My Ancestry

 I like to think that my combined heritage somewhat represents the melting pot that is the United States. My ancestry is a mix of Austrian, German, Hungarian, Irish and Ukrainian. For a while now I've been trying to acquire keychains to pay tribute to the homelands of my ancestors. I'll be showcasing some of those keychains in this post.

This first keychain was purchased secondhand. I'll admit, most of what I know about Austria comes from watching The Sound of Music. I know that popular entertainment is often loaded with cultural stereotypes, and is therefore not the most reliable source of information. But in this case, I don't think the movie had any influence on my choice of keychain. However, there have been other times on my collecting journey when I've been swayed by cultural stereotypes.

People with strong Irish roots may be offended that I see this keychain in terms of my Irish heritage. The shamrock design and the green rhinestones are so over the top that, if I was more in touch with my Irish ancestry, I might've left it at the store. But I am first and foremost an American, so I'm accustomed to seeing St. Patrick's Day celebrated with tacky, green accessories.

I do have other Irish keychains that are a little more culturally sensitive. Or at least as culturally sensitive as something made to be sold to visiting tourists can be.

The keychains in this next picture are meant to pay tribute to my Slavic ancestry.

The one keychain was designed to look like a traditional matryoshka, or 'nesting doll', while the other features a red and white design that resembles designs used in Ukrainian embroidery.

Here's another 'nesting doll' keychain, but with a different color scheme and art style.

I'm still looking for interesting but affordable keychains to represent Germany and Hungary in my collection. Seeing as how I'm unable to travel to those countries in person, and considering the cost of international shipping for online purchases, it may be a while before I find anything. But then, isn't hunting for specific things part of the fun of collecting? Having something to search for helps keep collectors energized. The day someone finally completes their collection must bring about the same mixed emotions as a school graduation. The feeling of accomplishment is quickly followed by the realization that one journey is over, and that you need to figure out where to go from there.

Given the wide variety of keychains on the market, and the rush I get from never knowing what I'm going to stumble upon next, I'm hopeful that my keychain collection will never really be 'complete'. After all, everybody needs a hobby. However, I'd still like to check off the necessary additions to my 'cultural heritage' keychain sub-collection, someday.

Signed, Treesa

'Dollar Tree' Store Finds

 Dollar stores seem to have a bad reputation in the public mind. Many people look down on them, assuming that they're all stocked with low quality, off-brand merchandise and cheap knockoffs. And then there's the fact that not all stores with the word 'Dollar' in their name actually price everything at a dollar. Places like Dollar General and Family Dollar qualify more as discount stores, since they sell things for a dollar and up. A lot of smaller, non-chain 'dollar stores' do the same thing.

The Dollar Tree chain of stores is what I would consider true 'dollar stores'. Everything they sell is priced at one dollar. I'll admit, some of the items they stock aren't the best quality. But if you need disposable party plates for a birthday celebration, or to use as palettes when working with decoupage medium the way I do, does it really matter what brand they are?

The thing I really love about Dollar Tree, however, is that sometimes they get old stock of name brand items.

Like these Harry Potter Backpack Buddies blind bag wands for example. These were made by Paladone, and if I remember correctly they were previously being sold for five dollars apiece at my local Five Below discount store.

The packaging states that there are 8 different wands to collect. I believe I've mentioned before that I tend to have bad luck with blind bags, so even at a dollar apiece I wasn't going to go crazy buying a bunch of these and risk getting mostly duplicates. But I did pick up one for my collection.

I ended up getting Ron Weasley's wand. Not one of the more elaborate designs, I'll admit, but it does have a decent amount of molded detail, considering the simplicity of the design. Just to clarify, the wand is made from a hard plastic. I know there was at least one other company making blind box wand keychains from metal, but that's a subject for another post. I'm also planning to replace the plastic clip on this with a split ring.

While I was at Dollar Tree, I picked up a Series 1 Lucky Fortune pack by WowWee as well. I forgot to photograph this in package, but each 'fortune cookie' came packed in a clear bag so buyers could see what color the 'dipped' ends were. The 'cookie' opens similar to a real fortune cookie, and inside you'll find a fortune plus 1 mystery bracelet. According to the packaging, Series 1 had 100 different bracelets that you could collect. However, it didn't really matter to me which bracelet I got, since I was more interested in the fortune cookie itself.

