Every Sunday and Wednesday and on various babysitting occasions, we find ourselves taping a name tag to Rachael and Abi's sippy cups before dropping them off. I use masking tape since it comes off of the cup easier than the nursery stickers provided. But each Sunday morning there is the "Oh right, we forgot, let's find the tape, a permanent marker or pen and get the names on there." Sure we could write the names on Saturday night if we were overly thoughtful parents, but we aren't. LOL.
So I came up with a crafty solution that will eliminate confusion and can translate to more than just sippy cups.
After viewing a diaper strap tutorial, I modified it to work for us and to work with what I had in fabric.
I started out by measuring the middle of our sippy cups and kid water bottles. After measuring, I took the variance of 2 inches between all the cups middles to measure out the length of my soft-side of the Velcro (will explain more later). Then I knew from the 7inch to 8.5inch width of my sippy cups that I needed to make the strip of fabric at least 9 inches to accommodate the cups. I chose to make my base fabric 10 inches just to be safe.
I grabbed out a few scrap pieces of receiving blankets used for other projects, measured my soft-sided Velcro and cut it. I decided to place my soft-sided Velcro on the inside of my strap so the sticky part of the Velcro would only adhere to the strap and the soft-side would not adhere to clothing/etc if exposed by a fatter cup than the smallest setting.
I measured the sticky side of my Velcro to be 1.5 inches to make sure it'd stick really well, defying toddler curiosity, and the soft-side of my Velcro to be 3 inches to allow for further cup variance in size should we get other cups in the future. (Sticky side of Velcro is located on other side of fabric behind the button).
Then it was to work sewing the fabric, flipping the fabric inside out, folding in the edges and sewing them shut, sewing on the Velcro, and then the hardest part; stitching the names.
I free-handed with a pencil on the fabric the girls' names (excluding the one pictures above. I just free-handed that on the sewing machine) and then sewed accordingly. I wasn't worried about perfection, just readability and functionality with a little cuteness of course.
I added on a reused button from my button tin just for a little flare.
And voila! Our cup name tags (on three different sized cups):
Front and back.
Front and back.
Front and back (see a trend?)
I made 2 for Abi since she's the sticky-fingered/less neat child. That way one can be in the wash while the other is in use. Also, we're carrying around cups less frequently for Rachael so I wasn't as worried about making her two. If I find we need two for Rachael, I'll make her a second one in 15 minutes (her name is long).
Abi also discovered while playing with one off of her cup that they can be used as bracelets. =) They can also be used as bag tags, luggage tags, and pretty much anything you need to label for kiddo that has a loop. Be creative. =D
Functional, cute, effective and fun.
Cost: No financial cost, total of 40 minutes of free-time during the girls' nap time.
YAY!
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