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#1
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I belted my kid (ON topic)
Bet that got your attention! But it's not what it appears to be. The latest issue of Belle Armoire (I think) and some of the teen fashion magazines and catalogs are promoting interestingly embellished belts as a hot fashion accessory. Manda and I were looking through her Urban Outfitters and Alloy catalogs and saw two that she especially loved: one made of what looked like an old seat belt, including the buckle, and another with carbonated beverage bottle tops riveted along its length. (It's called tonic around here folks, I can't bring myself to say the s*da word) So after a little while gathering materials and several false starts, yesterday was belt day. Manda has a house guest for the next couple of weeks, so we got two of everything, so everyone could join in on the fun. Although I had planned to make some belts for myself, I've recently discovered how uncomfortable a belt can be when you're stuck in a wheelchair for any length of time. So I skipped making for myself, and limited my participation to financial (no kidding) and advisory (only when asked). Bottle Cap Belt: This one was a blast for both kids, and turned out not to be the problem I had feared. It has a cheap belt from a discount store as its base in the appropriate size for the girl who will be wearing it. The belt we saw in the magazine had what looked like beer bottle caps riveted along the length of a wide black leather belt. That's not appropriate for my kids, both because of the beer caps (which are inappropriate for kids too young to drink) and because they were attached loosely, so as to make a jingle when the wearer moved. Noisy belts are not what I think should be worn to school. I decided that the belts were stiff enough that the bottle caps could be glued in place, assuming we could find some good ones. We had just about decided to get a bunch of bottles of Coke and Pepsi and drink them up, when I spotted the coolest bottle caps in the scrapbooking section of our big craft store (A.C. Moore) These had oodles of fun designs, which probably never got near a beverage in their lives, as well as blank ones you could paint yourself. I was all set for the blank ones, but the girls liked a bunch of the retro looking printed kind. Fine by me. At $3/dozen, the caps cost just about as much as the Cokes in bottles would have cost, but the caps wouldn't have been nearly as cool. We bought two dozen caps. Bob took the girls to a discount store, where they bought the appropriate belts for $2.97 apiece for some substance called "bonded leather." I assume it's something along the line of reconstituted turquoise: floor sweepings from a leather factory mixed with a binder and rolled out to use like the real thing. The top layer of the belt was actual leather, so they did look good, and should wear reasonably well (see below) We measured the belts and decided the area to be embellished should be mostly in the back, so the buckle and tongue of the belt wouldn't be hindered by the bottle caps. To copy the store bought belts, I could have used Pop Rivets (I have a rivet gun in the garage), but I didn't want anything that pokes a hole in the middle of those cute printed bottle caps, and it would leave the jingling cap problem. When we opened the packages of bottle caps, they had foam things with adhesive on them. We decided to use the heavy duty glue dots to glue the foam into the bottle cap, and then the bottle cap onto the belt, at an interval that had ten bottle caps along the belt. This turned out to be not quite as sturdy as I liked, so we used a little two part epoxy the next day, and those bottle caps aren't going anywhere. Part of why the belts were so cheap was the buckle . The belts had large buckles with a lurid, gross faux turquoise cab in the middle. It was such a jarrindg shade that it looked almost like it lit up and along with the large buckle, made the wearer look like she had a huge waist, which is not the case in the least. Anything that makes a size 6 person look fat is badly designed. Happily, I have many tools to solve such problems. That plastic stone was gone in oh, about a second. Even better, a bottle cap fit nicely over the bezel for the cab. It took the girls about an hour to do this, mostly unaided by me. Probably 95% unaided by me, and it would have been completely unaided if I had wanted to be a hard guy. When they wanted to know how to measure the belt's "working area," I could have given them a tape measure and told them to figure it out. But it's hot, and this is a fun project, not a math project (and although the two can intersect, this wasn't one of those times). It took me about a second to show them how each belt needed different spacing, because they were of different sizes. They took care of the rest, including swapping bottle caps so each had the ones they liked the best. The scrapbooking section also offered mini bottle caps with letters on them, rather like Scrabble letters. Manda's friend chose those in addition to her vintage full sized caps. She put her name in bottle caps inbetween the larger caps, which created an interesting, attractive effect. We bought a couple