Camera Strap (NOT a cover)

I am in love with my new camera strap!!  I want to show you some of the details…

I have a confession – – I won a camera strap cover a couple of years ago on a blog giveaway – it looked cute and I was so excited – but when I got it, I just didn’t love it.  It’s a cover and so it’s not really well fitted, and it’s pretty bulky – too thick, etc.  I’m sure lots of people would love it, but it just isn’t for me.  But I’ve just put up with it until now.

and random update, if you want to know Trevor’s thoughts on this project, go HERE.

I saw the amazing camera strap series over at Sewing In No Man’s Land and was inspired – I’ve made camera strap covers, but it never even crossed my mind to make the whole strap (NOT a cover) – I LOVED that idea!  Here’s the ones Kelly made:

So, head over there for the tutorial.  It’s really not hard!

For mine, I bought 1/8 yard of the vinyl – I really wanted turquoise like her but my store didn’t have it – they did have lemon yellow and hot pink, but I wasn’t sold on those, so I went with boring black.  So I bought black straping, but I love her white as well.  For the strap part I bought home decor fabric because I figure it was thicker and would hold up better.  In the trims section, I found this awesome gauzy flower trim stuff that I knew I had to have.

The flower trim was a little wide, so I made my strap wider to accommodate the trim.  For the vinyl end pieces, I just traced my old camera strap.  They were a smaller width than my new strap, so I angled the strap down at the end to fit – like so:

I sewed the strap together with several rows of top stitching for interest.  There’s only one layer of batting in the middle – so it’s soft but not out-of-control puffy.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned from craft bloggers (namely AGAAGG), it’s that I can use my glue gun for anything!  I was afraid that if I sewed the trim on, the stitching would show and look bad.  So I just hot glued it on – it’s holding great and you can’t even tell:

After I sewed it all together. you could see the white edges of the black vinyl (it’s white wherever you cut it) so I just took a sharpie marker and colored in the edge so it’d look more leather-ish – here it’s half colored and half not, so you can see the difference:

I am IN LOVE with my new strap!!!  My favorite part is how un-bulky it is, but still retaining it’s cuteness.

 So, ever made a camera strap?? Not a cover, but an actual strap??  Give it a try!!