Why you're glad you aren't my best friend.

(prologue:  Sorry to those of you who expect a Monday Food Fest.  My grandma passed away and we held the funeral tonight, so I wasn't doing any cooking.  BUT, next week is going to be a whopper because my aunt and uncle will be in town all the way from Texas!)

I was only about two months late, but my BF received her birthday present, finally.  (This is made only more ridiculous by the fact that I got my birthday present from her before she got hers from me - and her birthday is two months before mine).

Since it arrived safely, I can finally show you what these were for.

Well, I used some of them, anyway.  

I had a lot fun thinking of things El would like when I made this and put it all together.  And if your best friend is a girl and likes girly things, I’ll bet you’ll have fun making this for HER, too.  (Well, I guess if your best friend is a guy who likes girly things, he might like this too.  Who knows?)

Want to know how to do it? (and what it is?)

First, 

you’ll need:

a pair of canvas flats

a plain metal headband

Embroidery floss and or heavy duty thread (I used both for different parts of the project)

BIG needle (like for quilting.  Or bigger)

small needle

Braiding Cord

small bits of ribbon (two)

small bit of felt

Large snaps

embellishments (as seen above) in pairs

Ready?

If your canvas flats have a little bow on them, like this:

you’ll need to get rid of it.  So, untie it and either snip it off or pull it out of its casing (if it goes all the way around the shoe.)

Now, take the bottom part of two snaps (or the part that has the hole) and sew them onto the toe of the shoes using embroidery floss and a BIG needle.  Make sure you make them really secure.

Cut a section of braiding cord and starting at one end of your plain metal headband, hot glue the end of the cord to the back.  Now wind it around the headband very tightly.

When you get to the other end, hot glue the end of the cord down to the back.

Take your small bits of ribbon

and hot glue them to the end of the headband, covering the hot glued cord.

Take a rectangular piece of felt and sew the part of a snap with the hole to one end.

Fold the rectangle under and either hot glue or sew it together to make a doubly thick square.

Lay a strip of hot glue down the center of the piece of felt, on the back.  Lay your headband on top.

Spread hot glue all over another square of felt, cut to the same size.  Sandwich the headband, gluing the two felt pieces together.

For my embellishments, I used matching yo-yo flowers with brown button centers, three-layer ruffle flowers with vintage button centers, covered buttons, and a hand sewn ruffle (which I made by folding a circle in half and folding the ends in, then sewing together.)

Take each of your embellishments and sew the other end of the snaps (plus the other end of some other snaps, depending on how many embellishments you have) (and by “other end” I mean the end that sticks out) to the backs.  

Note: if you use a covered button for one of your embellishments, you’ll need to give it a back to sew the snap to.  Sew the snap on a small square of felt, then double it up and hot glue it to the back of the button.  Like so:

See how many different mix and match combos you can come up with.  Like

and

or

oh, the possibilities!

Pack it up all pretty and send it off to its new home.  

I may need to make more fun things with snaps to send to El.  (hmmm, perhaps that will make up for the month(s) long wait?)

Now that I’m caught up through July, I only have a father IL, and a niece to make birthday presents for.  Those are only a month late.  So I guess the moral is that you should be glad you aren’t my father IL or my niece, as well.  Or related to me in any way.  (unless you ARE, in which case I’ll just apologize now).

-Kimberly