Thursday 29 May 2014

DIY Project Recap: Starbucks Coffee Cup Baby Rattle

One late-night Pinterest session, I stumbled upon these awesome baby toys that are fake food made of felt - fiffer-feffer-feff. (Search 'felt food' - you'll find a load of results as well as a couple of basic free tutorials).

It got the creative cogs in my brain a-turnin' and I thought it'd be a pretty fun to make something for the Master to fake-nom on. So I got to pinning some inspiration pics.

Check these out:

Sweet Emma Jean (buy pattern here) - Etsy

Felt food *fruit cake * no.01 ---PDF pattern---
Felt.co.nz (buy pattern here)

Felt Playground (buy pattern here) - Etsy

That last one in particular tickled my fancy - isn't it cute how the colours sort of remind you of a Starbucks cup?? It looked simple enough and not as time-intensive as the others so I thought that'd be a good starting point. But I didn't like the bland 'coffee' on the front and thought I could possibly make my own version that I liked better.

And being the cheapo that I am, I decided to flag using a pattern altogether and wing this entire thing. I highly advise against doing that. If I were you, I'd buy the pattern. 

Anywho, here's my finished product.

Tada
Mmm... chocolate sprinkles (done with brown embroidery thread)
Order up

Yeah it took me a long time cos like I said, no pattern. Idiot. It's also all completely hand-stitched. Mofo. 

As for how I did the logo part, I googled Starbuck's 1992 logo because I'm not digging their newer logo. I drew the mermaid part onto cardboard, cut that out, traced it onto white felt fabric, cut that out, then sewed it onto a circular piece of black felt with white thread. 


My quick scribble of the Starbucks mermaid on cardboard - this is what I traced around onto some white felt fabric (the coin's there just to give you an indication of size... pretty irrelevant if you've no idea how big an NZ $2 coin is hah)

In-process shot: after I cut out what I traced onto the white felt, I sewed it onto the black circular piece of felt with white thread, then I sewed on the details with black thread

I don't have any shots of the stage where I sewed on the writing or the white border but I used a thick embroidery white thread for it. And I also don't have any shots of the cup-making process - a lot harder than it seems, dang it. 

The lip of the cup was pretty easy: I just curled it over at the top and sewed it down. Not rocket science there luckily. 

The lil guy ordered a decaf mocha

Aaaand I have no other photos of the progress sorry. I seriously just winged this entire thing. I used a fabric pen to do any designs and back-stitched for the written portions (above). I used thick black embroidery thread for the big X and his name to make it look like a barista scribbled on it with a big marker like they do in the shops :) 

The cardboard sleeve bit is just a large piece of tan coloured felt - the best way to do this if you're going rogue and sans-pattern like me, is to cut out a big enough piece, pin it onto your cup and draw with a fabric pen where you want to cut it. Reason being... a 3-dimensional object... when it curves man.... it does something weird. You'd think it's a straight line right? It's not. When you flatten that circular object it freakin' curves, ever so slightly. 


DIY Trade - crazy science

Oh and finally, the rattle-y bit: I bought some bells from Lincraft (they were around $4), I put them into an empty M&M pottle, taped that up, put it at the bottom of the cup then stuffed the rest of the cup with poly. There's some batting at the bottom - ideally I would've used batting all the way around that M&M pottle but there wasn't enough room - doesn't show through anyway. I can't remember if I used batting around the rest of the cup... ::shrugs:: 

See what happens when I wing a project?? I can't give you a decent tutorial!! Sorry. 

One last look at the cuppy.

sub-par lighting~

Hah. Hope you enjoyed!


A.V.

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