DIY Faux Plant Desk Decor

This week I'll be showing you how to make some cute faux plant desk decorations. I decided to make these because my sister got her first internship and she needs decorations for desk at work! First I'll start off with the grass. I thought it could make a pretty neat looking pen/pencil holder. I wanted it to be long, so I'm going to cut the grass chunk in half.

First I'll start off with the grass. I thought it could make a pretty neat looking pen/pencil holder. I wanted it to be long, so I'm going to cut the grass chunk in half.

Now onto the succulent plants. I decided to make a little trio.

DIY Burlap Felting Pillow

DIY Needle Felted Cat Toys

I've had some requests to do more cat projects and I've been meaning to put together a needle felting tutorial, so I decided to combine those two ideas together. So today I'll be showing you how to make some needle felted cat toys! I made three different types, one stuffed with cat nip, one stuffed with jingly bells and one stuffed with a crinkly plastic bag.

First, here's the cat nip stuffed toy:

And now, the jingly bell toy:

Finally, the crinkly bag stuffed toy:

I hope you (and your cat!) enjoyed this project! Next week I'll be doing a tutorial on how to make the felting surface, so stay tuned if you're interested!

DIY: Image Transfer: Mother's Day Edition!

Mother's Day is right around the corner, and if you have yet to get your mom something, there is still possibly time for you to make something for her! Let's face it, homemade gifts are more special since you put a little piece of yourself into it. At least, that's how I see it. So today I'm going to show you how to make a nice photo transferred wooden plaque, which isn't necessarily a Mother's Day only kind of thing, but it can be depending on the imagery that you use. Like for the one I made I used a photo of me and my sisters from the last time we were all together. Anyway, enough rambling, let's get started!

I hope you enjoyed this weeks project! And to all the moms reading, Happy early Mother's Day!

DIY Pet Leash

So, I had been wanting to get my dog, Hobbes, a new leash. Nothing is wrong with the one he has now, in fact, I love the leash he has now. It's adjustable and really easy to clip around poles or trees or anything like that if we're out at the park and want to just sit around and hang out. Even though the leash we have for him already is adjustable, it would only go so short. I wanted something that was short and was simple, easy and quick to clip on him so we could run out the door for a quick walk.

In true chezlin fashion, I decided I'd make the leash myself. So of course I documented it all and I'm going to share it with you all so you can make one for your own pets!

Now, you can stop here and be done, but if you want, you can wax it. This is supposed to make the cord more comfortable to use and it makes it waterproof and, if you do it right, can give you an effect like leather.

I didn't get the "leather" effect I wanted, but I'm pretty sure it's because I only did this waxing process once. I'm going to go back and repeat it a few more times later and see if that works.

DIY: Studded Shoes

A while ago I saw some Jeffery Campbell skulltini flats, which are basically simple flats completely encrusted with skull studs. I thought they were super cute and I wanted them, but of course I ended up talking myself into making some of my own. So today I'll be showing you how to make some, too!

I absolutely love how these turned out!

Here are some affiliate links for some of the stuff in this project:

The flats

Skull studs

Anvil and rivet setter

DIY: Travel Watercolor Kit

The weather is getting nice so it's perfect for taking a trip to the park to hang out and paint a little bit. This week I'll show you how easily to put together your own travel sized watercolor (or gouache) kit that you can just throw in your pocket, purse, bag, etc. and be on your way!

Click here for an affiliate link for the aqua brushes.

I hope you like this weeks project! Now get out there and paint! :)

DIY: Paper Mache Deer Head

A while ago I made a post about how to dress up a paper mache deer head to make it look like two tone faux mounted deer head. Unfortunately a lot of people were having trouble finding these elusive paper mache deer heads, so I started working on a tutorial on how to make your own from scratch. Finally I've finished it so I can share it with you all! Like with my turkey candles, I made a rough 3d model of a deer head and put it through a program to make it printable onto flat paper. Then all you have to do is cut it out, fold it up and glue or tape it together!

To get the template for this project, click here!

DIY Droopy Chain Necklace

This week I'll be walking you through how to make a necklace with some drooping chains hanging down. This is an intermediate level project because part of the necklace will be fabricated by hammering the metal and drilling into it.

Let me know what you think of this finished necklace! I quite like how it turned out!

DIY Valentine Heart Boxes

Today I'm going to show you how to make a cute heart shaped box that would be perfect for Valentine's day! You can fill them with love notes, jewelry, chocolates, or any thing else that will make your Valentine feel loved.

