Pretty Pins

I remember thinking at one point "Why would you need glass head pins?" I shrugged it off as some ploy to sell expensive pins to fancy people... Then I experienced plastic head pins. Can you guess why plastic is a bad idea?

They melt when run over by the iron. Which I do all the time on occasion because I'm reckless not super careful. From the looks of these pins, I'm abusive to them in more ways than one : /

 The fancy pins were making sense finally. The next problem was that I was not prepared to spend $8 for 50 pins. Yes, I'm cheap. That, and they only came in solid yellow, meh. If I'm going to get fancy pins, I at least want them to be pretty. 

So my cheapiness and cute snobbery led me to DIMS! ( do it myself ) 

I happened to have these supplies lying around for a while, so my new pins were free to me! Still, if you had to buy the supplies, they're pretty cheap. I just checked HobbyLobby.com and you can buy a box of 400 pins, A tube of beads and a tube of super glue for less than $10.

You will need:

Dressmaker pins

Big seed beads (6/0)

GEL super glue 

Dressmaker pins are slightly longer than standard straight pins. Thus giving you enough length to pin effectively even after you deduct some length with the bead.

  

 The beads are like seed beads on steroids. You'll be able to tell, because standard seed beads definitely will not fit over a pin shaft. 

I placed a bead on each pin, then stuck them through the edge of my ironing board. 

I put a dot of glue just below the head of each pin, then pulled the pin down, twisting as I got to the end to make sure the glue was spread all the way around the bead. You can see here why the gel glue is important. The liquid stuff would just run all over the place. 

I let the glue dry for about 30 minutes (The gel dries pretty fast.) Then I flipped the pins upside down, and added another drop of glue to the underside of the bead. Stick them back in the ironing board (this time, so the bead is not touching the fabric, unless you want it glued there forever) and leave them overnight. 

The first time I used them I did a wiggle test to make sure they were glued up nice and secure. A few needed some extra help, so I just repeated the process, and I haven't had any problems. It probably didn't help that the project I used them on was the ACU zipper pouches, where I was pinning through up to 7 layers of fabric at certain points! They do just fine for normal/light work though. I love them, because they are SO PRETTY, and they make me happy because I made good use of things I already had :) 

--CJ  

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