laced up earbuds

if you look closely at the photos above you can see a sad little progression. the first photo shows you what happens when your loving husband washes your earbuds. now, to give props where props are due, the earbuds still worked even after a wash, rinse and tumble in the dryer (way to go sony).

now i don't know about you guys but at casa de dehart we are on a budget. even 10 bucks for new earbuds feels frivolous. plus i'd seen these cute laced earbuds on etsy and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try and make my own. mine do not look as perfect as those worked up by Chozin, they work for my purposes . . . making earbuds cute and functional again.

so here's how i worked mine up. as you can see up top, i first patched any of the melted places with electrical tape. if i were into black and white minimalism, i could have stopped there. but i'm not. i really love apple green. so I snagged three "skeins" of DMC embroidery thread in a lovely green color and went to town.

the easiest way to get started was to tape this to a little table and begin by tying a knot at the base of the earbuds. from then on out (because i wasn't really sure exactly how to go about things) i made up my own rules. :) for those of you who never made friendship bracelets back in the day, check out Honestly WTF's tutorial here. if you did, then you know how to do the basic knot bracelet. that's basically what I did all the way down the cord.

this is not a quick project. i kept tying and tying and tying . . .

at this point i started thinking . . . "maybe i could leave that last earbud undone." because dude, it's a lot of tying!

i'm pretty pleased with the final product. not only do the earbuds have a nice solid weight but the cord doesn't tangle!! (cue the hallelujah chorus) i can also guarantee that captain awesome (my darling husband) wont' be snagging these beauties and telling me he just got our headphones "mixed up." lol

enjoy! play with your earbuds! have fun. there's not much you can't do to dress up your gear with a little imagination. let me see what you come up with!