In this tutorial I’m going to show you how I made the flowers for this belt
I used some leather scraps I had left over from when I did the Baby Shoes. I bought a whole bag of them at Joann at the time, and I still have a bunch left. I also used Eco Flo Glue (also purchased at Joann) to glue the leather. It looks like this:
I used this tutorial from How About Orange as a starting point. Using her basic idea, I cut out the rose petals like she did, but a lot smaller.
Then I got out my super cool leather working tools to give the petals shape. I used a pencil and the fat rounded end of a paintbrush. Yup, I’m all fancy schmancy like that. The trick to get these super cool tools to work is to throughly soak the leather then wring it out. Once it’s damp, you can stretch and shape it, and it will dry holding that shape. I poked the round brush handle in the center and stretched the leather down, then rolled the edges over my pencil. After it was dry I used the Eco Flo to glue the overlapping petals together, just like the other tutorial.
When it was all dry and glued, I had this
To make the leaves, I cut out leaf shapes and then added a pleat at the fat end, which is held with glue.
To make the flowers on the ends, I did the basic cutting slits and rolling with glue so I had all these pieces.
I cut out an oval of leather to be the back of my embellishment, and glued all my pieces to it. You can see it under the rose above.
Here’s the belt I got at the thrift store that I used for this
You might have noticed the problem – if I glued the flower on top, the belt would have to go over the flowers to get under the other side of the ring. I pondered this over the days while I waited for the leather to dry in shape and the glue to dry, and finally came up with a super simple solution – put the belt on inside out. So the flowers are glued to the back side of the belt buckle. It’s a little awkward, but hey, this is a belt that cost under $10, including the leather and glue.
So there it is – no sewing involved, and definitely an easy project for the super cool effect. I’ve worn it several times already.
Sharon
This is the nearest thing to the roses I create–very beautiful and creative -good job.
Ashley
Woah, it looks great!!! Love the idea!!! Thanks for sharing the tutorial 🙂
Mamita's Next Thing
Thanks for sharing. I can’t believe how simple it was. No sewing.
CREATIVE MIND
Love it..
Anonymous
Beautiful! But I’m a little confused – do you wear the entire belt inside out? Does the printed “Banana Republic” label show?
Melissa
Thanks. I do wear the whole thing inside out, but the label does not show because I turned the buckle so that the outside of the belt was out, if that makes sense. The buckle faces the inside, and I loop the belt to the inside with the loose end just tucked in.
Steph @ Crafting in the Rain
Thanks again for letting me share this on Make a Splash–it’s totally on my list to try now 🙂