Sunday, January 13, 2013

My First DIY: Embroidery Floss Wrapped Tangle-Free Ear Buds

I'm not going to lie to you...I'm addicted to Pinterest. I love the unlimited amount of information, pictures, things that make me laugh, and of course all of the DIY stuff out there. I decided to learn how to sew because of Pinterest. Most of the time if my phone is in my hand and I look really intent on it....I'm pinning. So I thought it would be fun to pay tribute to my love of Pinterest by sharing one of the DIY's I was pinspired to do.

Ladies and (hopefully gentlemen) may I present The Most Awesome Ear Buds EVER!!!


My beautiful, no-tangle, ear buds.


These ear buds are mine. I did them before I settled on all of the decisions I had to make in order to start this blog, and there were a lot of decisions. Making them helped me make the decisions though and Mr. M liked them so much that he asked me to make him some. That made me decide to make these my very first ever DIY post. YAY!
 
So... I went out and bought him a beautiful new pair of ear buds, and in his favorite color, red.



New SkullCandy 2XL ear buds

Then I dug into my stash of embroidery floss and found red and a black and white variant and got to work.

Supplies you'll need are:
* Ear Buds (any brand, any color, whatever you want goes.)
* 3 skeins of colored embroidery floss.
* tape
* scissors
* one or two binder clips
* and something sturdy to anchor your buds and floss to.

The "stitch" you'll be using is a little difficult to explain in text but I'll try. No promises on the coherency of it. Here we go...

 
 
To start you'll want to tape the end of the ear buds the you plug in to your music player to whatever surface you are using to anchor the project.
 
Then you want to unwind the first skein of floss and find the midpoint of it. I wrap the floss over the back of my neck (like a scarf) and then wind each of the ends around my first and middle fingers (like when you start to roll a ball of yarn). This will help you keep the floss from tangling any worse than it did when you were unwinding it initially (yep... It happens to all of us.)

Then I take it off my neck and slide the floss under the ear buds I have taped and clipped to my sturdy surface.

Once I have the midpoint lined up under the ear bud wire, I tie it in a regular knot to ensure the floss is anchored to the wire.

Now, I will try to explain the process of the stitch but I also did a video (my YouTube debut...yay!) showing the entire process.

So, now that you have your floss tied to the ear bud wires, and and the floss wound up to keep it tangle free (pausing here to allow you to catch up)...

You'll start on your right, picking up the wound floss on the right and sliding it under the ear bud wire, making sure to leave a loop of floss on the right side of the wire.

You'll cross the wound portion of the floss over the floss on the left, making an X out of the floss.

Then you'll pick up the left side of the floss and cross it over the top of the wire and through the loop you left in the right floss.

Pull both sides and you'll see that the floss will pull parallel to the wire. Keep pulling until the knot reaches the knot you made to anchor the floss to the wire. 

Continue this over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over (get the picture?).

You'll notice that as you go the knots are going to appear to spiral around the wire. As that happens you'll just slide the right side of the floss over to the left and the left will become the right and then... Continue the stitch.

When you reach the plastic piece between the split to the earpieces and the bottom, tie a knot in the floss twice and snip the floss with your scissors. Then you can untape the pieces you just finished and replace the end with one of the buds. Tape it to your sturdy surface, clip the other part to hold it taut and start the process all over.

If all of that was confusing (and trust me, and I know it was) take a look at my video, and see if that helps.



M decided after watching me do the video for this post that he wanted to try to do this himself so I'll let him finish (I'm sure Ill do part of it anyway).

I really hope you enjoyed this, my first DIY and that it was as much fun for you to watch and attempt as it was for me. The end result is extremely satisfying and you'll love the look of your ear buds when you wear them.

As always be sure to leave me your feed back in the comments!

Smooches!
Shelley

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