Connoisseur of Creativity: DIY Cigar Box Cufflink/Ring Holder

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Today is my Fiancé's birthday and how lucky is he that I made a craft for him! And also lucky for him, I got him a 10 game pass for the Texas Rangers. Sticking to that theme, I found the coolest cufflinks that were made from a previously used baseball by the Texas Rangers! Going through Pinterest I found the neatest idea a while ago to create a cigar box ring holder and going through my crafting pin board I found it again and realized how awesome it would be to use it for cufflinks instead! I followed the tutorial from cut out + keep. I already had a stash of cigar boxes that I bought a while back so I just picked my favorite one and I had a great teal shirt that I could use for the folds, I also had everything else listed below already.

Supplies I needed:

- Cigar Box

- Hot Glue Gun

- Old Shirt

- Fusible Fleece

- Scrap Fabric

- Fabric Scissors

I began by measuring the width of my cigar box so that I could cut my shirt to fit within that width. I also cut the shirt into three pieces in order to get three of the same sized pieces to fill the whole cigar box.

I realized after I cut that I would not have enough thickness to get the desired look I wanted for each roll that the cufflinks would slide in to. Due to this, I grabbed some thick scrap fabric I had from a previous craft and cut that to the same size as my shirt. I then grabbed my fusible fleece and made sure to cut it smaller than the shirt and the scrap fabric because it expands as you iron.

I then covered the whole thing with my scrap fabric. Be sure to follow the directions on your fusible fleece package to be sure you are doing it right. Another great tip is to wait for it to cool down, when it is still warm the fabrics will still move around because they have not fused or attached yet.

After fusing the two fabrics together and letting them cool. I began folding the fabrics accordion style about 1" thick, so that it would be a nice height within the cigar box.

Here is where I got a little ahead of myself. Rather than doing on piece at a time I tried to do them all, which slowed me down tremendously. This is when I went back to doing one fused piece. After folding the fabric I placed it inside of the cigar box and made sure to hot glue the edges and each fold. Then I found some heavy objects I had lying around and placed them inside the cigar box in order to let that fabric cool.

While I waited for that to cool I went to the next fused fabric piece and did the same thing. It was easier for my to attached each folded section I made going from outside in, so I did the same thing as above for the bottom part of the cigar box and used the heavy objects to help them stay in place while they cooled.

When it came to insert the last folded piece everything had cooled perfectly and I could just slide it in and hot glue the sides. I was honestly worried how well this craft would come out, but I am pretty excited it looks as good as it does! I even left in the paper flap that came with the box for added detail!