of sets of Scrabble tiles at the scrapbooking section as well: one to replace the missing tiles in our sad Scrabble game, and the rest for a project we haven't thought of yet. Then they simply glued the bottle caps in place, and we weighted them overnight on my kitchen table, while the glue cures. (Cinder blocks look strange on a kitchen table, but this certainly isn't the first time) Then they started on Belt #2 Seat Belt Belts: These are HUGE around here. It's just a length of 1970's era lap belt with the metal release (not the black plastic with the orange button of today's seatbelts) Most have an auto logo in the center of the buckle part, and some have a design in that little square (often something goth). The thing that struck me is that they were charging $30 and up for a three foot piece of discarded seat belt webbing and "recycled vintage" (read "gathered at junkyards for next to nothing") buckles. My days of climbing over old cars in search of parts at a junkyard are long gone, so much so that I am shocked when Bob tells me that most places don't even allow you to go out and strip a vehicle yourself, for insurance reasons. So, I went to the next best place: a local auto body shop. An old friend from the neighborhood owns one, and I asked him if he had some old seat belts for me. Shockingly, he turned me down flat. I asked why, and it was because of (ahem) insurance reasons. He was worried that I'd buy webbing from him, put it in my car (rather tough since I don't even have a car right now), and get into an accident where the belts fail. I suppose that's remotely conceivable, but it's not at all likely. When I told him why I wanted the webbing, he was fine, and gave me two 90" pieces, in exchange for a note saying it wasn't going to be used as safety equipment in any vehicle. Making these was simple, although hand sewing them was a giant pain. I had the girls use the fattest Fireline I own (50 or 100 lb weight in smoke) I cut off the right length from the end with the buckle, and then sewed the tongue to the raw edge. One hint: Fray check is your friend in this project, as is a thimble and a pair of pliers. Because I was hand sewing, I ended up having to use a heavy curved needle and an awl to go through all that stuff. Instead of leaving the buckle 100% plain, we went back to the scrapbooking aisle: they had little plastic adhesive bubbles that have a retro photo molded into them. Six buttons for $0.99, on sale. Making my entire out of pocket expense for this one to be $0.50/finished belt, plus some very sore hands from pushing the needle through the webbing. But the belts were worth it. They look absolutely gorgeous. Lastly, the girls wanted some accessories that were listed as "must haves" on one of the teen fashion sites. Manda called me over to the screen, to see if I could figure out how to make cell phone charms (they want $30 and up), purse charms ($20-$50), "designer watches" (sky's the limit, even for plastic) and wide crystal cuffs (the ones they liked were about $200). Manda and her friends know that getting that kind of money out of me is ahem, rather unlikely. I sent them over to my box of Czech pressed beads and Peruvian ceramic beads and had them each pick out a couple of focals; suggesting that they stick to one theme for both the cell phone and the purse, since they'll be together. I also dug out a sheet of "shrinky dink" plastic. (Great name for that stuff. Sounds like you need Viagra to make it work) I printed each girl's name and address on the plastic, cut it to the approximate size of a business card and punched it with a paper punch. Then I shrunk it and set it aside. Manda's guest picked a set of Peruvian ceramic hedgehogs as her focal. The cell charm was the hardest, but only because I didn't have small hedgehog beads. After many tries, she now has a hedgehog school ID lariat, a hedgehog purse charm, and a wolf cell phone charm. Upon examining the cell phones, it was easy to find a slot or hole in each that was perfect for running a piece of beading wire through. I ran a 6" or so doubled length of 49 strand softflex through the hole, and put some tape on one end as a bead stopper. Because of the large hole in the ceramic beads, I put those on first. The girls then picked out some 4 mm crystal bicones and matching 8/0 seed beads (the 11/0 ones disappeared in this project - you needed something bigger). they strung about 4" worth, leaving me room to double crimp the wires and hide the crimps inside the ceramic bead. These charms are not removable by design, but you could put a little lobster claw clasp/split ring combination in there somewhere if you chose. The purse charms were made in exactly the same way - even the same length. Ooops - I forgot one thing. On each set of charms, I put the shrink plastic ID on the wire before I crimped it. It would be a long shot to get the stuff returned if one of the kids lost it, but a name tag would be proof of ownership should they spot another kid with their cell phone. The ID lariats were simple Y necklaces, with a ceramic bead at the junction of the Y, and a huge sterling silver lobster claw at the termination of the dangle. (We've tried everythng, and that's the one thing that lasts the longest for the kids I know) The