a glasses case re-style – tutorial

Wanna hear the only downside to drawing intricate artworks all the time? It strains my old lady eyes and gives me headaches occasionally.

i have glasses for close-work. i just always forget to wear them.

So here’s a little project i did to try to make my glasses seem more fun…you know, so i’ll want to carry them around with me and sometimes put ’em on my face. It’s a fun re-style of my boring old glasses case!

i started with the hard, clamshell-type case my specs came in, and cut a strip of canvas a teeny bit wider and long enough to wrap all the way around the case.

i also traced the end shapes of the case onto the canvas and cut. i went a touch larger b/c i knew i wanted to have frayed, raw, exposed fabric edges.

i gave the case a liberal coating of ModPodge and pressed all the canvas pieces in place. i just tucked and glued the ends of the wrap-around piece with more ModPodge and let it dry with some clothespins as clamps.

Here’s how it looked when ensconced in canvas. Do you remember on Seinfeld when George talked about how he’d like to live his life “ensconced in velvet?” Yeah, like that ; )

Once everything was dry, i painted the canvas with a coat of white primer and then a coat of yellow craft paint. See that wooden prop i’m using? It’s a clapper/seam presser for sewing. Do you have one? i highly recommend it for great, smooth seams without burnt fingers…..and also for holding glasses cases open while you paint them ; )

Next, the fun part! My 5 year old and i grabbed Sharpies, my set of Prismacolor markers, and some gel pens and started going to town doodling on the entire surface of the case to add a great colorful background texture.

When all the colored doodles were on, i went back with white paint pen to add some brightness.

The last step was adding a top layer of black Sharpie doodles and a couple coats of clear Polycrylic.

Result? Well, i did this project a few weeks back. And it has actually got me remembering my glasses a little more often!

Doesn’t hurt that my little helper likes to remind me now, what with his vested interest and pride in the whole dealio, yo.