Scrap Box Sunday: Elastic Cuff Bracelet

Happy Easter beautiful people! First of all, let me apologise for being AWOL from the blogging scene lately - as I predicted, being on holidays meant I actually had less spare time ;) but don't fret, Uni goes back after this long weekend so everything should be back to normal soon!

Now onto the crafting! Today we're using up fabric scraps (again! I have a lot of fabric leftovers...) and making a cuff bracelet!

What You Need:

* A rectangle of fabric

The longer it is, the more ruffled the cuff will be.

The wider it is, the wider your cuff.

* Two strips of elastic

* Embellishments

I used more fabric and felt scraps and some beads.

What To Do:

Fold both long edges of your fabric rectangle inward and pin them in place. You want to fold them over enough so that when sewn up, your elastic will fit inside.

Sew up both edges. If you want the finished product to be tidier and more robust, you could fold that raw edge under as well, but it'll be on the inside of the cuff and since I'm just making this one for me, I did it the lazy way (as usual!)

Cut two strips of elastic. These should be long enough to comfortably fit around your wrist, plus about 1 cm for sewing up the edges.

Grab a safety pin and pop it through one end of one piece of your elastic. Use the safety pin to thread your elastic down the sewn "tube" edge of your fabric rectangle.

Push your elastic all the way into the tube, so that the end lines up with the edge of the "tube".

Sew across the end of the elastic, back and forwards a couple of times, to hold it securely in place.

Now use the safety pin to pull the elastic all the way through and out the other side of the "tube", ruffling your fabric as you go.

Line up the end of the elastic with the open end of the tube and pin it in place. Remove the safety pin and sew across the end of the elastic, back and forth a couple of times, to hold it in place.

Repeat with the other piece of elastic on the other side of your fabric! You should end up with a stretchy, ruffled thing that looks kind of like a piece from a baby's nappy cover XD

Fold this in half, raw edges facing the outside, and line up the ends. Pin the two ends together.

Sew straight across the top edge, remove the pins.

Turn it right side out and now you have a very simple, ruffled fabric cuff!

Time to embellish it..!

You can of course embellish yours any way you like. This is what I did.

First, cut some petal shapes from three different coordinating fabrics. You probably want about 6 petals from each fabric. Also [not pictured!] cut out three circles of white felt.

Grab out that trusty glue gun! Pop a little dab of glue on the end of your petal shape and press it together. Now you have a nice 3D petal instead of a 2D one ;) Do this to all of your petal shapes.

Glue your petals directly onto your cuff, arranged into three flowers (sorry, forgot to take a photo!) Pop a dob of glue in the centre back of your felt circles and glue these to the centres of your flowers.

 This next step was tricky to take a photo of because you need both hands (thus, no camera hand free!) and you need to do it quickly! Before the glue dries. It'll take longer to read about than to actually do ;)

Pop a big dob of glue in the centre of your felt. Pinch the opposite edges of your felt circle together (I'm doing one in the pic below, but you want to do both at the same time to get the right effect!) and when it's starting to hold, but the glue is still drying, take a generous pinch of pretty coloured seed beads and sprinkle them in the centre. Push them into the glue. 

Resume pinching the edges until it's all nicely dried, then shake off the loose beads. 

I lost a tonne of beads in our carpet, yay! >_<

Do this for all three of your flowers and you're done! I think smaller flowers would look even better.

Here's an action shot, please excuse my thin yet manly wrist :P Let the pretty cuff distract you instead!

Happy Easter! Have a safe and love filled weekend!