Supplies~ Click HERE for the template!

Spray the template with spray adhesive and stick to your foam core board. The template is two pages. On the second page trim it up a bit, up to the dotted line- this makes it easier to line it up with the first page.

Using a sharp xacto knife, cut out the pieces.

On the dotted lines you're going to only cut through one layer of paper and the inner foam core. This makes it so you can make the curves in the walls of the box.

Take one of the wall pieces, fold it in half, and starting at the bottom of the heart piece with the inner heart, hot glue the wall piece on. Use the inner heart to help line up the walls. You can give the boxes some lip according to how you position the walls. In the one I'm making for this tutorial, I was going for a small lip, so I glued straight onto the line. I have two other examples: one where I glued the wall right along the edge, giving no lip, and one where I glued along the inside of the wall, giving a slightly larger lip.

Since I wanted you to be able to customize how large of a lip you'd want, the walls will be slightly longer than what you need. Just trim them up with an xacto knife when you get to the top part.

Here's the trick to making the box fit together really well. Take the second wall, fold it in half, curl each end inwards and place inside of the other side of the box.

Again, you'll have to trim the walls a little bit.

One side cut, one more to go.

Now that you have it cut to size, carefully glue the wall together, taking care not to accidentally glue it to the other half.

Pull the inner heart wall up about 1/4 of an inch. It should stay up on its own, but if it keeps falling,  you can just use some scrap pieces of foam core to hold it up. Apply hot glue along the top of the inner wall.

Take the second heart piece and press on to the glue, lining it up with the heart from the other side.

At this point you can take it out of the first half and then press the wall down more to make sure it's secure.

Now for decoration! You really can decorate these however you'd like, but I do suggest at least painting them with a base color first. I chose red.

For the walls I measured how tall they were and cut some decorative paper strips to that size.

And then I simply just glued them down with mod podge.

I also put glitter on the edges because they were pretty rough looking. My xacto knife wasn't very sharp so it kind of tore up the foam and it looked really bad. Always use sharp knives!

Here's the version with a larger lip. I covered the the top face with decorative paper, applied glitter to the edges and used ribbon to cover the walls. This one was my least favorite, but that's mostly because I was really impatient when I glued down the ribbon so it doesn't look that good.

And here's the one with no lip. It's my absolute favorite one. I'm considering putting it up to display it even after Valentine's day, that's how much I like how it turned out. For the decoration on this one I started with a few layers of red paint for the base coat. I stuck on some masking tape and drew a design on top of that. Once I had a design I liked, I used my xacto knife to cut the tape. It's okay if you cut a little into the first layer of the foam core. As long as it's not cut like that all over, you shouldn't have a problem. I removed the tape but kept tape on the areas where I still wanted the base coat to come through. Then I sprayed it with spray adhesive and dumped a bunch of glitter on it. I removed the masking tape, and then to give it a nice shine and to keep the glitter from shedding, I sprayed on a nice layer of clear acrylic sealer. I let it dry and ta da~

Here they are all done, filled with goodies! To make the pillow for the jewelry one I simply traced the inner heart side onto some felt, cut it out, hot glued along the edges leaving a one inch hole, flipped it inside out, stuffed it, and sealed it closed with more hot glue. Then I cut a small length of ribbon and hot glued that onto the middle. Of course, you could sew it instead of hot gluing, as that would look much nicer, but I was going for speed with my heart pillow.

Again, if you want to see how to make those delicious chocolates then click here!

I hope you liked this weeks tutorial, stay tuned for more next Thursday!

DIY Paper-cut Light Box

I recently saw some awesome artwork by these artists Hari and Deepti and I was very inspired to create some of my own. I threw together three tutorials; one is advanced, one is intermediate and one is easy. Check out the video below, or continue on after the "read more" tag, to figure out how to make your own!

A quick note about the lights I used in these light boxes. These things are great; you can cut them to size and they're self adhesive. Perfect for any project requiring a little bit of lighting. If you want to buy some for your own projects here are some affiliate links for the lights, extra connector things and power cords. If you don't feel like buying these things you can probably just use some Christmas lights, but the downside to those is that you'd only have a tiny bit of the lights inside the box, and then you'd have a long tail of lights hanging out of it. Unless you build a big box to accommodate a whole string of lights. Which would be awesome.

Advanced:

Mouse over or click on the images for instructions:

Intermediate:

Click here to download the template for this one.

Mouse over or click on the images for instructions:

Easy:

Mouse over or click on the images for instructions:

So there we go! Three different light boxes, three different levels of difficulty. I hope you all enjoyed these things, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, and I'm already planning a few more to make!

