Felt Belt!

So, among my Good Will finds this morning was this cute, simple tee shirt dress.

It is actually one of those longer shirts for women, but since I found it in the girls' dresses section, of course that's what I thought it was.  And I thought Caida would love it, since she's on this purple kick thanks to Tangled. :) It is definitely too big for her, though...even with black leggings or skinny jeans underneath it still needed something to give it some SHAPE so that she didn't look like a homeless stick dressed up in her mommy's old clothes.  A cute matching belt would do the trick...but I didn't have one of those on hand.

So I made one up!

And now it's shapely and cute and will grow with her until she wears it out.  :)

I love it.  It'll be perfect for lounging around on lazy Saturdays or dressing up for field trips, with her little black tights.  I don't know why, but I envision a girl curled up with a cup of something hot and sweet and a book on a fluffy couch when I see this.  Maybe it was a commercial?

Sorry I don't have pictures of the step-by-step process...I think it'll be pretty clear/obvious to most people how I made it (braid long strips of felt together and glue on a flower), but I'll write the directions in detail in case it isn't.  :)

1. All I did was find some felt sheets in my stash that were coordinating colors--you'll want up to three colors (though you could easily do just one, or two if you want one to pop).  I cut three long strips from each color about 1" wide down the whole length of the sheet--so each was about 11" long.

In case you're confused already, I had 3 11"x1" strips of purple, 3 11"x1" strips of gray, and 3 11"x1" strips of black.  :)

2. Then I used my handy dandy hot glue gun to glue each separate color into one LONG strip.  So one 33" strip of purple, one 33" strip of gray, and one 33" strip of black, give or take.

3. I glued the three different colors together at one end (right on top of each other in a stack), braided it the length I needed (21" in this case, Caida's waist measurement), and then cut off the excess and glued them together again at the end (again, stacked).

4. Add a cute matching felt flower onto one end, and hot glue either velcro to both ends (so they'll stick together when they wrap around the waist) or snaps, or, like I did because of my plethora of pins, just a pin backing to the flower.  No one will know.  :)

VERY easy, and very cheap.  About a 10 minute craft, but it really adds a cute personal touch to whatever you're wearing.  I will have to remember this for some of MY shirts that need that extra "something special."

Happy crafting!