D.I.Y. // Hearty Pin Cushion & Box

Today I have a little D.I.Y. for you: a pin cushion-box-set.

My mum had this very old but practical little plastic box/pin cushion-all-in-one set. That kind where you have a little box to store your pins but also a little pin cushion on top, so you can use it for storage as well as work with it. Naturally plastic wears out, so a little while ago the box broke and mum has been looking for a new one for months. In the end, I bought a little wooden box and decided to make one myself. And today I’d like to share with you how I did it.

This little project is one I like for various reasons: it’s cheap (I went under €5, especially because it includes things you will find in most households anyway), it’s easy (suuuuper-easy, believe me), it’s quickly done (because it’s so easy) and there are thousands of possibilities in terms of colours, size and looks. I used a heart in a different colour to be in the centre of the pin cushion, but in fact you can use any shape you want, a star, a rainbow, even a unicorn I guess (given the fact you can cut out a unicorn free-hand – I couldn’t). And above all, it looks cute.

First, I spray-painted the little box gold (mainly because I still have so much spray-paint left-over and because I really like using it). Then I collected all material I wanted to use: two different colours of felting (you can go with only one colour or with even more, if you like), a needle and matching thread (I used pink, but blue would have looked great, too), a pair of scissors, darning wool, a few safety pins and some mod podge(1). 

I used a plain sqaure of 13×13 cm in pink (the box is about 5 cm in diameter), folded it in half and cut out half a heart in the centre of the felting (2).

I cut out a smaller square of blue felting (the size depends on the size of the heart, it should be slightly bigger than the cut-out heart) and attached it on the back (3), handstitching along the edges of the heart (4).

I put a small fist-full of darning wool in the centre of the square (still on the back where you can only see the blue square obviously), brought the four corners together and used a few wild stitches and two safety pins to bring the edges together and turn it all into a little round-ish package. As you can see in the picture below, my stitches are really wild and this looks rather unprofessional – but the safety pins (from which you can only see one, because the other one is covered by two or three layers of felting) are really helpful, especially if you are using a really thin thread like I did. 

Eventually, I applied some mod podge to the lid of the little golden box and put the pin cushion on top. It took about 12 hours to dry but now you can’t even see the safety pins. I put in some pins and also stuck some into the pin cushion and voilà – the gift was ready to be presented to my mum (who, by the way, is really happy to finally have that old, broken plastic box replaced).