Flippin' With Flowers

Hello Again!! My name is Lori Apgar and I am honored to be back as a Sassy Designer!! For those of you who don't know, my Gypsy screen cracked last week and I have been a little lost without her! Thankfully, I completed this project before she cracked!!

I wanted to try cutting fabric with my Cricut, and with summer right around the corner I thought this would be a great time mix my project with some summerwear!




I bought some fat quarters from Michaels and Wal-Mart as well as used some left over fabric that I already had. I picked up some hot pink flip flops and a visor from Michaels. My original color scheme was hot pink and zebra stripe. Well, the zebra stripes looked too chunky once the fabric was cut into small flowers. I changed out the hot pink for the orange flowered fabric. Lucky for me, I work at Michaels and was able to pick up another pair of flip flops and a visor in white!!




Cutting fabric is a bit tricky when you don't have a ton of patience like me! I almost quit more than once, but I do have a stubborn streak as well!

The first thing you need to do is iron Heat and Bond (or something similar) to your fabric. This will stiffen up your fabric and make it easier to cut. I did iron my fabric first to get out the wrinkles, then ironed on the Heat and Bond. My friend uses a heavy duty iron on paper, but this is all I found at Michaels. Next time I will seek out something more Heavy Duty!!



Following the directions on the package, place the paper side up (shiny side towards the fabric) and iron to the wrong side of the fabric. Do not peel off the paper until after you cut the fabric.




You should use a new blade and a new mat. My friend also recommends using painter's tape to tape the fabric down to the mat. This helps keep the fabric tight across the mat. I did not have painter's tape handy, so I tried scotch tape. It did not really seem to help much and it did not come off the edge of the mat easy.



I used Plantin Schoolbook for my flower shape and made four different sizes of flowers. The pink fabric cut the best as it was a pretty thick fabric I used to make drapes for my daycare with. You can see here the orange flowers did not cut well. I used scissors to snip the parts that did not cut through all the way. I did peel off the paper backing once I removed the flowers from the mat.





Once cut, I had a difficult time getting my flowers to have some texture. I tried running them through the crimper, but that did not do much. Crumpling does not work with fabric like it does with paper ~ that would have been too easy!!

I decided to poke two extra holes (one on either side of the middle hole) and gather the flower a bit. I used my Cricut dental tool for this and it worked like a charm. I only poked my finger once!! I used the biggest brad I had and poked it into the bottom hole, back up through the middle hole and down into the top hole to gather the layers together. I did this one layer at a time. I couldn't take a photo as I needed both hands and did not have a helper handy!



I glued a rhinestone on each flower. I used Tacky Tape to glue the flowers to the flip flops.

I made a third flower with the extra pieces and glued it to my visor with a glue dot.



So here you have a nice flowery pair of flip flops and visor!! This project was a bit frustrating, but I am glad I stuck with it! I will be giving away this pair of flip flops and visor on my BLOG.

Thanks again, Sassy, for having me on your blog!!