a big difference in feel to me... if Cat Got Your Chain had a location name I would name it the San Francisco but this one is definitely the NOLA.

Cat Got Your Chain

Making sweater clips from earrings

As mentioned in other blogs Tim and I took a trip to Joann's where I picked up a few supplies for this project.

- a suitable chain

Oh wait, that's all that I needed. Yay!

What I had around the house:

-two extra small 1 inch alligator clips which I had left over from a past project
-a pair of large round cat earrings I bought in Alameda from Modern Mouse, a store which features Etsy sellers

I got together my supplies, chain, alligator clips, earrings, tacky glue, glue gun, and tweezers.

Comparing the chain length to other sweater clips I own I determined the length where I wanted to cut the chain in half. I did this manually by pulling apart the chain and twisting it, working it around where the chain links. Having the chain link open, I was trying to wind it through the hole in the alligator clip but the open chain link was too small so I simply placed it over the edge of alligator clip and glued it with tacky glue then waited a day for that to set.


While I was waiting, I attempted to take the backs off the earrings. This is where I ran into problems. Do I really want to destroy these earrings for the sake of a sweater clip. As a sweater clip I would probably get more use out of them... I've had these earrings for over a year and have never worn them. They are heavy on my ears and are so big... but they are cat earrings... maybe one day I would want to wear them... Ah! So I got the idea that maybe I can find the same round cat piece minus the earring backing from Etsy especially considering that the store I bought them from features sellers from Etsy. I was happy to find this guess to be true. So I waited a week for my cat cameos to come in the mail.

Now with the arrival of my cat cameos I am ready to complete this project.

I hot glued the chain attached to the alligator clip previously tacky glued on. In hindsight I should have just super glued it on in that beginning step and foregone the two glues. Also because the chain link which attaches to the alligator clip was so small it was kind of overkill to use the hot glue.

Last, I used the hot glue gun to glue the cat cameo to the alligator clip. I think here hot glue was probably the best thing to use since the alligator clip does not fit flat against the cameo.

 

Here is the finished project. Pretty spiffy if I do say so myself!

Sparkle Time!

Making an old brooch new again or... The Missing Piece

Here is a craft project I recently worked on.

A friend at work gave me this lovely vintage brooch she found which belonged to her mother. She said she found this cat and thought of me <3! It was so sweet of her. Because it's original vintage it was not without a few flaws from being well loved over time. When I first got it it was missing two crystals at the neck. Easy fix. I took a trip to Joann's to look for something I can use to replace the missing pieces. Clumsy me though... :( when I was going through Joann's with my arms full of my new goodies which included supplies for my next craft project (see next blog... Cat Got Your Chain) as well as having this brooch out to be able to quickly compare it to potential candidates for replacement crystals, I agonizingly dropped the brooch which fell hard and I could see pieces from it flying every which way. I thought for sure I had broke it for good! When I picked it up and surveyed the damage I found that only the third crystal fell off which may be kind of fortunate because now when I add crystals they will fully be a matching set, but I also found that the colored piece in the ear filling also fell out. I thought this piece would be much harder to try and replace so Tim and I took some time looking for this missing piece and was lucky to have found it! Anyways, I learned a very valuable lesson... always use the baskets when shopping!

Here are my supplies ready to go.

I used "Create Your Style with Swarovski Elements" crystals which I find to have excellent sparkle and a good variety of colors, tacky glue to affix the crystals and ear filling into place, a toothpick to apply the glue, and tweezers to easily move my pieces around. Glue, set, wait and voila! Like new again. :)

This is an easy-peasy project.

Thank you for looking :)