DIYShopping, Style and Beauty

DIY Safety Pin Crafts

Updated: Aug 07, 2011 21:34
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So, I was checking out this the other day:


Image courtesy mtv.com

(Yes, that is Kristen Stewart at the MTV Movie Awards. Don’t judge. ) And it hit me – safety pins. Years of being both gothy and crafty taught me a lot – like always have at least one safety pin on you. It’s proven to be a useful habit on more than one occasion and safety pins, like buttons or newsprint, are available in bulk and cheaply.
Years ago, I used to make safety pin bracelets by stringing beads onto the safety pins then stringing the safety pins together on a length of elastic chord. It usually wound up looking something like this:

Image courtesy outsapop.com

Which looks cool and was a fun project – and there are about a million and a half easy variations of that – since safety pins require no adherents, projects are usually pretty straightforward to assemble. Stringing together safety pins onto elastic can also make a belt, necklace or choker.
Other jewelry techniques include randomly stringing safety pins and chains onto an existing necklace (or earrings):

Image courtesy monoxious.com

Or, stringing together safety pins and beads in a patterns onto a chain. Or, my personal favorite, into a huge jumbled mess with a cameo.

Image courtesy oligoville.com

There are just as many options for clothing too – from embellishing a collar or shoulder of a jacket

:

Image courtesy mypreciousconfessions.blogspot.com

to creating an entire design on the back of a shirt, to draping safety pins and chains over boots, to an entire tank made of safety pins (which looks….pokey). You can even craft a top out of a scarf and some safety pins. There’s a goth-as-fuck option of using safety pins to replace the negative space you cut into a shirt, like so:

Image courtesy glamglamhitchhiker.blogspot.com

And a safety pin corset top tutorial here. I can’t believe we didn’t do this earlier.

 

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Amber Bouman - Crafty & Cashless

Amber Bouman - Crafty & Cashless

A freelance writer, blogger and poet based in San Francisco, Amber has written for PC World, InfoWorld, and the 16th & Mission Review. She has performed at City Hall, Litquake, the Brainwash, 16th & Mission, BlueSix, and SFSU among other places. Amber is also consummate fan of swearing, organizational freak, yoga practitioner, music geek, caffeine addict, and tattoo enthusiast who enjoys platform shoes, making out, thumb wrestling and fighting the good fight. She owns a bicycle named Gretel, a motor scooter named Elroy and a cat named Simon. She can be found in various virtual locations all over your interwebs.