How to not lose your sunglasses - Silhouette Style

I have lost misplaced (for almost a year) my FAVORITE pair of sunglasses. I have been making do with some of the spares that I had on hand, but once you have these polarized lenses and you fall in love - nothing seems to hold a candle to them. These sunglasses were acquired free of charge and it seemed that I was UNABLE to lose misplace them until sometime after February/March of last year (thats the last time that I have them on record in photos) and now, they have grown legs and wandered off. So after braving last summer without my UV blockers, I knew exactly what I wanted for my birthday - new Costa Del Mar sunglasses.

My birthday is my FAVORITE holiday of the year! I've always loved birthdays because they are YOUR day - you don't have to share with a bunch of other people, and I'm happy to be here! I just think they're special and should be celebrated as such. My bestie used to tease me about my obsession excitement over birthdays and tell me that I would go into a depression if no one told me Happy Birthday. Thankfully, Facebook makes sure that doesn't happen - and my WONDERFUL friends & family! So, now that I'm another year older - nothing has changed, except that I have a brand new pair of really awesome sunglasses that I have the privilege of keeping up with...

   



see even my puppies were excited it was my birthday!

Alright, so Crafty Mom lives on a beautiful lake! If its summer, and not raining, she's in her boat on the water - and I can't blame her!

girls cruise

This is a view of the lake from the air. You can't even see the whole thing in this picture, but most of it is there. We like to ride in the boat in the summer, and "float" with our friends, and ski, fish,  tube, whatever goes really. They have a "floatilla"  on LC, but really its just where a bunch of boats get together and tie themselves in a line so they can all hang out (gymnastic skills required to navigate from boat to boat) - it really looks like a classier redneck yacht club. Really, the lake is almost its own form of transportation - its quicker in the boat!

Floatilla

Paris loves to ride

Floatilla from the water

4th of July party with all the boats

Floatilla from water - see redneck yacht club

And here I am - on the lake - so relaxing!

Now, with all of that fun coming up this summer - how will I keep up with my new sunglasses?! I'm not the best "keeper upper" if you know what I mean. I'm the one who looks for my phone while I'm talking on it. And not to mention, they don't float...
So, onto Pinterest and Etsy I went - found some great sunglass straps at a great price that float (I think - if not I'll pop a cork on them and they'll float then). I ended up getting a chevron lime green strap for CraftyMom and a chevron hot pink for me.

SIDEBAR: The company that I got these from was AWESOME! Excellent customer service - and super fast shipping. Now they carry a whole LOAD of stuff on the site that wasn't on their Etsy shop, and I'm glad I didn't see all of that before I ordered! But they sell the sunglass straps for an awesome price (seriously-you can't find this quality for this price anywhere else, and I looked), koozies of every sort, and some random cool stuff like baby bottle koozies, energy drink koozies, water bottle koozies, ice bucket koozies and loads more. AND they have LOTS of colors and patterns to choose from! I'm getting ready to order some stuff for the BF for his birthday in May!

So, I saw some sunglass straps that were monogrammed, and thought I'd just take these and get them monogrammed. Well, I get to the shop and the lady & I start talking and of course I'm rambling on about Gertie and how much I love her and everything and I mentioned that I had thought about using HTV on them. She thought it would be a good idea too gave me a sample of the yellow HTV that she uses and I was on my way home back to Gertie so she could make them pretty and personal for me.

Now I had teal and black and didn't know how well it would show up, etc but figured it was worth a shot, I could always peel it off and try again, right? So, I messed up most of the yellow vinyl by cutting it but not cutting it deep enough because its so much thicker than the Silhouette HTV that I had. So, in the beginning I just figured I would do them both in teal and be done with it...

These were the font choices that I gave CraftyMom for the temple part of hers and what I ended up with on mine. I wasn't sure that I liked the way that the teal looked on the pink - but I think that it showed up REALLY well on the lime green! Now, during this, I had to cut the monograms SO TINY (literally smaller than an inch) so after putting in the vinyl the wrong side up twice (it might have been late and I sleepy) I just went with the regular Silhouette settings for HTV - WRONG!!! If you are cutting something this tiny, make sure that you SLOW YOUR SPEED DOWN and DOUBLE CUT! I also found that it was easier to weed and cut a little better when I used my mat. I used a blade depth of 2 and speed of 4. 

Doin' Fine is the name of CraftyMoms boat, and she wanted it on her strap. I was going to surprise her with them, but I can't ever keep a secret of something that I'M trying to do for someone ( I just get SO EXCITED) and she wanted her boat name on there. The process for the heat transfer was the same - turn the iron on Cotton and put something really thin (like really thin) between the strap and the iron (the neoprene will melt, please don't ask me how I know) and set it down on the design - go get a snack or let the dogs out and come back in about 2-3 minutes. Remove the iron and the whatever you decided to barrier with. Peel up a TINY corner and see if the design is stuck on there yet. No? I just ironed the plastic in like 10 second intervals at this point (keep it moving, sista) and checked. Then when the HTV was stuck, it didn't look stuck good to me so I ran the iron over the vinyl for a few seconds to make sure it was on there good. Make sure that its the design you want and you don't want to change colors before "heat setting" your vinyl because you can kinda tear stuff up when you try to peel it off - you'll see. So, I ended up with these as the finished product, and hopefully we will have these glasses for years!

Sorry for the picture quality, I will have to work on my photography skills but I think you can tell how they turned out! Much better than monogramming, IMHO, because I can use the intricate fonts if I want to. and if you look carefully on my monogram beside the fleur de lis you'll be able to see where I pulled some of the threads up when I peeled the teal off, but I do like the yellow and it was about all I had left to work with!

I'll let you know if they float or not... :)

Now for the part you really wanted to get to - the Silhouette Challenge of March.  Thanks for joining me and reading this really long post (hey - I promised more pictures, didn't I?) and please visit the other bloggers who are participating in the Silhouette Challenge with me.

Want to know more about the Silhouette Challenge??? Visit Lauren at The Thinking Closet and read her post about the group posting events. We also have a super fun FB group - and everyone is SO NICE and friendly and encouraging so I can't wait to go and see what everyone has created as well!

Gender Neutral Onesies & Free Cut Files - (The Thinking Closet)

Personalized Kindle Fire Cover - (Daily Dwelling)

Vintage Numbered File Organizer: Office Organization - (Whole New Leaf)

Make Montessori Sandpaper Letters with Silhouette - (Tried & True)

Steampunk Lime Fog Plus Free Stuff - (Creative Turn)

Their WORD for 2013: A Gift - (An Elegant Touch)

Pinch-Proof Shamrock Pin - (Coley's Corner)

Lucky - (Sugar Bee Crafts)

Hope everyone has a FANTASTIC week and feel free to follow or comment. I'm looking forward to some floating time in the lake this summer , what are your plans?