DIY Noren Curtains

I live in a shotgun style home, where we have no hallways and it's  basically just series of rooms, back to back. Some shotgun homes have doors to separate the rooms, but some, like mine, only have doorways. No doors. I've grown accustomed to the openness of being able to see basically all of the rooms if you look through a doorway, but I did also somewhat miss having a bit of separation between each room. My solution to this was to whip up a few sheer noren curtains. So of course, I'm going to be sharing with you this easy sewing project!

Supplies

First, you'll need to measure the width of your door and then how long you want the curtains to fall.

Divide the width by half. Add 1/2 of an inch to each side. Add 4 inches on top and 2 inches on bottom. Cut out these two measurements from your fabric.

Put the fabric together, right sides together, mark down 8 inches, 1/2 of an inch in. (Note: My measurements are twice as big because after cutting the fabric, I realized I didn't have to finish the outer edges of the curtains because they were the selvage edges. So instead of trimming 1 inch off every piece of fabric (I made 3 all together) I just made the seams twice as large on the inside.

Sew along the line and then fold open.

Fold 1/4 of an inch and iron that down. Then fold another 1/4 of an inch, iron again and pin. I skipped all of the ironing parts on the first one I  made, which was a huge mistake. For the other two I ironed after each fold and it made the job so much easier. So do as I say, not as I do.

Sew the seam down along the edge. This will encase the raw edge of the fabric in the seam, making them look nice and neat! Repeat this process on the outer edges of the curtain. Fold 1/4 inch, iron, fold 1/4 inch, iron, pin, sew.

For the top, fold down 1/4 inch, iron, fold down 2 inches, iron, pin, sew.

For the bottom, fold down 1/4 inch, iron, fold down 1 inch, iron, pin, sew. Repeat on the other flap.

And you're done!

Now from here you can either leave them plain or you can decorate! I was already thinking about decorating them, but after I put up this plain one to see how it looked, I decided I was definitely going to decorate them. They just didn't do it for me in their plain state. It probably didn't help that this particular curtain looks horrible because the tension of my sewing machine was off so it puckered the seams really bad.

But anyway, to decoration!

For this one I drew an ensō circle. It's supposed to "express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create." I thought it would be perfect to put up in one of the doorways to our office/studio/wood shop. For this one I just painted some pretty standard bamboo.

And for this one I painted the whole curtain, sans a circle in the middle, with a dark greyish blue. After that dried I painted the circle with liquid gold leaf.

And here they are all hung up!

I hope you all enjoyed this project! I'm glad I didn't give up after I hung that first plain one. I almost did. But I think they look so much better after painting on them.

What do you all think?

Sea Urchin Ornaments Part Deux

Yesterday I posted a video of me making an ornament with a sea urchin using a lathe to turn the parts for it. I realize not everyone has access to a lathe, so I decided to put together some sea urchin ornaments using materials that a lot of crafters would have but also would be easy to find at your local craft store. A little video summary will follow!

I will be doing a giveaway for the wood turned ornament from yesterday, so if you're interested in that, click here for more information.

I made two different kinds of ornaments.  One using a drawer pull I bought at my local craft store, and one using beads.

Drawer pull ornament:

This is by far the easiest method. You're basically just screwing the drawer pull together around the urchin.

Hover over or click on the photos for instructions.

Bead ornament:

Hover over or click on the photos for instructions.

I hope you all enjoyed! If you have any comments or suggestions for future projects, please let me know!

GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. Winner will be announced 1/1/15~

And don't forget to enter for your chance to win a wood turned sea urchin ornament made by me!

DIY Embroidered Appliqué

A few months ago I came across a sweater that I totally fell for. It was the embroidered crane sweater from the Altuzarra for Target collection. I just loved the design and the placement of it, but of course, being the crafter that I am, I ended up talking myself into embroidering some of my own designs and throwing them onto a sweater to create something that has the same feeling like the original sweater. So today's project is going to be the embroidered appliqué that I made to attach to a thrifted sweater.

Keep reading for a video summary!

Here's what you'll need. You'll want to cut the water soluble fabric and tulle to fit your embroidery hoop.

Draw your design onto some water soluble fabric.

Take the middle hoop and drape the black tulle and water soluble fabric over it and then push the outer hoop over it all and tighten the hoop slightly. You'll want to keep it loose enough to be able to pull the fabric in the hoop, but tight enough to keep it in place once you've pulled it.

