Water Bottle Lanyard

While visiting family in Florida, we borrowed some water bottle lanyards during our day trip to Sea World. They really helped save us some money while staying out of our way since we could just put them over our shoulder.

After getting back I surfed the web and found some of these lanyards, but the shipping cost seemed a bit much for something pretty light and cheap in my opinion. I also found sites that offered customizations to the lanyard, but you had to buy them in bulk. Then I decided to do a quick search on Etsy.com to see if any other creative people had made them. Turns out a couple of people were making them.

In the pictures and description, the lanyards were made with ribbon being the strap. I knew that the part that really made these work would be the ring that went around the neck of the bottle. The one in Florida appeared to just be a simple rubber ring. A visit to the nearest hardware supply store and I had a box of rubber o rings.

I brought in a plastic bottle for measuring and found that the 1 1/16" x 7/8" fit perfect. The first measurement is the ring circumference and the second is the thickness of ring. There was a thicker ring that was the same size and fit just as well.

All I did next was to pick out the ribbon and to make them. These work great for parks and hikes, so make sure to make one before your next outing.

Custom Dry Erase Boards

Dry erase boards are easy to come by. Even website like Esty will have some for you to choose from. The only thing about the ones you buy from a store, is that they don't offer you the customizations that you might want on your board and they can be expensive.

For my custom board I needed it to be small and light. I couldn't use anything other than a thumbtack or some tape to put it on the wall. I started looking for ideas on the web that I could use to create my board. One site mentioned using clear contact paper to cover a surface. Perfect!

My basic board would be made from paper and I would use the contact paper to laminate the front and back of the paper. The idea seemed perfect till I tried to use dry erase markers. If you removed the marks quickly after making them, they tended to come off. If you left them there for a few hours, the marks were pretty much permanent. There went my idea of a cheap solution.

Crayola to the rescue! I had recently purchased these markers that you use to draw on the surface of glass. I brought back out my ruined board and experimented with these makers. They were perfect. There wasn't even a hint of color left. Idea back on track!

Some ideas for this application:

Calendar that you print out using your favorite word processor.
To Do List: create a blank one or put the most done activities.
Game sheets: Tic Tac Toe, Battleships, Tally page
Paper doll: Print out a doll with plain clothing on and color away.

As I come up with new ideas I'll post them. I'll also get some images of what I've created so far.

First Notes

This is my first time posting a blog