necklaces are long enough to fit over the girl's heads. These were made with 6mm druks rather than seed beads, so the druks would be the part against the skin, instead of the bicones. Manda is still very sensitive to scratchy things. Today's project is to have "someone" make a whole bunch of wheels made of crystals in triangle weave, which can then be made into wide cuff bracelets. If I have any spare time, they've picked out cartoons they'd like me to copy in beadwork, so they can glue them to denim purses they bought. If I tie a mop to my *ss, I can sweep the floor at the same time and really be useful. :-) But all of these projects are suitable for teens, and right up to the minute as far as fashion goes. It's also one of those great times when made at home produces a product that inspires envy among classmates instead of "awww, you were too poor to buy it?" The belts are going to be especially popular, because I saw nearly the same thing at the store in the mall. The seatbelt one was $180, and the bottle cap one was over $100 as well. Manda had charms on her things last year, and they were admired by all the kids; because she was able to pick whatever characters she liked instead of whatever was available at Claire's that week. I even made a tiny eyeglass charm to replace a screw on her eyeglasses one morning when she forgot to tell me the glasses were broken until five minutes before it was time to leave. (a 4 mm bicone on a headpin, pushed through the holes and made into a wrapped loop. Use as many wraps as necessary to tighten connection between lenses and arms of glasses. constant cursing required) If I can, I'll take and post some photos. Kathy N-V |
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#2
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Those sounds really cool and I love your thriftiness. I'll have to
show Heather & Meghan this thread and see if the belts appeal to them. |
#3
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Sounds like tons of fun. I would love to see pictures if you are able to
post them somewhere to have us see. Lara -- Check out my eBay auctions under user ID: lutrick Or click on the link: http://snipurl.com/8fa3 "Kathy N-V" wrote in message . giganews.com... Bet that got your attention! But it's not what it appears to be. The latest issue of Belle Armoire (I think) and some of the teen fashion magazines and catalogs are promoting interestingly embellished belts as a hot fashion accessory. Manda and I were looking through her Urban Outfitters and Alloy catalogs and saw two that she especially loved: one made of what looked like an old seat belt, including the buckle, and another with carbonated beverage bottle tops riveted along its length. (It's called tonic around here folks, I can't bring myself to say the s*da word) So after a little while gathering materials and several false starts, yesterday was belt day. Manda has a house guest for the next couple of weeks, so we got two of everything, so everyone could join in on the fun. Although I had planned to make some belts for myself, I've recently discovered how uncomfortable a belt can be when you're stuck in a wheelchair for any length of time. So I skipped making for myself, and limited my participation to financial (no kidding) and advisory (only when asked). Bottle Cap Belt: This one was a blast for both kids, and turned out not to be the problem I had feared. It has a cheap belt from a discount store as its base in the appropriate size for the girl who will be wearing it. The belt we saw in the magazine had what looked like beer bottle caps riveted along the length of a wide black leather belt. That's not appropriate for my kids, both because of the beer caps (which are inappropriate for kids too young to drink) and because they were attached loosely, so as to make a jingle when the wearer moved. Noisy belts are not what I think should be worn to school. I decided that the belts were stiff enough that the bottle caps could be glued in place, assuming we could find some good ones. We had just about decided to get a bunch of bottles of Coke and Pepsi and drink them up, when I spotted the coolest bottle caps in the scrapbooking section of our big craft store (A.C. Moore) These had oodles of fun designs, which probably never got near a beverage in their lives, as well as blank ones you could paint yourself. I was all set for the blank ones, but the girls liked a bunch of the retro looking printed kind. Fine by me. At $3/dozen, the caps cost just about as much as the Cokes in bottles would have cost, but the caps wouldn't have been nearly as cool. We bought two dozen caps. Bob took the girls to a discount store, where they bought the appropriate belts for $2.97 apiece for some substance called "bonded leather." I assume it's something along the line of reconstituted turquoise: floor sweepings from a leather factory mixed with a binder and rolled out to use like the real thing. The top layer of the belt was actual leather, so they did look good, and should wear reasonably well (see below) We measured the belts and decided the area to be embellished should be mostly in the back, so the buckle and tongue of the belt wouldn't be hindered by the bottle caps. To copy the store bought belts, I could have