I ended up getting a bracelet with a unicorn charm that, according to the Collector's Guide, is Very Very Lucky. The bracelets are categorized on the sheet as either Lucky, Very Lucky, or Very Very Lucky. This seems to correspond to the supposed rarity of each charm. However, I don't know enough about this product to say for sure if there really are fewer of this unicorn charm than other charms.

Also, the charms are broken up into color coded categories that seem to match up with the different colors used for the 'dipped' ends of the fortune cookies. The categories are coded as follows: Adventure (light blue), Friendship (pink), Success (darker blue), Love (light purple), and Happiness (bluish green). The 'dipped' ends of my 'cookie' seem to be the Adventure blue color. However, according to the Collector's Guide, the unicorn charm belongs in the Happiness grouping, which again is color coded as bluish green. I wonder if this mix-up was a common problem for these Lucky Fortune packs, or if this batch was somehow defective and that's how they ended up at Dollar Tree. Or maybe the bracelet selection really is supposed to be completely random.

Incidentally, the gold tone ball chain didn't come in the pack. I added it myself to convert the cookie into a keychain.

And that's it for this keychain haul. I hope you enjoyed the post. And the next time you're near a Dollar Tree store, why not stop in and see what they have. You never know what you might find.

Signed, Treesa

(Note: This post has been in draft for longer than it should've been, and my neighborhood Dollar Tree store is already sold out of the two items I discussed here. I apologize to anyone who was planning to check the stores in their area for these specific blind bags.)

Button Canister Keychain (A Story Post)

When I first found this keychain years ago at a consignment shop, there was a baseball card inside of it. I gave the card to my cousin S.V. after my dad bought the keychain for me. At the time, I think I was drawn to this keychain because of its potential. In my young mind, the possibilities of what I could put inside it seemed endless.

The reason I decided to fill it with buttons had a lot to do with my mother. Mom likes to sew, and when me and my siblings were kids there were a lot more brick and morter stores that sold fabric and sewing notions than there are today. There was one store I remember in particular because it had a large bin of loose buttons that were sold by the scoop. It was a small store, and my mom would often let us kids stand there and pick through the buttons while she did her shopping. Sometimes she'd even let us fill a scoop with buttons to buy and bring home. All of Mom's spare buttons were stored in empty cookie tins under her bed, and every now and then she'd pull out a tin and let us empty it out onto her bed so we could run our fingers through the buttons.

The buttons inside this keychain were all taken from my mom's stash, with her permission. Now every time I look at it, I remember the thrill I felt as a child grabbing handfuls of buttons and letting them fall through my fingers. I like to think that my fascination with Mom's button tins was similar to the fascination that most young kids have with ball pits. Plunging my hands into a box of buttons somewhat parallels jumping into a ball pit, at least in my mind.

Signed, Treesa

Keychain Customizing (A DIY Project Showcase)

There are certainly a wide variety of keychains on the market, to the point where collectors can find just about anything they desire in keychain form. However, mass produced items, no matter how well made they are, can still lack something. You can't buy a mass market keychain without being aware that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other people who have the exact same keychain. Collectors who want something a little more unique can either pay a professional crafter to make them a custom product, or they can make their own keychains from scratch. I've dabbled in jewelry making, but I'm not particularly good at it. However, there is a way around this. There are plenty of mass-produced keychains that can be customized to give them a personal touch. Below are some examples that I've done. I hope that they'll give you some ideas of your own for dressing up your keychains.

This first custom project looks a lot more complicated than it actually was. It started out as a plain clipboard keychain made from unfinished wood that I purchased a number of years ago at a local craft store. Sadly, the craft store in question went out of business. But I wouldn't be surprised if you can still find these keychains online.

Step one involved painting the exposed wood with light blue acrylic paint. The sand dollar and the darker blue flourish designs are actually rub-on transfers. The sand dollar was applied first, but because the rub-on transfer sheet had been sitting around for a while and hadn't aged well I couldn't get the entire design to transfer. Adding the flourish designs helped to better define the shape of the sand dollar. People I showed this keychain to didn't really seem to notice the missing patches of the design.

I decided to coat the finished project with a thin layer of spray sealant, which is basically clear spray paint, to help protect the design and the paint from scratching and chipping. (I later added a thin coat of matte varnish.) All in all, I'm really pleased with how this keychain turned out. I'm also really proud that I was able to salvage it when the sand dollar design didn't transfer all the way.

I bought this Alexon plush alligator keychain from a flea market specifically so that I could customize the little, white tee shirt. The butterfly design was actually supposed to be a dragonfly. I made the design by applying some green paint to a dragonfly shaped acrylic stamp, then stamping on the fabric. (I placed a layer of glossy cardstock inside the shirt when I did the stamping, so that the shirt would lie flatter and so that the paint wouldn't bleed through to the other side.)