Work around the hoop gently pulling the fabric taut. Then finish tightening the hoops all the way.

Embroidery time! I was totally inspired by Michele Carragher's embroidery style. I'm not really going to go into detail about how to do this part because I was just kind of winging it and doing what felt right for that part of the design. According to my research I was using a combination of stem stitches, detached chain stitches and split stitches. And of course I added some beads and jump rings as embellishments.

Here it is all finished! Well, the embroidery part anyway.

To secure the thread ends and to make sure nothing moves too much, paint a thin layer of Mod Podge onto the back of the design. It's important to use Mod Podge because once its dry it isn't water soluble so you wouldn't have to worry about washing the glue away whenever you did laundry.Tear off as much of the water soluble fabric as you can.

Trim the excess tulle away leaving 1/8 inch on the edges.

You can see here where the water soluble fabric didn't tear away, so off to the sink I was.Under running water, gently rub the areas where the water soluble fabric is still clinging on for dear life. It will dissolve away.

I made two mirrored embroidered appliqué designs and sewed them on the shoulders of a thrifted sweater.

And...

Finished!

I hope you enjoyed this project! I actually like it a lot more than the original sweater I based this project on. This is my first major embroidery project so if anyone has any better techniques or anything like that for me then please leave a comment! :D

Stay tuned for some holiday goodness next week!

Geometric Turkey Candles

Thanksgiving is a week away and now is the perfect time to start getting your table decor together. Especially if you're like me and plan on DIYing most, if not all of it. Recently I've seen some tutorials on how to make geometric candles and I really liked that look, so I decided to create my own design for a geometric turkey that you could display by itself (along with the food of course) or you could pair it with the other geometric type of candles for an interesting tablescape.

Keep reading for a quick video summary!

Supplies! You can find the pattern HERE. I recommend printing onto cardstock since it's more rigid, but printer paper will still work. It just won't look as sharp as one with a cardstock mold.

Use scissors and/or an xacto knife to cut out the pattern.

Flip your blade over and, using the blunt side, trace over the dotted lines to crease, or score, the lines. This will help you to cleanly fold them.

Fold along the lines using this guide.

Apply glue to a tab.

And glue to the corresponding number. You want to glue the tabs to the outside of the pattern. Since we're filling them up with wax, if you glue the tabs inside, you'll get an indentation from the tab in your candle.

After you finish gluing the whole thing up take your glue and  dab some on to the corners to close up any holes.

Take some acrylic paint and paint a thick layer all over the turkey. Repeat 2 o r 3 times. This is to ensure there will be no leaks. I did 2 layers on this one and had no leaks. Let dry.

Take the tube shape and glue the tabs onto the matching triangle tabs on the chest of the turkey like so. After I did this I noticed a few iffy spots on my turkey so I just dabbed on a bit more glue to those areas. Theoretically you could have just done a few layers of glue rather than paint initially, but with paint you can easily see if you have missed any areas.

Mark a hole on the back of the turkey and poke a hole.

Stick your wick in and pull through so an inch or two is sticking out of the top and bottom.

Apply some water soluble glue(Elmers) around the base of the wick. You want to make sure it's water soluble so that if, after you removed the mold, there is glue still on the wick, you can just easily clean it off under running water.

Melt your wax in a double boiler. I'm using an old coffee can that's sitting in about an inch or so of simmering water. I'm also using crayons to color the wax. For this specific candle I attempted an ombre and totally failed at it. I explain it more in the video, but that is why the candle ended up having some weird horizontal stripes in it.

Pour your hot wax in the mold and let cool slowly. I had another mishap at this stage. Since I was trying to do the ombre effect and I'm impatient, I threw the mold with the hot wax into the freezer between layers in an attempt to speed things up. My resulting candle has cracks all in it and I believe that the freezer step is what caused that. The two prototypes I made before this one were both cooled on the counter overnight and didn't have any cracks like this one did.

After you let the wax harden, cut the excess wick off the bottom and then remove the mold. If you made a cardstock mold you will probably have to use your xacto knife to get it started.

When removing the mold from around the wick just pull up carefully. Like I mentioned earlier, if there is still some glue attached to the wick just clean it off under running water. Trim the wick down to about half an inch to an inch.

And here it is with my first two prototypes! (The new guy is in the back) You can see the cracks in the new one. The smaller prototype has a line halfway through it because I didn't melt enough wax initially so it had started to harden by the time the second batch of wax melted.

Here they are all lit up! You can see the slight design chance I did in the tail between the first two prototypes and the newest turkey.

