DIY Rainbow Wands

As you recall from my guest post over at Crunchy Crafty and Highly Caffeinated, I am throwing Faith a My Little Pony themed birthday party, which mostly centers around her favorite pony, Rainbow Dash.  In that vein, I saw a few cute ideas on Pinterest, including a rainbow wand.  Based on this tutorial, I headed off to my local craft store to gather supplies.

THINGS NEEDED 

These materials are enough to make 20 wands; to make the full set of 24 wands, you would need to buy longer ribbon spools.

1.  Wood dowels, 5/16" 6 pk 

I initially bought 1/4" 10 pk of wood dowels, but the dowels needed to be thicker for larger screw eye hooks.  I couldn't find large enough dowels at Joann Fabrics so purchsed 4 packs of wood dowels by Creatology at Michaels.

2.  Screw eye hooks, 8mm 12 pk

Need 2 packs

3.  Satin Ribbon, 3/8" x 21' 

I purchased ribbon in colors red, orange, yellow gold, emerald, royal, and purple.  At the time I bought the ribbon online, they were out of red satin ribbon so I got it in grosgrain.

4.  Stick It felt, white

This pack includes a set of 6 sheets 9" x 12".  I was initially cutting out 6 per sheet, but fit my cloud on each sheet for a total of 8.  I needed enough to fit two halves together.  

DIY STEPS

1.  Screw hooks into wood dowel

Center the hook over one end of the dowel, apply pressure and screw the hook into the wood.  It takes a minute and a bit of pressure, but it will penetrate and go into the dowel.  You don't need the hook to go all the way in for it to be secure.  If you try screwing it in too far, you could split the wood at the top (this happened a few times).

2.  Cut ribbon lengths and tie onto screw eye hook

I cut the ribbon lengths at 12" and tied to the eye of the hook.  I followed the method found in this video by beadaholique.

3.  Create cloud pattern

I drew a 4.5" wide by 3" long rectangle to serve as the constraints of my cloud design.  Then I drew a design that filled up most of the box.

4.  Trace and cut out of felt

So, you'll need 20 pieces cut of the pattern shown above.  When you cut out the second set of 20 pieces to form your back half, you need to flip your design horizontally, trace the mirror image and cut those out.  This will give you 40 pieces of felt whose two felt sides will line up together to give you a cloud sandwich.

5.  Put two cloud halves together to complete wand

I put the first cloud piece over the screw eye hook; adjusted the ribbons and then lined up the second cloud piece and pressed the two together.  The biggest benefit of stick it felt - no glue guns and no sewing.

FINAL RESULT

So what do you think?  I think this will be a good party favor for Saturday's venue (post on picking party venue here).  My plan is to combine these with Skittles to fully round out my rainbow theme.

This post will be shared with these linkup parties.