DIY Cufflinks: Tutorial

It so much fun coming up with new cufflinks for my husband.  The fact that I could use it as an entry for So You Think You're Crafty makes it all the better. 

Have you seen the price of a pair of cufflinks?  The price tag, huge!  It's hard to find a decent pair for anything less than $50.  When I discovered that you could buy the blanks to make your own, I jumped all over it.  I bought two bunches of the blanks, the flats and the recessed cufflinks.

All of them were very easy to make.  Each pair I did use E-6000 glue, I will break down everything else that was used for each pair.

I will start with the baseball cufflinks.  Needed is a pair of recessed cufflinks, your glue, a marker, scissors and a utility knife.

Place your cufflink on top of the ball face down, mark around your cufflink.

Cut out your circle with your utility knife.  Once cut, take the edge and peel up your circle baseball pieces.  They are glued down, but it didn't take much to get them to come up.  You will need to trim up the edge a little bit as they will be over-sized.  Cut a little at a time until you get the perfect fit.

Place enough glue to cover the bottom of your cufflink, then place your baseball circles in there, taking special care to make sure that your stitches do not pop up.  Once the glue is dry, gift them up for your husband/dad/uncle, etc.

The golf cufflinks are a little more complicated, but very doable.  You will use all the same items that you did for your baseball cufflinks, but will need to include a bandsaw and sand paper.  Your initial cut will be made with the bandsaw.  Make sure you make your cut based on depth, not on diameter.

Once your cut is made, mark your circle from the cufflink in the center of your cut.  Either cut it out with a utility knife or scissors.  Once you get it close, you will want to shave the edges down with your sand paper.  I used 150 grit sandpaper.

Once you have them sized to fit your recessed cufflink, layer it with some glue and place it in.  Clean any glue that might seep up from the side and once dry, gift them up!

The fishing cufflinks required flat cufflinks, glue and the bandsaw.  I cut the diameter of the bobber to match the top of the cufflink.  Then I glued it down. 

That is it!  Easy peasy!  The only simpler one was the lego cufflinks.  All that required was a flat cufflink and glue.

In all seriousness, each pair of cufflinks broke down to less than $3.  That's for the pair!  Take that stuffy men's store that overprices these things!

Is anyone out there in blog land going to be making some cufflinks?  Is my husband the only one that wears them?  Any good ideas for some fun quirky ones that I haven't made?

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Tater tots and Jello - Weekend Wrap Up Party

Photo 366 #31

Oh my goodness am I busy!  The competition has been eating up a lot of time.  I'm also a bit of an Olympic addict.  That is a serious time suck.  Yeah, completely forgot to put this up yesterday.  The only reason I am doing it right now is I am waiting for some stuff to dry.

July 24 - What a pleasant surprise!  I got a postcard from Eric Carle in the mail.  Now, I realize it was probably automatically generated because I visited his guest book and follow his blog, but it doesn't matter to me.  It made me feel special.  Doesn't he look like he could be the best grandpa ever?

July 25 - The boys wanted to help me water the flowers and yard.  Well, it turned into lots of sprinkler fun.  I love the way the water and light play in this photo.

July 26 - The boys posing in some holes at the top of a slide at a local playground.  It's almost hard to tell who is who!

July 27 - My liriope finally bloomed!  Yay!

July 27 - A cool looking moon rising as the sun was setting on the other side of the sky.  There was a thin layer of clouds over/around the moon that were a dark magenta.  This picture doesn't do it any justice.

July 28 - Maben and I took most of our mother/child scavenger hunt today.  This is our photos of each other, straight out of the camera (no editing!).

July 29 - We signed Maben up for gymnastics.  He had a blast and it happened to be a theme week.  Here he is showing off his muscles after he got the Gold Medal!  I wish I had time to adjust the camera, it's such a cute pose and such a terrible job on my end. 

SYTYC and a Recap

This competition is really heating up.  We are officially half way through the competition and I honestly think that last week was the tightest the competition has been thus far.  Let's Hear It For The Boys, everyone stepped up their game and it was so difficult to even attempt to predict how it would end up.  I was so close to getting a win, so close!  My cufflinks came in a close second, two votes out of first.

I will post a tutorial later this week on how to do your own custom cufflinks.  It's really easy and you can really customize it for that special guy in your life.

This week's theme is, "Out and About."  I had a lot of fun crafting for this week and hope you head on over and vote for your favorite.  I always hope your favorite is mine, it always makes me feel good when it is!

You can click on the link above or the photo to be taken to this week's challenge post to go vote.

I also wanted to share a recap of all the projects that I have done so far.  I hope to make it all the way to the finals!

Audition Week - DIY Birdfeeder

Click here to go to the tutorial

Week 1 - Scrappy Crafts

Week 2 - Upcycled Crafts

Week 3 - Summer Bounty

Week 4 - Ombre

Week 5 - Let's Hear It For The Boys

Photo 366 #30

There have been some amazing skies this week.  Well, more like amazing clouds.  It had made one thing clear to me, I am not great at photographing clouds.  I need to get better at that.  At least I got one that turned out well this week.

July 17 - The only good cloud shot I got.  Many of the clouds reminded me of Maxfield Parish paintings.  It was so pretty out.

July 18 - I saw a really cool photograph of a sun setting while laying in and focusing on the grass.  This was my attempt at that.  Not great, not bad.

July 19 - This is a hawk's nest the kids and I have been watching.  Not sure of the specific breed as if we got any closer than the 100-150 yards, we would be trespassing.  There were at least two babies this year.

July 20 - We were invited to go swimming at a friend's house.  Her daughter is in gymnastics and starting flipping into the pool, so Maben did too.  It was a little scary and really cool to watch.  Don't worry, he wasn't as close to the edge as it looks.

July 21 - The kids and I went on an after dinner walk and the light dancing on the tall grasses was just beautiful.

July 22 - Animal, the biggest baby in the house always wanting some love.  I get this look from him a lot.  I am just glad I was able to do it justice.

July 23 - And he sleeps!  Colton is into that stage where he doesn't really nap anymore, even though he really needs it.  This was 5 or 6 days in a row without napping before he finally allowed himself to go down.

SYTYC: Let's Hear It For The Boys and A Reveal

I survived another week, thanks to all your voting!  I have my husband to thank for the suggestion of doing a sunset out of stained glass.  I actually went through a couple ideas, trying to come up with one that I determined to be good enough.  I will show off the other finished piece that I did later this week.

This piece is really hanging up in the window of my art/craft room.  I love it and it makes me smile every time I walk in there.  I wish that I could have showed off the look of the green glass a little better, it had an amazing white/light green swirl at different opacity levels.  It really makes it look like you are gazing upon a mountain.

This week's theme is, "Let's Hear It For The Boys."  It looks like some tough competition this week.  I would love it if you hopped on over to So You Think You're Crafty and voted.