Decorated Spools

B comes with me every morning when I drop my niece off at preschool. One of the activities he always seems to gravitate towards is the bucket of spools and buttons (similar to these ). I always just assumed it was because he sees so many spools at home since I go through so many of them! Every time I finish a spool I usually give it to him to play with-there are quite a few roaming around the house! I decided that the ones I did save aside for him should be dressed up a bit, so I decided to decorate them with some tape and scrap vinyl that I had!

I love the idea of washi tape, however I haven't gotten around to buying any. Just can't seem to justify the price of a small roll of tape being $5, but I did find "decorative" tape at AC moore for less than $2.50 on sale. (And quite honestly, I'm not sure what the difference is between decorative tape and washi tape? Is it just called washi tape when it's specifically from Japan? I'm seeing more and more "decorative" tape at the craft stores, so for now that's what I'll be buying!)

Of course when I went to make some of the decorated spools for B I was only able to find 3!! I used the tape on one of them, and vinyl on the other two. Luckily I had scraps of the metallic blue vinyl- I think that one may be his favorite so far- definitely caught his eye! Definitely a cheap and easy way to make a "toy" for the little ones to play with, and obviously if you are going to make these for young ones to play with, use your better judgment and only use the larger spools!