Twenty Five Dollars Richer

I haven't really caught on to the whole "chevron is the coolest way to decorate" fad yet.
In fact I usually prefer to avoid chevron just because it is the popular thing to do right now (I'm such a rebel right?!).

But I've seen this pin floating around, and I'm quasi embarrassed to admit that I actually pinned it twice. Whoops.

I looked it up to see what fabulously crafty person created it and how they did it - well someone is definitely fabulously crafty, but it took me to an Etsy site for purchase. $34.00!!
(The Etsy shop is called bedbuggs and she has some totally cute stuff.)

That doesn't sound like a lot, I know.

But I am on a budget.

And I'd rather spend my extra cash on other things.

Like food.

Third trimester people! I get cravings!


So I decided to make it myself! There isn't a tutorial out there on how to do it, so I kind of winged it with some of the directions.

I went here to this site: Craftiness is not Optional, to get a basic dahlia flower out of felt tutorial.
She uses a die cut machine though, which I don't have.
So I guestimated a little bit. I knew I wanted my flower to turn out a little bit bigger than hers (hers is broach or headband accessory size). I wanted mine to be about 4 1/2 inches across. So I started measuring candles in my house to see if I had one with a similar size base... Free form drawing a circle is hard!

I found one that was the right size, and I traced the base onto my felt. Cut that out.

Then I eyeballed how big I should make the "leaf" shapes to match the size of the circle. Then I followed her directions from there with my hot glue gun.

P.S. the bigger your flower is going to end up, the more little leaf shapes you will need! I went through 2 pieces of felt. 

I deviated from her pattern when it got to the center section at the end. I just used the smaller size "leaf" petals that I had, and made a five point center. Done!

Then came the canvas.

Remember, I haven't been all big on the chevron thing. So I had no prior experience trying to create that pattern.

HOLY COW IS IT A PAIN IN THE BUTT TO DO!

First I tried with painters tape.

Please excuse my baby belly sticking out. 

But that was aggravating. The tape was too wide for what I wanted, and it was terrible to get all the angles to work and the tape to line up nice.

So I gave up on that.
Instead I decided to use a good old ruler and pencil.
So much less stress.

I wanted 3 peaks across the top so I measured out how many inches I would need in between points. My canvas is 10 inches by 10 inches. So it worked out to about 1.6 inches for each "angle" top to bottom. And I wanted the same distance between each color.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
And then repeat again.
A few more times.

Then came the painting!
I used paints I already had on hand from other projects. Just normal craft store acrylic paints.
I didn't have a paintbrush small enough to fit in between my chevron stripes (are they called stripes?) so I used an old eye shadow brush. And I do mean a brush. NOT a sponge.

Doing the edges was the trickiest part, cause my brush wanted to fan out, so I used sideways sweeps with the brush and that totally worked to let me paint within the lines.

Originally I wasn't going to paint the white part, but I figured that now was not the time to get lazy, so I went ahead and painted it. I'm glad I did, it totally eradicated any stray pencil marks that were still showing. Much cleaner looking! I also decided to paint on the edges of the canvas as well, so the color would follow the canvas all the way around.

Hot glue your flower in the center.

Ta Da!

I spent $7 on the canvas, and $0.58 on felt.
You just spent $9 for something that you could have bought for $34.


I'm pretty proud of the way it turned out.
Chevron may grow on me yet.