Rookie

I’ve combined this month’s theme‘s love of roses—and in this case, GIRL POWER—with my own love of brooches to create this DIY for a flowery feminist badge. It’s way more in-your-face and awesome than those puny tin buttons you see everywhere. And thanks to the satin roses that it’s covered in, it’s a lot prettier, too! (Huge thanks to Girls Get Busy for the inspiration!)

You’ll need:

• A hot glue gun
• Craft wire (24 gauge)
• Satin rosettes. You can find these in the bridal/floral section of any craft store. I found that the slightly larger ones work best for this project.
• Bar pins
• A sheet of felt
• A pen
• Scissors

To start this project off we’ll need to make a base for our badge. I’m using craft wire to make mine, but if you don’t happen to have any lying around, I think a cardboard cut-out will work fine. Since this badge is going to be in the shape of a Venus/female/whatever you wanna call it symbol, we’ll need to bend and fold our wire in that general shape.

Making the base:

1. Cut off a length of wire that is about 12 inches long. We’ll only be using one piece of wire for this entire process.

2. Start by taking one of the ends of the wire and forming a round loop with it. It doesn’t need to be perfect or anything. Mine was around one-and-a-half inches in diameter. You can make yours larger or smaller, depending on what size you want your badge to be.

3. After you make a loop on one end of the wire, take the very end of the wire (the part that I have bent downwards in the photo) and coil this around it. This will secure the loop.

4. Once you’ve done that, you should have a round loop up on top and a length of wire running from the bottom.

5. Measure about one inch from the bottom of the loop and bend the entire length of wire to the right from that point.

6. Measure about a half an inch from where you bent the wire in the last step and bend it again, but this time we’ll bend it inwards to the left.

7. Bend the wire back down so it aligns with the section that is running vertically. Now we’ve got half of the symbol done! For the other side of our base, we’ll basically just repeat what we just did.

8. Bend the loose end of the wire inwards. Be sure to keep it straight!

9. Bend the wire outwards at the middle point where that little “arm” of wire sticks out on the other side.

10. Measure about a half an inch from that middle point in the other direction and bend the wire inwards from there.

11. Lastly, you’ll need to bend the wire so it’s pointing towards the loop. Wrap any excess wire around the loop like you did in the first step.

Your finished base should look like this. Keep in mind that it doesn’t need to be perfect—slightly crooked areas won’t ruin the outcome of the badge. So now that we have a base, we’ll need to make a backing for it.

Making the backing and adding the flowers:

1. Place the wire base on top of your felt square and trace the outside of it with a pen.

2. Cut the traced shape out using your scissors. Set this piece aside for later.

3. Now for the fun part: adding the flowers! All you really need to do is place a glob of hot glue on the back of a rosette and stick it on the base. Continue doing this until the entire wire base is filled with the rosettes.

4. To make the underside of our badge a teensy bit more attractive, we’re going to put the felt piece that we just cut out to use. Spread some hot glue on the back of the badge using the wire base as a guide, then quickly (because hot glue sets really fast) place the felt piece on top of the glue and press it down. This will make everything smooth and neat.

5. Finally, you’ll want to affix a blank bar pin or whatever fastener you wish to use on the back of the badge with a little glue.

And that’s it! You’re done. Now all that’s left to do is wear it out and spread the girl-power vibes everywhere you go. ♦