Faux hat pins for cards!

I know I said I was going to feature that other Cuttlebug project today, but please allow me to interrupt and show you the faux hat pins I made today! :) I've admired the hat pins everyone is putting on their cards lately. They're so Victorian, and that's definitely my style. But I wasn't willing to put out a lot of money for them, so I put that idea on the backburner.

Then I saw that Lindsay featured them on her blog the other day, and she used eye pins like I had seen at Dollar Tree and wondered about. Suddenly I had a frugal alternative! So today when I found a new load of beads at the Dollar Tree, I picked up a few packs to make some hat pins. I had so much fun with these, and I couldn't wait to share them with you! Now I can't wait to make some cards to put them on ...



I couldn't get a good picture of this first set, but let me tell you how I layered everything: bead cap, clear bead, sea-themed bead, clear bead, and bead cap. They're quite pretty when you see them from the right angle! The sea-themed plastic beads came from Michaels a little while ago when they were on clearance for $0.50/pack (around 100/pack, if I remember correctly).



This isn't as close-up, but I think you can see them alright. I didn't use the bead caps on these. There are two of each kind of sea-themed bead because I made a variation of each to see which one I liked better. One of them has 1 (or 2) clear beads, the sea-themed bead, and another 1 (or 2) clear beads. The second variation has 2 blue seed beads, 1 clear bead, 1 sea-themed bead, 1 clear bead, and 2 blue seed beads. I still don't know which one I like better!



Here's a closer picture of the end of that line-up.



And then these use the dark pink pearly beads I picked up today. I used a variety of seed beads, clear beads and pearly beads in a variety of combinations. At the far right, you can see that I even used a button with a small shank on it! (I turned the last one over so you can see how it attaches.)

Can you tell I was having lots of fun with these? I think I made about 25 of these today!

I forget where I read it, but I used a small drop of hot glue at the end of the beads to keep them in place. It worked wonderfully!

Oh, and before I forget, those clear beads color beautifully with my BIC markers!