Mothers Day Craft a Dad Wouldn’t Mind Making!

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This post and photos come to you straight from my baby sister and Handmade Mood DIY contributor Marissa Garner. She is a crafting genius and I love her idea for a craft that even a dude would want to make! Take it away Marissa!

 

I wanted to come up with a project that a dad could do with their kids to melt mom’s heart for Mother’s Day.  This project is easy and thoughtful and only requires a few inexpensive supplies.
Start by making a list of words to describe mom for the kids to choose from. Happy, supportive, spiritual, fun, loving, funny, adventurous, wise, energetic, motivated, organized, inspiring, thoughtful, patient, humble, kind, outgoing, caring, gentle, sweet, …you get the idea.

 

Next, gather up your supplies. You’ll need:

• Leather
• Metal Stamp Set (you can order these online or find them at craft stores or even some hardware stores)
• Hammer
• Rotary Cutter
• Linen cord (or other string/fine cord to tie bracelet closed)
• StazOn ink (optional)
• Some kind of hole punch (I used an eyelet punch)

Using a rotary cutter, cut your leather into strips. I used different colored leather and varied on my band widths. This is were you can get creative and really think about what fits your lucky lady’s style.

Now take your metal stamps one letter at a time and pound the letters of your descriptive words in using your hammer. Be sure to hold the stamp steady without lifting so your letter comes out crisp. It’s easy to accidentally shift a little and come out with double letters. Also, try to space your letters evenly apart. Through trial and error I learned that my words looked better when I pounded more than seemed necessary. Practice on a leather scrap first to make sure you get the look you’re going for.
Another way to change things up is through word placement. I purposely didn’t center my words because I wanted the words to stagger when all the bracelets were together. Just do what looks right to you.

I found that the thinner leather seemed to cure a little after stamping, making the words hard to read so I used StazOn ink (you can find it at most craft stores).  It is a permanent ink pad that works great on leather and comes in lots of colors. I dabbed my metal stamp on it making sure to only get ink on the letter and then pounded it in.

Because these bracelets are tied your leather doesn’t have to be the perfect length. Your cord makes it adjustable.   Using an eyelet setter I punched out small holes on each end of the leather strips.

Then I folded a piece of fine cord in half and threaded it through the hole bringing the loose end through the loop. Repeat on the other end and voila!

You can keep them all separate  or overlap them and run the cord through all of them together like I did.

The bracelet shown here is for my mom. Each kid in the family chose their own word representing our mom but if you had a smaller family you could always add blank strips or each person could come up with more words. You could also do this writing family members names on the bands. The options are endless! Happy Mother’s Day!