What the Kids Are Wearing

It's not often that I attend children's birthday parties but, for some reason, I was invited to two in the same weekend recently. The first, for a newly-turned four year old, was mostly adults so the presents were particularly awesome. The best gift of the day was the "Fart Blaster" gun. I leave that to your imagination. The second party, for a newly-turned three year old, was 50/50 kids and adults so it was a bit more chaotic, but still fun.

The take-away for me was from the first party, at which there was a particularly interactive tween. He was proabably about 12 but not intimidated (or embarrased) by adults. At one point, I noticed that he was wearing a really cool bracelet and I thought, "Wow. That kid's got some style." So, me being me, I asked him about it and, as it turns out, it was made from pop tabs (soda can tabs for you eastcoasters) and embroidery thread.

My crafty brain studied it so I could get an idea of how it was threaded and I immediately started thinking of ways to make it nice enough for an adult to wear.

Here's a tutorial with my first attempt. :)

Step one... save up some pop tabs.

Step two... measure your wrist.

Step three... measure a line of pop tabs to see how many you need to get around your wrist, then double that number because this is a two-layer bracelet.

Step four... lace the tabs together with ribbon. Here's a video (it was easier than trying to capture it in photos):

Once you've laced together enough tabs to go around your wrist, here's how you finish it up:

End with a "bottom" tab as the last one you put on.

Lace the ribbon to the back of the bracelet.

Knot the ribbon on the back to secure the last tab.

Slip the ribbon back through the first tab and tie.

And DONE!

If you have someone in the house to help, it would look really cute with a bow instead of a knot but, you know, my dogs don't have opposable thumbs.

Check out YouTube for inspiration on how to make these even cooler. I plan to experiment some more and see what I can come up with. I think it would be interesting to thread it with different materials - like leather or hemp. I saw one vid where they'd used something stretchy to make a headband out of tabs and another where a girl made a belt... the possibilities are endless!

Happy upcycling, friends.

- Alex