DIY Ukulele Strap

My boys are fascinated by Jason Mraz's I'm yours accompanied by Sungha Jung. They'd hold on to their ukuleles with a leg hiked up to support their ukuleles while strumming and singing along, losing balance once in a while. I thought they'd be more comfortable standing properly so I decided to make them a ukulele strap.

I went to my local craft store and found some buckles and a suitlable sized strap. 

Here's the finished ukulele strap.

Things you'll need.

1. Hard felt (I bought mine from Giant Supermarket. Came in packs of 10 pieces of A4, multiple colours)

2. Buckles. 

3. Strap.

4. Thin ribbon/string.

5. Hole punch

This is end that gets looped to the top of the ukulele. 

This is the other end that gets "buttoned" to the bottom of the ukulele.

This buckle enables you to lengthen or shorten the strap:

To attach the other end of the strap to the ukulele, I adhered one of these baby proofing accessory to the ukulele using strong double tape. No drilling required!

All in all, I spent approximately RM 5 per strap. That's really inexpensive right? 

Well, thanks for reading. Bye!

Help! Broken Crayolas!!

My boys decided that it was fun removing their crayola wrappers and breaking them into small bits. It truly upset me because it made their crayons dirty and the box which I used to contain them all dirty as well. They also have a habit of dumping all the contents of their crayon box on the table while they draw. Not only was it difficult to find the colours, it was also difficult to tidy up after with so many broken pieces scattered everywhere. 

So, I researched online for some solutions and decided to try melting them. Here's a picture of their crayons before.

The only small sized silicone mould I have is this mini donut maker. It seemed to be the right size for the crayons.

I put the crayons in the oven left my kitchen. When I returned after a very short while, my kitchen was very smokey. The crayons melted very quickly and were smoking!! I thought there was a fire in my oven but there wasn't.

I took them out immediately and placed them in the fridge.

Here's a picture of them removed from the mould.

As you can see from the picture, the crayons have separated. The bottom yellowish portion draws clear while the top coloured portion works like a normal crayola. 

Overall, I'm disappointed with the results. Perhaps I left the crayons in my oven too long or the heat setting on my oven was too high. Oh well... What's done's done.

My advise if you want to attempt this, once you've put the crayons in your oven, watch your oven like a hawk. :)