used Pop Rivets (I have a rivet gun in the garage), but I didn't want anything that pokes a hole in the middle of those cute printed bottle caps, and it would leave the jingling cap problem. When we opened the packages of bottle caps, they had foam things with adhesive on them. We decided to use the heavy duty glue dots to glue the foam into the bottle cap, and then the bottle cap onto the belt, at an interval that had ten bottle caps along the belt. This turned out to be not quite as sturdy as I liked, so we used a little two part epoxy the next day, and those bottle caps aren't going anywhere. Part of why the belts were so cheap was the buckle . The belts had large buckles with a lurid, gross faux turquoise cab in the middle. It was such a jarrindg shade that it looked almost like it lit up and along with the large buckle, made the wearer look like she had a huge waist, which is not the case in the least. Anything that makes a size 6 person look fat is badly designed. Happily, I have many tools to solve such problems. That plastic stone was gone in oh, about a second. Even better, a bottle cap fit nicely over the bezel for the cab. It took the girls about an hour to do this, mostly unaided by me. Probably 95% unaided by me, and it would have been completely unaided if I had wanted to be a hard guy. When they wanted to know how to measure the belt's "working area," I could have given them a tape measure and told them to figure it out. But it's hot, and this is a fun project, not a math project (and although the two can intersect, this wasn't one of those times). It took me about a second to show them how each belt needed different spacing, because they were of different sizes. They took care of the rest, including swapping bottle caps so each had the ones they liked the best. The scrapbooking section also offered mini bottle caps with letters on them, rather like Scrabble letters. Manda's friend chose those in addition to her vintage full sized caps. She put her name in bottle caps inbetween the larger caps, which created an interesting, attractive effect. We bought a couple of sets of Scrabble tiles at the scrapbooking section as well: one to replace the missing tiles in our sad Scrabble game, and the rest for a project we haven't thought of yet. Then they simply glued the bottle caps in place, and we weighted them overnight on my kitchen table, while the glue cures. (Cinder blocks look strange on a kitchen table, but this certainly isn't the first time) Then they started on Belt #2 Seat Belt Belts: These are HUGE around here. It's just a length of 1970's era lap belt with the metal release (not the black plastic with the orange button of today's seatbelts) Most have an auto logo in the center of the buckle part, and some have a design in that little square (often something goth). The thing that struck me is that they were charging $30 and up for a three foot piece of discarded seat belt webbing and "recycled vintage" (read "gathered at junkyards for next to nothing") buckles. My days of climbing over old cars in search of parts at a junkyard are long gone, so much so that I am shocked when Bob tells me that most places don't even allow you to go out and strip a vehicle yourself, for insurance reasons. So, I went to the next best place: a local auto body shop. An old friend from the neighborhood owns one, and I asked him if he had some old seat belts for me. Shockingly, he turned me down flat. I asked why, and it was because of (ahem) insurance reasons. He was worried that I'd buy webbing from him, put it in my car (rather tough since I don't even have a car right now), and get into an accident where the belts fail. I suppose that's remotely conceivable, but it's not at all likely. When I told him why I wanted the webbing, he was fine, and gave me two 90" pieces, in exchange for a note saying it wasn't going to be used as safety equipment in any vehicle. Making these was simple, although hand sewing them was a giant pain. I had the girls use the fattest Fireline I own (50 or 100 lb weight in smoke) I cut off the right length from the end with the buckle, and then sewed the tongue to the raw edge. One hint: Fray check is your friend in this project, as is a thimble and a pair of pliers. Because I was hand sewing, I ended up having to use a heavy curved needle and an awl to go through all that stuff. Instead of leaving the buckle 100% plain, we went back to the scrapbooking aisle: they had little plastic adhesive bubbles that have a retro photo molded into them. Six buttons for $0.99, on sale. Making my entire out of pocket expense for this one to be $0.50/finished belt, plus some very sore hands from pushing the needle through the webbing. But the belts were worth it. They look absolutely gorgeous. Lastly, the girls wanted some accessories that were listed as "must haves" on one of the teen fashion sites. Manda called me over to the screen, to see if I could figure out how to make cell phone charms (they want $30 and up), purse charms ($20-$50), "designer watches" (sky's the limit, even for plastic) and wide crystal cuffs (the ones they liked were about $200). Manda and her friends know that getting that kind of money out of me is ahem, rather unlikely. I sent them over to my box of Czech pressed