Choose Joy Banner Necklace

This was supposed to be yesterday's Tutorial Tuesday post....but seeing as how I couldn't find ANY of my jewelry making supplies I had to postpone until today. I have NO IDEA where it all went. I guess it decided to grow legs and walk away. Because of this I had to go get some new supplies today, which I had to squeeze into my insane day. I'll actually be splitting this up into a few different tutorials. Partially because I have come up with a few different ideas as to how to make the necklaces, and this tutorial would be insanely long and full of a ridiculous amount of pictures if I put it all in to one! So... on to the first part of the tutorial!

I came up with this idea in the wee hours of the morning last week. My littlest nugget had woken up super early (hello 5am!) and was "snuggled" up in bed with me. And by "snuggled" I really mean she was rolling all over the bed wanting to get up and go play. And this is what my poor tired brain came up with (I was extra tired since I had stayed up really late getting sewing done)! I was far from in the mood to wake up after only about 3.5-4 hours of sleep. I guess my tired subconscious was reminding me of what Ashley from Lil Blue Boo has been trying to remind all of us.... to Choose Joy.

I wore completely the wrong shirt to show off the necklace!

The Choose Joy banner necklace! Want to make one too? Here's what you need to make the banner flags:

Freezer paper, calendar pages, scrap paper, pencil, scissors. Not pictured: pen, super skinny paintbrush (or permanent markers), paint, fatter paintbrush (for the mod podge).

Fold the scrap paper down about an 1 - 2 inches and draw a few different triangle shapes along the fold.

I decided I liked my third one the best. That's the one I cut out. Once it's cut out open it up and you will have a diamond shape. Put the diamond on the fold of the paper with the center being as close to perfectly perpendicular to the fold in the diamond as you can.

Trace around the diamond shape so that you now can cut out a diamond that is as close to perfect as you can without having to use graph paper and a ruler. Cut out the new diamond shape. Use this diamond to trace onto the backside of the calendar pages.

And then repeat repeat repeat! For one Choose Joy necklace you need 9 diamonds. But I would suggest doing 10 or 11 in case you mess up along the way.

Then cut out all of those diamonds!

Fold each diamond in half to create banner triangles again. Then open them back up and paint the words on them.

Once the entire word is painted on you want to completely turn the diamonds upside down AND make the word go backwards. Then rewrite the same word. So now the same diamond will have a C on one side and an E on the other, an H on one side and an S on the other, and the two O's in the middle with also have O's on the other side.

Once all of the diamonds are lettered and dry paint a layer of Mod Podge onto each one. Once that layer is dry paint another coat of Mod Podge on.

Enough Choose Joy banner pieces to make 5 necklaces!

Next Tuesday, for Tutorial Tuesday, I will show one of the ways to put the necklace together. It will be the one in the first picture of this post! And I'll show a sneak peek at the next necklace at the end of the next post. ;-D

Note to self: Don't wear a cowlneck shirt when trying to showcase a necklace! Also, remember to Choose Joy!