Hi friends! I have a fun DIY project for us here today! Lately, I’ve had all the heart eyes for puffy embellishments! I love the alphas, stickers, three-dimensional embellishments – everything puffy! So I thought, why not take my favorite Print & Pray items and make my own?! I used two recent sets by Elaine Davis for this project. You can use any set for this as long as the elements have clearly defined borders. This makes it easier for the elements to “stand on their own” so to speak. 
I decided to make my embellishments double-sided, meaning I could flip them over and see the same image on either side. To do this, I printed an extra sheet of printables as a mirror image. You might want to search online how to do this on your computer. I opened the file in Photoshop Elements, and selected Image > Rotate > Flip Horizontal. Then I printed the sheet. As you can see, this works fine for anything that doesn’t have writing on it! If you don’t have the option to flip the image, no worries, you could always trace an extra image on a colorful piece of cardstock for the back.
Next, cut out each image you’d like to use. I like to leave a small white border around the piece. To make the elements puffy, I also cut out a piece of foam batting that I traced each image onto. If you use a foam, make sure you cut out the foam well inside the lines so it doesn’t stick out. If you don’t have foam batting, a small cotton ball would work fine! Next, I made a sandwich of each item so the foam was in the middle. I used some liquid glue to hold the sandwich together. If you’re using a cotton ball, I would stretch it a bit and glue it into the middle. Make sure the filling doesn’t show on the outside!
For the plastic covering, I used a scrapbook page protector. I’ve had some in my stash for ten years that I decided it would be ok to finally cut up! Insert an element into the page protector and carefully stitch around the element. If you have a fusing tool, that might work even better, try it and let me know! Plus you could add glitter to your items if you wanted. I don’t have one of those tools, so I used my machine. No glitter because I’m afraid it might get into the machine. After stitching around the embellishments, I carefully cleaned out my bobbin case with a dry paintbrush to make sure no plastic pieces escaped inside. Don’t shorten your stitch length, because you don’t want the stitches so close together that it chews the plastic around the image.
Next, I cut out my images, being careful to not cut too close to the stitches. I punched a hole for hanging, and added a scrapbook eyelet to the hole. This part was very tricky. Next time, I might skip the eyelets, as my technique is quite rusty after years of not being used. Plus, I hit my knuckle with my mini hammer, and it still hurts. Be careful, friends! The plastic will keep the holes from wearing out.
Next is the fun part! String ribbon or bakery twine through the holes. I added a few beads for fun! Tie your new embellishments onto your planner or dangle them from your bible. Or tie them onto your keys. Let me know if you make your own puffy embellishments!!
Additional Supplies: Scrapbook page protectors | eyelets | ribbon | beads
