"Will You Be My Bridesmaid" - Belly Bands for the Doll Cards

The Project: "Will You Be My Bridesmaid?"-Belly Bands for the Cards


The cost: 3.00 ( with paper and initial stickers) or 2.00 if you use left over paper as I did and just buy the stickers. *Get paper from Micheals in the color of your choice, .59-.99*

*My belly-band consisted of a black band, a black square, smaller orange square, and even smaller marble print paper*

*I used all excess paper from my other projects so paper cost me 0.00*

*Initial sticker was bought at Michaels for .99*














The Story

Once again, I got the belly-band idea from the original oncewed.com invite. In the original, the belly band was one solid color and the girls names were stamped on the band using white lettering. Because I made larger dolls and wanted to "go big or go home", I wanted mine to have more detail. I decided on keeping with my "layered theme" and originally was going to print the initials onto the paper in orange instead of the stickers. Once, I found the stickers for $1, I changed my mind pretty quickly. These bands were simple to make, and cost nothing if you use extra paper from other projects. Never throw away your scraps unless they are ridiculously small or damaged! When your on a budget, you'll find ways to use them :-)

First Things First

1. Decide if you are going "simple" or "complicated"

2. If going simple, pick one solid color

3. If going complicated, decide how many paper layers you are using, and what colors they will be

4. Decide if you will use stickers or your printer. *If you cant find stickers on sale, or dont have a coupon for 40% off, I would just use your printer, its not necissary money to spend*

What You Will Need (Sorry no Picture again)

1. Paper - color or colors of your choice (.59-.99 from Michaels or AC Moore)

***Before you go get paper, its important to estimate before you go how big of a piece you would need to cover the whole doll. You dont want to just guess and realize the paper you got is too small. If all else fails, buy the bigger paper regardless. You can always use the scraps later.***

2. Paper Cutter

3. Glue Runner (not just regular glue, it will turn out bumpy for multiple layers)

4. Stickers or a printer (Buy on sale, or get a 40% of coupon to purchase full priced stickers)

5. Your completed Doll Card (Dolls and Poems)

6. Ruler

Step by Step Directions

1. Decide how thick you want your bands to be. *This can be whatever you want, just make it look good depending on what size your dolls are. The bigger the Dolls, the thicker the band will need to be*

2. Make sure your paper will fit around your doll **Leave extra room to glue band together (Ex: if you only need 7inches to wrap the doll, make your paper 8inches to be safe. You can always cut it off later)**

3. Take a ruler and mark out the size you chose (Ex: if you do 1" bands, take your paper and ruler and put a line for every inch so its easier to know where to cut)

4. Put paper into the cutter and cut on your pencil marks the desired number of times (I had 7 girls so I made seven strips)

*Paper placed in cutter at desired size and ready to cut*

*This pic shows only 6 strips because my MOHs Card was a different size than the others and needed a custom size*













5. Take one of your strips and lay it on a flat surface. Take your Doll Card and place it in the middle of the strip. Keep strip high enough on the card also. **Keep dolls facing up**

6. Once Card is on top of the strip, press down on the card so it doesnt move and fold the right side over the Poem and Doll.

7. Hold down the piece you just folded, and fold over the other side onto the rest of the band to make your creases before you glue.

*If you notice where the line overlap is, it is way too far to the right. You will need to just take some scissors and cut the paper so that the seam is in the middle.*

It wont matter if you cut that new seam sloppy because the other squares will go right over it and you dont even see it.

*If you are doing a simplified band, just do the band the same way but face the dolls down on the band instead of up. This way, the seam will be on the back and not the front and it wont matter because who will really see it?*

8. Take your glue runner and glue the bottom of your flap. Place down, and hold a few seconds so it stays.

9. Take your excess paper, or color of your choice, and create a square or ractangle of whatever size you want. Just make sure its big enough to cover the seam.

10. Once you created the square, glue the under-side of it and place over the seam that was in the middle of the band and press down. The seam is gone!

*I used a rectangle but you can choose your own style*

















11. Take your next color, and cut out a smaller rectangle or square. The size will depend on how much you want the underlayer to show. (My next color was orange)

*I placed my orange paper onto the square to get a better feel of where I should cut. I always check first so I dont have to cut more than one piece because I messed up*















12. Once you figure out where you want to cut, mark it with a pencil, and cut it.
13. Once cut, use your glue runner to glue the back of it, and put it onto the previous square or rectangle.

*Dont mind where Im pointing, just focus on how the orange on the black now looks*



















14. Continue doing this process however many times you decide to based on what colors you are using. I used one more piece, the marble print paper.

**If at this point you are printing out your letters and not using stickers, you will place your last piece of paper into the printer, pick your lettering, letters,sizes, colors and then print out. Once printed out, cut to the appropriate size, cut, and glue***

I didnt everything the same way as I did before since I was using stickers. I marked my paper, cut it, and glued it.

15. Once its glued on all previous papers, take out your letter stickers and start putting them onto the correct invites.

Belly Bands are Done!!!

Hope everyone had some fun, and you can do these with just about anything. Good DIY project to perfect. The more you do, the easier and faster you can make them.

For more directions on other belly bands, such as the envelope bands made of ribbon, check out my other blogs :-)