Bling bling football

This is a craft idea that's been in process for a long time.  My ultimate vision is to make a disco ball out of a football.  I've tried to find a rigid plastic football, so I don't have to worry about inflation.  I couldn't find one, so I ended up buying a cheap inflatable football, which I spraypainted black.  As for the mirrored pieces, I couldn't find anything acceptable within my price range. The next best thing I could find was strips of bling.  I thought I might be able to glue the strips, 4 or 5 rows across, onto the football, but that didn't work so well either, so I cut the wide strips into thin strips.

Then came the hot glue.  This took a lot longer than I expected. 

I used a bamboo skewer to tap the bling into place.

I had to leave a small gap for the inflation hole.

Et voila!

Cat fez

Timey-wimey kitty witty.  Lounging in a pile of clean laundry.

Has this ever happened to you?   A beloved companion sleeps in your lap.  You look down at her and make this realization:

What this sleeping cat needs is a fez.

You realize that such an impulsive cat accessory may not be imminently available.  But the internet doth provide. However, if you don't want to wait for shipping from Australia, a reasonably priced altenative is available if you are reasonably crafty.

You will need:
Supplies
A paper coffee cup
A scrap of felt in the color of your preference (I used a traditional maroon)
A small tassel, or some yarn to make your own tassel.
A few scraps of paper or cardboard.
A small bit of stretchy material, unless your cat likes to wear hats.  It should match your cat, if possible. (I had some white stuff around, which matches my cat beautifully)

Equipment:
Ruler
Pen, pencil, or marker
Scissors
A hot glue gun
Darning needle to attach tassel

Instructions.
Get yourself a cup of coffee, tea or whatever.  It's really the paper cup that you want.  If you get a styrofoam cup, it still could work if you use school glue instead of hot glue.  Your gratification will be delayed, though ):

Ah, caffeine.  Empty and wash and dry it before proceeding.

Remove the zarf (the paper sleeve, yes, that's what it's called).

The Party Mix is to reward the cat's patience.

Measure the depth of the hat and mark where you wish to cut.  I made mine about 2".  

2 inches seems like a good size for a cat fez.

Cut it out with the scissors.

Now get the felt out, and make sure it covers the top of your fez form (coffee cup) with a slight overlap. 

Looking good!

Add a bead of hot glue to the edge of the form and press down onto the felt.  Trim away the excess so you have a square slightly larger than the top.

Bead of hot glue at the top

Press the cup onto the felt.

Now trim away the excess so it make a circle about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch larger than the top of the cup.

Glued to the felt and trimmed.

Now work you're way around the top, gluing down that edge.

Hot glue, hot glue.

Ready for the next step

Now you can start gluing the edges to the top. Line up the edge of the felt with the top.  Start gluing the top and edge and work your way around.

Work it around, glue, keep working it.

And then,

Rolling it up and gluing all the way.

Keep working until you get all the way around.

Trim the excess to leave a margin of about a half inch

 Now glue the edge down to the inside of the form

It's starting to look fezzy, isn't it?

I happened to have a nice gold tassel laying around. You can make a yarn tassel, or leave it with no tassel.  I'm not gonna tell you how to live your life. 

It's time to add the tassel.

Poke a hole through the center of the lid to thread the tassel through.  Wrassle that tassel.  That's what I had to do.  Once it's through, you can attach it with a dab of hot glue.  I used a small scrap of construction paper to smash it all together.

A dab will do ya!

It's basically a fez now.

The last thing you need to do is to add the stretchy band. This will help keep the hat on kitteh's head. Don't make it too small, you don't want to moosh kitteh's bwain. Use hot glue/paper scraps.

See how the scraps of paper help moosh the glue down?

Et voila!

So excited I might pee at this point.

Only thing left to do is try it on.  Please don't hurt your cat when you do this, and reward her/him with treats.  Most cats are not really fans of wearing little hats. 

So sexy.

Really, this is an easy project that took me much less time to execute than to blog about.  I will post about how to make your own human-sized fez soon. ;)
Addendum:  What do you do with the other half of the paper cup?  Dog fez. 

On the right, cat fez.  On the left, a slightly larger dog fez

Isn't she lovely?  Don't be shy!

So purty!

Recycled pallet guitar stand

I've had a problem with having enough space to hold my guitars. I also have a backstock of some wooden pallets.  So I thought I'd introduce my two problems to each other, and a little Pinterest research (which led me here) gave me the measurements I needed.  A few jigsaw and circular saw cuts, a few deck screws, and a bunch of hot glue and felt yielded this:

Red felt I had left over from making my fez

Add caption

Electric, acoustic, bass? They all fit!

Googly eye pleather bracelet

I've been trying to think of things to put googly eyes on, and I was inspired by seeing a punk rock studded bracelet to make this lil number with some leftover pleather and Velcro. I still need to work on my hot glue technique, and I'm not sure how well the eyes will stay on. I've got some other idea though.