Bejeweled Clutch

Happy Tuesday everybody!

Over the weekend I made what I consider to be one of the most super-fun projects of all time: take a plain old thing (in this case, a leather wallet/clutch I picked up at Goodwill for fifty cents) and BEDAZZLE THE HELL OUT OF IT.

YAAAAYYY!!!!

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I don't usually do a glamor shot of the things I used, but I thought this was pretty so you're getting a "materials photo":

To recreate this awesomeness, you'll need a little leather wallet, some E-6000, and a handful of beads, cabochons, rhinestones, and broken jewelry bits. FYI, I got the rhinestones and cabochons from an Etsy seller named Earthly Adornments 3, and the broken jewelry pieces from Becali Jewels - both EXCELLENT shops that I will definitely buy from again!

Let's take a look at this wallet for a second:

Pretty simple, but in EXCELLENT shape. I couldn't believe it was so cheap! It was hard to photograph and get the color just right, but the photo above is pretty accurate: it's a very dark green color.

It has a coin purse on the back...

Basically unused-looking card slots, and a zipper pouch (which I will use to store important receipts and insurance documents):

It even had a checkbook cover! WTF! This thing is AWESOME!

First things first, I laid out some of my jeweled treasures on the wallet in various ways until I found one I liked. I tried colorful yet simple:

Bohemian:

Romantic:

But eventually I settled on "over the top and probably too blingy, and also vaguely rams-head shaped because I am apparently a Satanist":

I glued that stuff down using my trusty E6000. But then I noticed that the center piece had some missing pearls! And I didn't have any pearls to replace them with!

So I took this as an opportunity to bling it up even more, by dropping in random rhinestones and other little broken jewelry pieces (I used "crystal glue" for this part):

Aaaand I realized that the little horns on the side were too boring, so I used more crystal glue and MORE RHINESTONES BECAUSE YES:

HERE IT IS!! IT'S SO PRETTY!

But I wasn't done yet...no, no, I'm NEVER done...

I found this really cool vintage chain-link-esque necklace in my jewelry stash...

It's super heavy and awesome but it's far too boring for me to wear by itself as a necklace. It needed to be REPURPOSED.

I used my jeweler's pliers to remove the jump ring that held the lobster clasp...

And then threw that clasp and jump ring into my jewelry making stash because you can NEVER have enough lobster clasps.

I ended up with two identical ends to my awesome necklace:

Then I set upon the task of gluing each end to the inside of my wallet so it could be a cool shoulder strap.

I tried the E6000, thinking that since it held the stuff onto the front of the wallet so well, it would SURELY work on this part...

But it didn't. It just would not stay, even as the glue started to dry. Hmmmm....maybe I needed to add a dollop of hot glue to the top to hold it in place until the E6000 dried?

Hahaha, NOPE! That didn't work at all!

By now I had made a huge mess of things:

(Those little rings are just barely hanging on for dear life there...)

So I pulled out old faithful:

Well, THAT worked.

As soon as I realized they were going to set, I carefully put the bag down and stepped away from the project, partly because it was frustrating me and partly because I had just been working fervently for 20 minutes with my face right above three different types of glue and I was feeling light-headed. Then I looked up "how to remove superglue from your fingers" (turns out you can use nail polish remover) and did something else while I waited for it to dry.

And oh...my...god!!

It is the cutest little freaking purse that ever was!

It doesn't have a place for my cell phone, but WHATEVER!!! I CAN FIGURE THAT OUT LATER! For now, I have a totally awesome wallet/purse/thing - something that I would pay good money for (or at least seriously consider it)!

I so adore breathing new life into things. I can't wait to take this purse out on the town!

XOXO