I know that we are all busy people and we don’t always have time for the large, involved and time consuming craft projects that we’d like to spend time on. I’ve been thinking up projects that can be completed in less than an hour, are relatively inexpensive, and the end product is worth making.

This has brought me to today’s Quickie Tutorial:
The Reversible Ribbon Belt

Materials:
1 1/2 yds. each of two coordinating 2″ woven ribbons. (You may need less if you need a shorter belt!)
One set of 2″ D-rings.
Coordinating All Purpose Thread

(All the pictures below can be made bigger by clicking on them.)
Place ribbons right sides together and sew across one short end.

Slide D-rings onto ribbons. Fold ribbons, wrong sides together with the D-rings at the seam.

Using a zipper foot on your machine, sew close to D-rings across ribbons.

Topstitch down long sides of ribbons, pivoting at the corners of short end.

You’re done!

In my never ending quest to find cool stuff for crafty boys I’ve found what may be an all time winner.

Marshmallow shooter

YouTube How To

NOTE: This is a project that isn’t limited to boys. I know a particular 11 year old girl that had a marshmallow gun on her birthday list last summer and had a blast with it when she got one!

This isn’t the project I said I was going to share with you yesterday* but instead another one that I did on Saturday afternoon. (*I wrote that post yesterday but had to repost it today because of my blog/hosting issues.)

This project is pretty easy and rather quick to finish.

Materials
Scrap of foam insulation board - mine is approx. 18″ x 28″ (I found mine in the store basement! Shhhhh.)
Quilt batting large enough to cover board and wrap around to the back.
Fabric also large enough to wrap around to back (just over a half yard for mine)
3/8″ grosgrain ribbon - approx. 8yds for mine.
Glue gun and lots of glue sticks.

Instructions

Iron fabric to remove and creases or wrinkles. Lay face down on clean work area.
Layer batting over fabric, smoothing down.
Lay foam board centered on top of batting.

Starting in the middle of one side, apply glue generously to foam board and smooth batting and fabric around back. Work down one side gluing batting and fabric to back of board, being careful to keep fabric straight.

Glue opposite side in the same fashion, gently pull fabric to keep it smooth and wrinkle free.

Glue the other two side in the same manner. Be careful at the corners to trim away excess batting and fabric to reduce bulk and miter the corners.

Now if you just want a pretty fabric covered pin-board you can leave it as is and hang it up.

To add ribbons start in one corner and using a protractor or quilting ruler with a 45° angle marking lay out your first piece of ribbon, pinning it in place. If you chose to make your board square, this should go from corner to corner diagonally and you won’t need a protractor or other angle thingy.

Using the quilting ruler continue to place ribbons across board (mine are 3.5″ apart). Turn and do the ribbons from the other angle across.

Making sure that everything is securely pinned in place, flip board over to back again.

Glue each ribbon end securely on back.

Flip back over to front and remove pins.

Glue buttons or other decorative items at the ribbon intersections. I used vintage wooden bingo markers.

Initially I used those double sided adhesive foam squares to hang mine, but they didn’t hold onto the foam board very well and I came into the store today to find that it had fallen off the wall. To make a wire hanger I cut a 6″ piece of wire (I don’t know the gauge) and bent it in a “U” shape. I stuck the ends of the wire into the foam in the opposite direction that I wanted to hang it, twisted the wire loop a few times and bent it up in the opposite direction. I then secured it with a piece of duct tape (it does hold the universe together after all!) So far so good, it seems to be holding fine.