Gymnastics and Medals

A byproduct of gymnastics competition is medals!!

Go onto Amazon and look up "gymnastics medal holders"...I'll wait...let's compare results.
The first item that shows up on my search result has the price of $38.95+$12.95 shipping. Who wants to spend that much?

I found a quick solutions, probably temporary, but very cheap.

How does it look?

Can you believe that this only took me $2.00 and some things I had on hand to make?

The picture frame is an 11x14 inch frame I found at the dollar store. Now this size of frame is not always in stock. I have about 8 frames this size in the back of my closet for future projects. (I like to print large size black and white pictures of my children to decorate our living room wall.)

The white hook is also from the dollar store. The metal is plastic coated which I might have been able to paint but didn't want to try.

There you have my $2.00 investment.

The silhouette I found online, resized and printed, traced onto black and cut out. Super easy!!

The background is just acrylic paint on a white sheet of paper. I could have used wrapping paper or maybe tissue paper, but I had a look in mind. Of course, the silhouette is not glued down so the background can be changed at any time.

Now I know we will have more metals than this. I will eventually find an alternative. What I will not do is spend $40 on it!!!

Thanks for stopping by. Please leave a comment so that I know you are out there! ;)

Nylon Bags and Gymnastics

My 7 year old is on pre-team gymnastics. What exactly is "pre-team"? Well, at the gym we are at, it means a day less of practice as team and also a little less expensive. She is technically a Level 2 gymnast.

She LOVES gymnastics. When she was 3, we began with ballet. She danced until this past year when she decided to give gymnastics her full attention.

The gym tries very hard to maintain the cost of the pre-team low. (Which I appreciate very much.) Because of this, they do not have a team bag. At our first meet, all the girls had their own bags to put their shoes and sweats in while they competed.

For some reason this drove me nuts. I decided to take it upon myself to buy the girls bags. The most inexpensive option is nylon, drawstring bags. The problem with this kind of bag is getting decorations to stick.

After looking EVERYWHERE online for information (and finding very little) I decided to experiment. I only needed nine bags and received twelve.

Online you can find a special kind of vinyl for nylon, but it requires a professional iron press. I just couldn't see how I was going to use it at home. I tried regular iron-on vinyl: no go. Then I picked up some fabric paints: the color was not bright and did not stand out. Lastly, I tried out my paint pen. Winner!!

I was able to use a silver, oil based paint to draw the team name on the bags. I then tried to layer a second color (fabric paint) on top to get the look I wanted. The fabric paint came off so I used a second oil based paint for the top layer. This worked perfectly!!

SO if you buy nylon bags, use oil paint pens!! I found mine at Michael's by the paint, not by the fabric paints. (Don't forget to use your coupon.)

The paint pens I used.

The finished bag.

Thanks for checking out my post!!