DIY Letter Keychain Tutorial

I had a really cool request from a viewer to make some letter keychains out of felt. So I'm going to show you how to do that now. To make the felt letter you're going to need some wire. I just got some cheap wire from the dollar store. It's probably about 20 gauge. You'll need a few beads, a piece of felt, a round form like a marker, and then some wire tools, cutters and pliers. So I printed out a bunch of letters from the internet. And what you want to do is you want to leave a little bit of wire at the top to add your beads. And I'll try a different letter here. I'll try the B because it'll be tricky to do the ones with the spaces in the middle. So what I'll do is I'll just bend it at a right angle here at the bottom of the B like that. And then you want to make that round form. So for that you can just take this round marker and bend it around. And the idea is kind of do it in the center of the letters. So if it's over too much you'll just bend it a little bit more. Each letter is different. So if you have requests for me to show you how to do the other letters, just let me know. Otherwise you can just kind of wing it for each letter. And the idea is to do the letter and then finish at the top. So we've got one of the loops and then you're going to bend it back on itself like that. Try to get it as flat down as you can. And then you'll do the other loop. And if it's not exactly like the printout it's okay because you're going to trace it onto the felt so it could be a little bit different. And then once you have your form of your letter you want to bend one end around like that and then just clip the end off right there. So now we're going to trace it onto the felt. So you'll need a sharpie and you want to leave a bit of an edge around the outside. So hold the wire down and then just very carefully trace around the outside and around the inside. Okay so there you have your letter and you need two of these. So you're going to fold this or get another piece of felt. So you're and you're definitely going to want to cut a little bit of extra. So I would cut like a good eighth of an inch extra around the outside of the black. So we're going to go like that and around the outside here. And make sure your pieces stay together and don't slide otherwise they're not going to be the same size. So make sure you line them up each time you go around a circle. So there you've got your basic shape like that. And what you want to do is we're going to go ahead and separate it but this way so they're ready to put right sides together. And we're going to get the glue. So now what you want to do is have your wire piece ready and you're going to be generous with your hot glue. So you want to really put a generous amount of hot glue. You have to work pretty quickly because you don't want it to dry. So put a generous amount of hot glue there and then get your ladder and then right away get this one and stick it on top and really press it down. And you want to make sure you put a lot of hot glue. If it goes past the edge it's fine because we're going to just trim it. But the idea is you want you want the wire to be really secure in there with lots of glue. So once the glue is dried enough if there's any little leftover bits you just trim them around the outside with scissors. And then if you have areas you have to cut out you can do it with an exacto knife. So you have to make sure it's very sharp and you want to cut it so that you're leaving enough of edge. You'll be able to see the outline of the wire there so you're just going to give it a little little trim like that. Put a block of wood underneath it so it doesn't uh so it doesn't cut your table or anything. This part's really tricky so you might want some help with this. The other way you can do this is actually cut it out with the scissors before you glue it. And once you've started the hole you can go in with your scissors. Make sure you have very you know fine scissors that are sharp enough that to do this. And you're just going to go in with little snips and cut those little areas out. So once you have these little holes cut out if you need to you can always like just clean them up a little bit like that. Filt is pretty forgiving so you can just push it around a little bit. And then we're going to add our beads. So I just have four beads here of different sizes you know anywhere between six millimeter and eight millimeter is fine. And just put them on in whatever pattern you like. I chose four beads but you can put however many beads on that you like. That's a little hematite one. So once you have your beads on there you're going to get your round pliers and you're actually going to just bend this to the side. Hold your round pliers make a good size loop because this will be added to your keychain whatever keychain you have. And just pull it around like that and then you'll just clip the edge. So once the beads are on there and your ring is done you're going to get your keychain. This is just like a split ring type keychain. And you can use any kind of key ring you like and just put it on like that. And there you have your keychain and I have a S and a B. Thanks so much for watching the video. Give it a big thumbs up if you like it. Be sure to subscribe to my channel for lots more DIY videos and if you make your own felt keychains please share photos on Instagram and hashtag or at sign me at heatherboydwire. And if you have other ideas for different DIY crafts please I'd love to work on some new designs.