Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Upcycled Sequin Jewelry

Confession time -- we typically have approximately 40 gazillion of these hanging around our house at any given time:



99.999% of them are from plastic water bottles. I know, I know, how much more environmentally irresponsible can we get than bottled water?  But seriously, the way our tap water tastes, we might as well just go on out and drink chlorinated swimming pool water (yechhhh).  We've tried the PUR sink filter and the Britta pitcher and even some fancy filtered reusable bottles, but have yet to find a satisfactory long-term solution (hanging my head in shame).

But as long as I have these things hanging around the house (which tends to happen because we are not supposed to put them in with the recycling), why not ... do...SOMETHING... with them...hmmmm....

I also happened to come across a random milk carton plastic pull tab thingie on my countertop, and I remembered this cool project I had bookmarked on Meet the Dubiens -- pull tab bead rings.  Oh so cute with the seed beads, but I have a whole giant jar of different shaped / colored sequins just begging me to do something with them...AND a birthday gift tutu in need of some fabulous accessories...double-hmmmmmm...

A little Modpodge, some cereal box cardboard, and a lot of sequins later, I wound up with about 6 of these:



The process was so simple.  For the pull-tab ring, I just liberally coated the top with mod podge, and placed the sequins on individually, choosing the ones that I thought would coordinate with the birthday tutu.  For the bottle top on the lower left I did the same, but traced and cut out a cardboard circle to mount the sequins on the underside of the bottle top, since I want to add some ribbon to the solid part of the top to make it into a necklace.  I'm also thinking you could use ring blanks to make these into rings or, hey, who knows, some of those big dollar store kiddie rings might even fit right into the hollow part of the underside!

For the bottle top in the middle I didn't even bother with trying to pick and choose or lay out the sequins, I just loaded up my cardboard mounting surface with modpodge and dipped it into a litle pile of sequins.  I think these randomly placed ones look the best!!

Once the initial layer of the 'podge had dried, I added a few more coats on top. It gives the piece more stability, and also provides a uniform, slightly reflective (at least with the modpodge finish I used) topcoat. 

I am pretty happy with the way these turned out, and I can't wait to give them to the birthday girl on Saturday.  Here's a picture of the tutu with the pull tab ring and soon-to-be necklace (once I add the ribbon):



OK, so you can barely see the "jewelry", but that's just because it coordinates so beautifully with the tutu.(Alas, I know the above photo is really just prime evidence that my blog photo-taking skills need serious work, but it is only my second post -- don't you judge me!)

And yes, I did make the tutu as well, but since these are all over the internet I didn't see any need whatsoever to give that its own post.  I was actually inspired by the gorgeous tutu that my best friend Holli made my daughter for Christmas...my daughter loved hers so much that she has been asking me to make them for her friends' birthday parties. 

Here's the inspiration tutu my bestie Holli at Double H Creations made:


Annnnd, now that I've posted this, I'm a little embarrassed to showcase mine.  Seriously, head over to Double H Creations on Facebook and check out Holli's stuff, she makes beautiful things (and not to mention, she is a beautiful person inside and out, I am so blessed to have her in my life ... sniff).

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