mommy's time out: polka-dot headbands

Mommy's Time Out is a series that my friend Jessi and I decided to start doing once a month as a way for us to get creative and do something fun during our kids' nap times. Last month, we made these really pretty ruffle wreaths. For this month's project, we really wanted to make something we both could wear.

We had really high hopes for this DIY project. "Let's make something with polka-dots!" "Yeah, like polka-dot jeans! That'd be easy and super cute!" Um, not really. When Jessi and I started gathering supplies for our DIY project, we quickly realized that jeans might take a little too long to complete. So, we decided to make polka-dot scarves instead. We got our fabric, bought our paint, and sat down for an afternoon of making polka-dot fabric:

To make the polka-dot fabric, we used: acrylic paint, fabric medium, water, and a paint brush. Simple as that.

We sprayed our fabric with the water so that it would absorb the paint easier. We mixed the paint and the fabric medium together (equal parts) to create a paint that wouldn't wash off of our fabric...

and painted polka-dots for a long, long, long time...

and then gave up after 4 hours of polka-dots. DIY FAIL. There was no way we were going to make an entire scarf.  So, instead we threw down our paintbrushes and took a walk to the neighborhood bakery for some salted caramel cookies. Because, that was way more fun than making stupid polka-dots.

So, we made polka-dot fabric. Not enough for a scarf, so how could we save our DIY project? HEADBANDS! We both decided to finish our projects at home and create different style headbands. For Jessi's headband DIY, visit her blog. Here's mine:

I took my fabric and folded in half, horizontally. Then, I folded it in half, vertically. Make sense? Then, I cut a curved line to make my fabric pointed at the end. The purpose was to make my fabric into a tube.

I folded the fabric inside out, so I could stitch along the ends to form a tube. It looked like this:

I left a hole at the end of the tube, so I could pull the fabric inside-out through the opening. After pulling the fabric inside out, I hand-stitched the hole closed (you could also just use hot glue or fabric glue). Then I tied a big knot in the middle. By this point, I was so sick of this piece of polka-dot fabric that I just wanted to be done, so I grabbed an old metal headband, turned on my glue gun, and made this thing:

I took the fabric and glued it right onto the headband. I had no clue if it'd look normal on my head, but I went with it.  After the glue dried, I tried it on. Not bad...

But, definitely not what we intended on creating. Oh, well... you win some, you lose some. Moral of the story: never make your own polka-dotted anything. Just buy polka-dot fabric. Duh.

Thanks for having a laugh with us, and please do let us know if you try to make your own polka-dot headband. We'll pray for you.