PEICD (PROJECTS EVEN I CAN DO): BIRTHDAY BADGE

We celebrated my mom's birthday over the weekend.  I wanted everyone to know it was her special day.  Those birthday badges you buy at Party America are cool, but the colors are never right, and they're too over the top.  So I decided to make my own birthday badge for her.  Key learnings?  You can never use too much hot glue.  Seriously, what did people do before hot glue?  It's become a staple in all my projects.  Why sew something when you can hot glue it?

How to make a (birthday) badge

Step 1:  Cut a piece of paper that's between 1 inch -1.5 inches thick.  I cut a strip from a piece of 12x12 scrapbook paper.  Any kind of paper should work well, though.  The key is not cutting too wide of a piece.  Wider piece=bigger badge, right?  That is what I initially thought until I tried a bigger piece and couldn't form it into a circular shape in step 4.  So stick with a narrower piece of paper.

Step 2:  Fold the strip of paper accordion style.  The folds should be about every 1/2 inch.

Step 3:  Glue the ends of the strip of folded paper together.  I used hot glue for this to make sure it stayed.  I found that overlapping a fold over a fold was the best way to glue the ends together.

Step 4:  Now here's the hard part.  You have to turn your piece of paper from Step 3 into a flat circle.  Just start pushing the ends down, towards each other to meet in the center.  I got really frustrated during this part, but finally was able to get it into a circular shape.  It won't look perfect, so have a cut out circle of paper handy, squeeze a ton of hot glue on it, and place it over the center of the circle.  That should hold everything together pretty well.  This circle will also be where you can write your message on the badge.  I chose to write "birthday girl", but the possibilities are endless.

Step 5:  Add some ribbon to the badge by gluing the top of the ribbon to the back of the badge.  I don't have a picture of it, but I hot glued another paper circle to the back of the badge to act as a flat piece to glue a pin back to be able to pin to the wearer's shirt.  You can add glitter or any other fun items to make the badge your own!