Aside from the ombre fail and the unfortunate cracks in this last turkey, I really do love how they turned out and I'm definitely going to throw these guys on my Thanksgiving table this year!

Cat Shelves

It's no secret I like to spoil my cat. A while ago I made him a cat tree to give him a space to get away from our (at the time) new puppy. Well now that puppy is a decently big dog and he can reach Gremlin's little cat tree sanctuary, and while Grem normally doesn't mind too much(Hobbes is like a annoying little brother) I still wanted to give him his own space to get away when he wants to. I also wanted to put Grem's food and water bowl up a little higher because Hobbes love that stuff and can still get to it when it's on my dresser. So I made one shelf with recessed food and water bowls and two more simple carpeted shelves. A quick video summary will be below!

Supplies. And how to cut your wood.

I did miter joints, so I cut the wood at an angle for the corners.

Figure out the placement for your food and water bowls on one of the shelves. Measure the size of the lip of the bowl (mine was 1/4 inch) and use that measurement to draw out another, smaller circle in the middle. You want to cut the wood out on that circle so the body of the bowl fits, but the lip doesn't, so the bowl rests nicely inside.

Cut the circle out.

Time to assemble! Use wood glue to stick the wood together and use the stapler to tack the wood in place with brads or finishing nails. You're going to attach the 32inch long piece to the 32inch side of the large piece of wood and then a 10inch length of wood on each side. Leave one side bare since it will be resting against the wall.

Finish the wood according to instructions. I used a dark stain.

Cut a piece of carpet out that's 32in by 10in. This is leftover remnant carpet I got for the cat tree. I still have so much left over...

Attach the carpet. I put down some wood glue first before laying the carpet down. I honestly don't know if that even did anything because I followed up with about a million staples, but it made me feel better so I did it. So after you lay the carpet down use your stapler to staple the carpet down. I made sure to use a lot because I figured Gremlin was going to use these things as horizontal scratching posts and I didn't want him to be able to rip the carpet off.

Here are the finished shelves! You can see the recessed bowls. I'm so happy with how they turned out!

Now hang up on your designated wall! I really wish we had splurged on nicer looking brackets, but oh well. They're up already so I just gotta deal with it. I can always change them later!

And here he is enjoying his new cat shelves!

I'm so happy these turned out pretty much exactly like how I pictured them in my head (beside the ugly brackets).

I hope you all enjoy, and I hope my instructions were clear enough! I didn't realize how hard it would be to explain wood working stuff.,. hah!

Flower Curtain Wall Decor

It's finally getting a bit chilly here and finally feeling like fall, so it's put me in the mood for all the autumn things. First things first, some decoration. My original intention was to make a wreath, but after getting my supplies home I changed my mind and decided to make some hanging wall decor instead. Here's how I did it!

Keep reading for a quick video recap below!

Supplies:

Cut all of the flowers apart.

With the flowers I bought, the leaves were loose so had I superglue them in place.

Find the center of a flower, squirt some hot glue in the middle and stick the end of a stem into it. Hold until the glue is hardened.

Repeat until the strand of flowers is as long as you want. I made mine four flowers long. Repeat to make as many segments as you need for your branch size. I made nine.

Tie a length of string onto the stick and then to the head of the top flower of one of the segments.

Repeat until you've attached all of your segments. I tied mine about three to four inches apart.

Here it is over my tv!

My branch was pretty lightweight and adding the flowers didn't add much weight to it so I was able to just hammer two nails in the wall and rest the branch on those.

If your branch is too heavy for that method, you could tie a piece of twine or yarn on each end of the branch and hang from a single nail like in the image above.

Hope you all enjoyed this project! I love it. I have a feeling like this piece is going to stay up on the wall for a while!

5 Last Minute Halloween Costumes

Halloween is right around the corner, so I put together this video that has five quick and easy DIY costumes!

Paper Mache Halloween Decor

Hey guys! Today I'm going to show you how make some nice Halloween decorations with paper mache. I found some small paper mache skulls at my local craft store, and yeah, they're not too pricey, but once I saw them I knew I wanted to make some on my own. I figured I could put a bit more personality into them, and I think I succeeded. I made two types of skulls; one that's a bit cartoony looking and the other a tad more realistic. I also made a little jack-o-lantern as well. This tutorial is best viewed in video format, however I'll provide some video stills with captions after the video!

Le supplies

Blow up your balloons; you'll want to fill them up only halfway. For the cartoony type of skull, tape around the bottom third of the balloon. Don't worry about being precise. Once you tape it up  you can squish the balloon around a bit to alter the shape of the balloon until it's just right.

