So what you need:

• Old felt dessert project… or you know the pieces of felt they are made up with 😉
• Cheap plastic retractable measuring tape
• Decorations like bows, diamantes etc
• Glue gun or needle and thread

First take apart all of the felt pieces.

The three main parts are the pink top, cream sides and brown crinkly bottom…

Start with the pink top. It is felt with some stuffing inside to keep the shape.

The pink top needs to be on the side without the button to retract the tape otherwise you’ll never be able to push it through all of the toppings XD

Hot glue around the edges 3/4 of the way around.

Poke some stuffing in…

And glue the rest of the way. Done.

Now the sides, cut strips of the cream tall enough to cover the edges of pink and still fold down underneath.

Wrap it all the way around the edge and glue in place. Make sure that you leave the hole that the measuring tape comes out of clear! Trim around the outsides so there is only a few mm of overhang.

Fold it around the bottom and glue in place.

Now the crinkly bottom part! As it was the crinkly bottom part didn’t quite fit my tape measure so I cut the thread that ran around the edge and redid it so it was loose enough to fit.

You can see below how it should fit without the other pieces in the way.

Put a tiny bit of glue on the button which retracts the tape so it sticks to the felt. This is so you can easily press it  after the felt is in place, just be careful not to glue it so it’s permanently pressed!

Glue/stitch on all of the strawberries and yummy parts on top and you’re finished! I decorated with a few diamantes and a bow as well.

Quick, easy and functional too 😀 Now my at home measuring tape is as cute as the bear one I keep in my purse!

Problem is that looking at this now is making me huuuuungry XD

What you need:

• Old manicure set

or

• Metal butterfly purse clip
• Cardboard
• Thin foam sheets

Plus:

• Fabric for the outside
• Glue Gun
• Fabric for the inside
• Ribbon
• Felt

Now the original one of these was glued together so I decided to hot glue mine. It probably would hold better if I was to have used epoxy on the metal parts but it’s held up in my handbag well so far so I probably won’t redo it.

First thing I did was to take the whole thing apart.

I had to unpick the inside stitching but it all came apart fairly easily.

From this point on we’ll assume I’m doing this from materials from scratch. Cut out cardboard and foam in the same shape and size as each side of the butterfly hinge.

Now cut out rectangles which are big enough to cover the  cardboard pieces with a few cm of overhang each side.

So that’s all of the pieces ready to go, let’s assemble it all!

Start with the cardboard.

Glue a layer of felt to it and trim the edges:

Next add a rectangle of the inside fabric on top of the felt. Hold it in place by gluing a thin line around the edge. My metal piece was around 4mm wide so I had heaps of room to hide the glue.

Now time to make a pocket! Take a second rectangle of inside fabric and fold it in half. Place the folded piece half way up and glue around the edges to hold in place. Don’t glue where the fold is otherwise you will be gluing your pocket shut XD

Trim all of the extra fabric off.

Repeat for the other side!

Now flip the cardboard over and glue the foam to the other side.

Next you need to glue both cardboard pieces to the metal butterfly. They should just sit on the outside like this:

Closed it looks like this:

Inside is done now we just need to make the outside look pretty. Grab the first rectangle of the outside fabric and glue it in place on the hinge edge.

Pull tight and glue on the other edge near the clip. Hinge on the right and clip on the left below:

My butterfly clip had a big groove around the edge where the fabric was previously held in by plastic tubing. I didn’t have any plastic tubing so instead I put a line of glue in then pressed the fabric into it using the nail file that came with the kit XD That way I could make sure it was all nice and tight.

I then trimmed the extra off with the nail scissors that also came with it… useful kit! Repeat the whole process on the other side and it’s almost finished.

Taadaa…

But you can still see the edges of everything in the groove so the easiest way to fix that is to cover it with ribbon!

I used 5mm ribbon which was wide enough to cover the gap and still have a little on either side.

Start at the back near the hinge and slowly glue ribbon over the gap. Make sure not to get glue on the hinge or you won’t be able to open it!

Repeat on the other side too. Make sure you’re really careful with the glue here because if you get it out of place you might have to remove the whole thing and start from scratch.

Where the ribbon meets I folded the edges before gluing.

Done!

Nice pretty inside with pockets to hold lots of business cards 😀

Still small enough not to be annoying in the handbag and much more stylish than just throwing them in there ^_^ What do you guys think?