beads and Peruvian ceramic beads and had them each pick out a couple of focals; suggesting that they stick to one theme for both the cell phone and the purse, since they'll be together. I also dug out a sheet of "shrinky dink" plastic. (Great name for that stuff. Sounds like you need Viagra to make it work) I printed each girl's name and address on the plastic, cut it to the approximate size of a business card and punched it with a paper punch. Then I shrunk it and set it aside. Manda's guest picked a set of Peruvian ceramic hedgehogs as her focal. The cell charm was the hardest, but only because I didn't have small hedgehog beads. After many tries, she now has a hedgehog school ID lariat, a hedgehog purse charm, and a wolf cell phone charm. Upon examining the cell phones, it was easy to find a slot or hole in each that was perfect for running a piece of beading wire through. I ran a 6" or so doubled length of 49 strand softflex through the hole, and put some tape on one end as a bead stopper. Because of the large hole in the ceramic beads, I put those on first. The girls then picked out some 4 mm crystal bicones and matching 8/0 seed beads (the 11/0 ones disappeared in this project - you needed something bigger). they strung about 4" worth, leaving me room to double crimp the wires and hide the crimps inside the ceramic bead. These charms are not removable by design, but you could put a little lobster claw clasp/split ring combination in there somewhere if you chose. The purse charms were made in exactly the same way - even the same length. Ooops - I forgot one thing. On each set of charms, I put the shrink plastic ID on the wire before I crimped it. It would be a long shot to get the stuff returned if one of the kids lost it, but a name tag would be proof of ownership should they spot another kid with their cell phone. The ID lariats were simple Y necklaces, with a ceramic bead at the junction of the Y, and a huge sterling silver lobster claw at the termination of the dangle. (We've tried everythng, and that's the one thing that lasts the longest for the kids I know) The necklaces are long enough to fit over the girl's heads. These were made with 6mm druks rather than seed beads, so the druks would be the part against the skin, instead of the bicones. Manda is still very sensitive to scratchy things. Today's project is to have "someone" make a whole bunch of wheels made of crystals in triangle weave, which can then be made into wide cuff bracelets. If I have any spare time, they've picked out cartoons they'd like me to copy in beadwork, so they can glue them to denim purses they bought. If I tie a mop to my *ss, I can sweep the floor at the same time and really be useful. :-) But all of these projects are suitable for teens, and right up to the minute as far as fashion goes. It's also one of those great times when made at home produces a product that inspires envy among classmates instead of "awww, you were too poor to buy it?" The belts are going to be especially popular, because I saw nearly the same thing at the store in the mall. The seatbelt one was $180, and the bottle cap one was over $100 as well. Manda had charms on her things last year, and they were admired by all the kids; because she was able to pick whatever characters she liked instead of whatever was available at Claire's that week. I even made a tiny eyeglass charm to replace a screw on her eyeglasses one morning when she forgot to tell me the glasses were broken until five minutes before it was time to leave. (a 4 mm bicone on a headpin, pushed through the holes and made into a wrapped loop. Use as many wraps as necessary to tighten connection between lenses and arms of glasses. constant cursing required) If I can, I'll take and post some photos. Kathy N-V |
#4
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Yes, it did ;-)
But you forgot to mention that you did not only help the girls get they wanted, on top of that, you had a great crafting day :-) I wish I would have that too, my daughter is absolutely NOT interested in any craft. Not in doing them, nor in wearing anything trendy. So, I craft on my own, and have no idea what to do with the finish pieces afterwards. Luckily, Christmas comes back every year, and I can give the piece away. What is your next project ? Take care, Christine Kathy N-V wrote: Bet that got your attention! |
#5
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When you give your work away, be sure to show, by how you present it, that
it is valuable. Include a card listing materials, ostensibly so they know how to take care of it. It will also help you learn to talk up your work. Tina "Lostspaces" wrote in message ... Yes, it did ;-) But you forgot to mention that you did not only help the girls get they wanted, on top of that, you had a great crafting day :-) I wish I would have that too, my daughter is absolutely NOT interested in any craft. Not in doing them, nor in wearing anything trendy. So, I craft on my own, and have no idea what to do with the finish pieces afterwards. Luckily, Christmas comes back every year, and I can give the piece away. What is your next project ? Take care, Christine Kathy N-V wrote: Bet that got your attention! |
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