For the realistic type of skull, take some cardstock and tape it to the balloon like so. This is only going to be temporary so we can draw the face on with the correct proportions.

Roughly sketch a skull face onto the cardstock. Carefully remove the tape and cut the shape out.

Tape it back on. Yeah,  you could probably just draw the skull face without taping it onto the balloon, but where's the fun in that? The best part is riding that fine line between almost popping the balloon and not.

For the jack-o-lantern, wrap a balloon with three rubber bands equally spaced apart, like so.

Draw on the face of the cartoony skull. Sure it's about to get completely covered with paper mache, but you need to sketch the whole face to see where the jawline will be. That's where we're going to stop layering on the paper  mache.

So much paper. You can use newsprint or any similarly weighted paper. I'm using brown packing paper. Tear the strips rather than cutting them, as a torn edge blends more easily.

Glue mixture. Two parts glue, one part water.

If so inclined, don your gloves.

Dip a strip into the glue, wipe off the excess glue and place on balloon. Repeat x1000. But really, do about 2  or 3 layers of paper, let dry, and repeat until it feels thick enough. Mine ended up being about 7 or 8 layers I believe. Although, I wish I had done more layers on the jack-o-lantern, because, as you will soon see, after I cut the face out it wasn't very strong and it started drooping.

Anyway, once you layer enough, let it dry overnight.

Before you pop the balloon, gently squish it down around the edge of the hardened paper shell. This should help prevent any distortions on the edge that may arise after popping the balloon.

Snip a small hole in the balloon and let it deflate.

You re-drew the face back onto the skull right? Oh, well if not, do so now.

Cut out the eyes, nose and mouth with the help of an xacto knife and scissors. And here he is!

Here's a realistic-y skull. I decided to do an opened mouth one by cutting the bottom jaw and taping it on separately.

And here's the little jack-o-lantern dude and his droopy face! When I paper mache-d him, I covered the whole thing except for about 1/8in around the knot of the balloon. That's where I popped the balloon. After I popped it, I rolled up some glue saturated paper and stuck it in the hole to create a little stem for the pumpkin. I pulled out the balloon and rubber bands after I cut the face out.

And here they are! All done!-- Well, almost anyway. I'll be posting the fully decorated pieces on Saturday the 25th, so stay tuned!

Redo Wind-up Key

Six years ago I posted a Halloween costume I made that featured a working wind up key. Four years ago I posted a tutorial on how to make said key and around Halloween it's almost always my top visited post. My husband has been wanting me to make some tutorials in video format, so I thought what better tutorial than this! So lo and behold, here's the video!

Here's a quick little photo recap of the video:

Supplies. Not pictured are some pliers and a screwdriver that I used to take the toy apart.

The sacrifice. Poor guy didn't see it coming.

This toy was nice because it was held together by just two screws. After unscrewing I just pulled the mechanism out. This is all we need from him!

In the original tutorial I used pliers to break off the wind up toy grip but this time my dowel(aka the piece of bamboo I had lying around) already had a hole in it and it was the perfect size with the grip still attached, so I just kept it on.

Mark the center point of the belt, cut a teeny tiny hole and stick the wind up mechanism through. You want to tack it down with a small dab of hot glue, taking care not to glue the moving parts.

Oh yes, the belt. That's how we will be securing the key to our bodies! I had this black elastic belt that I never wore anymore so I just used that.

To hide the white boxy mechanism cut a piece of matching fabric (I used fleece) and attach it on the belt. You can either sew it on or hot glue it.

Making the key pattern out of form core board. I traced a glass and then free handed the rest of it.

So in the previous tutorial I said to use a strong glue, namely a two part epoxy, since people will be cranking that thing all night. However, I have since tested it out and using a high temperature hot glue gun works just as well. You can still use a stronger glue of course, but hot glue does work.

For painting I did two coats of black as a base and then finished with a single coat of an antique copper.

Do not use spray paint! If you've made your key out of foam core board the chemicals in spray paint will react with the foam and eat it away. Craft paint is the way to go here.

Almost done!

You'll just want to put a bit of hot glue into the hole of the dowel. I had a pre-existing hole, but normally you would have had to CAREFULLY drill a small hole on the end of the key.

And here it is on the back of my costume!

And in motion!

So I hope you guys enjoyed the video. Is that something I should do more often? Let me know! It's pretty weird to sit there and talk to the camera, but it turned out alright I think.