DIY Googly Eyed Headband & Hat

I found a great craft on Pinterest done by The Crafty Blog Stalker.
The best part about this craft is that it is almost entirely a Dollar Store Craft. The one exception is you must buy or already own a hot glue gun and glue sticks.

Just so we’re clear you will need:

• Hot glue gun and glue sticks

• A package or two of googly eyes
• Headbands (the wider the headband the better for gluing eyes)
• And/Or, a knit hat

Step One: Gather supplies and get a workspace.

Step Two: Plug in your hot glue gun.

Step Three:
For the hat–Lay out a pattern that you like. I put a piece of cardboard (used the tag from the packaging) between the hat fabric layers. It would be lame to make a fun hat that you inadvertently glued shut.

For the headbands–Pick out a pattern that you like.

Step Four: For hat–Apply dots of glue to the backs of the googly eyes and stick to your hat. Allow to fully cool and dry before throwing it on your head. Again, you don’t want to have glue and hair and forehead all trapped and boiling hot.

For headbands–I applied glue to the headbands directly because my headbands were a bit more narrow than my big googly eyes. Be very careful not to get glue on your fingers. It’s stinkin’ hot! For the large eyes, I mashed them down and waited a couple of seconds to make sure I didn’t knock them back off while they were still cooling.

Step Five: Once you allow the pieces to fully cool, I picked away those little hairs that I always seem to have to deal with when hot gluing.

After doing that bit of housekeeping, throw on your accessory and hit the town.
I believe that people should dress up, or at least start getting festive during the whole month of October. I think the headbands would be a great accessory for people to wear who work in places they are not allowed to dress up. Offices and such typically err on the serious side. Hopefully your office doesn’t have a policy against wearing googly garb.

Kids: Get someone intelligent to supervise you. Or better yet, learn how to properly use tools, because when you’re an adult no one will stop you from chainsawing your fingers off. Hot glue is painful, please be careful.

This would make a fantastic costume piece too.
For example: I am working on creating a cherubim costume. The cherubim from L’Engle’s Wind in the Door were described as being a mass of eyes and feathers and wings. I believe a huge package of craft feathers and more hot glue is in my future. Feel free to use this idea and out-nerd all your friends at the next Halloween party. Perhaps more simply, this could be the spider eyes for a fun spider costume.

~Kat~

Day 282: Peace

Piecing together a broken ornament for my mom. Although this ornament would break if you breathed too heavy on it I thought this meant something.

Gluing Peace back together. It is broken. We are at war with our neighbors, nature, ourselves. Accepting self is a hurdle many people never scale. I have battles accepting myself at times.
How can we be in harmony with anything if we cannot feel good about ourselves. Calm down, I won’t go super spiritual on you guys.

Donno why fixing my mom’s ornament struck me so much. Just got the impression that we need to try to fix what is broken. Your pieces may become a peaceful whole.

*audience begins to snap*
Haha

Day 280: Acorn Ornament

Part of my December Adventivities.
This was one of the ornament crafts that I found on Pinterest and altered. Many of the acorn cap balk ornaments were a little more fancy than mine. It took some time to complete, so I would only make this again if I wanted to do some crafty gifts.

I was picky, which means this craft took a lot more time than it should have. I finally found some foam balls that appeased my expectations. They were white, of course, so I first painted them with a deep brown and allowed them to completely dry.

Next, I prepped my tools. I heated the hot glue gun, made sure all my caps were clean, and cut an appropriate length ribbon.

I can’t give you an exact length for ribbon everyone likes their ornaments to hang just right on their tree. I took deep brown ribbon. I think the ribbon was either a half inch or 3/4 inch width.

I recommend taking both ends, overlapping and gluing them to the bottom of the ball. Glue little by little up the side of the ball and mash the ribbon flat. This will enable you to glue the caps down flat on top of the ribbon. Once you glue the ribbon you should have a loop left over for hanging.

After your ribbon is glued down, you can begin gluing on the acorn caps. Start by putting one at the bottom so it hides your ribbon overlap. From there, just do what feels right. I packed my acorns pretty tightly but perhaps you want a little brown paint to show through.

I also added little silver bells in periodic places. If you do this as well, be careful how much hot glue you stick it to. One of my bells doesn’t ring because I buried it in glue. They should have a nice tinkling sound not a dull sound.

Even though I burned my finger tips a bunch this was really fun to make! I might make some as gifts for next year if I get started early enough.