Once the paint was dry, I felt that the design needed more detail. So I went out and bought a blue paint pen. Unfortunately I picked up the wrong point size, buying the fine point instead of the ultra fine point. I didn't realize my mistake until after I'd removed the plastic wrapping and took the cap off the pen, so I couldn't return or exchange it. I tried to 'make it work' as they say, but instead of the fine detail I wanted the blue paint ended up sort of blobby. It still looks ok, just not what I was originally aiming for.

The airplane and cloud designs on this duffle bag keychain were made with acrylic paint and a set of children's stencils. The stencils were a little difficult to work with. For starters, I was having some trouble getting the bag to lie flat enough to apply the designs. Also, because the stencils were intended for children, they were made from a much thicker plastic than stencils made for adult crafters. So getting into the corners of the designs was trickier. I'm also not convinced that the airplane's color scheme coordinates well with the duffle. When I first picked the colors, I was working under the assumption that khaki is a neutral color and therefore goes with everything. (I also forgot to take the black straps into consideration, which is why the details on the airplane are dark blue instead of black.)

This clear, key-shaped keychain is made of smooth plastic. To make the floral design at the top, I first used some acrylic stamps and two colors of solvent ink. When the stamping didn't turn out quite as cleanly as I would've liked, I filled in parts of the design with Sharpie markers. I later sealed everything with a thin coat of spray sealant.

Originally, the red plastic record on this keychain was one of those clip-on charms that were so popular in the 1980s. However, when I attempted to convert the clip-on into a keychain it became much harder to tell what the charm was actually meant to be. It looked more like a tire, or just a plain, plastic disc shape, than a record. So I added the silver music note charm to make it more obvious.

Even though I thought the real printed pages inside this dictionary keychain were awesome, I really didn't like the cover design. So I covered over both the front and the back covers with pieces of dark blue sticker paper embellished with alphabet stickers.

Over this I placed some clear packing tape to form a protective layer. I left the spine uncovered, since it had the word 'Dictionary' on it already.

In the case of this last keychain, someone else did the customizing for me. But I thought it was a nice idea for a quick project, so I decided to share it on the blog anyway. The keychain itself is made of wood, with a sticker letter monogram on each side. I found it for sale at a thrift store, and since the letter used is my first initial I bought it for my keychain collection.

As you can see, there are a number of ways to customize mass-produced keychains. A little paint or ink, some stickers or rub-on transfers, even adding extra charms can turn a basic keychain into something unique. So why not give it a try for yourself.

Signed, Treesa

Notebook Keychains (A Rant)

In my experience, mini notebook keychains are adorable as keychains but useless as notebooks. The one time I tried actually writing something in a keychain notebook, the stress on the binding that resulted from holding the notebook open caused the pages to separate from the spine. I think the problem was in the design. With most of the notebook keychains I've come across, the pages are glued inside the spine, rather than being sewn with string or spiral bound with wire. This is probably the most cost effective option for manufacturing notebook keychains, but as I said before it makes the end products more or less useless for writing in.

There are a lot of people who like to carry a small notebook around with them, tucked into their bag or purse. Writers, scrapbookers, and other creative types like to have somewhere to jot down quotes and other inspiration before their next big idea slips their minds. Busy working professionals will keep a small notebook handy to write out a quick to-do list or copy down contact information. In theory, having the notebook on a keychain would be convenient and would save on space. But what good is a notebook that you can't actually write in without it falling apart?

As I said before, I found out about the fragile nature of notebook keychains the hard way.

I can't remember exactly where I got the keychain pictured above, but I most likely bought it second-hand. It was made by Applause, and the Disney fan in me was probably drawn to the Piglet design on the front cover. Around the same time that I started using my scrapbooking and papercrafting supplies to create personalized artwork for my photo keychains, I got the idea to try 'scrapbooking' my notebook keychains as well. I decided to turn this Piglet keychain into an A.A. Milne quote book. (Milne was the author of the original Winnie The Pooh stories.) My plan was to use stamping, as well as a package of tiny, Winnie The Pooh themed stickers, to decorate the project.

As you can see from the photo above, I did get one quote into the book. However the block of pages separated from the spine before I'd even completed what you see in the picture. I decided to finish the pages I'd started, before gluing the notebook back together with strong craft adhesive. However, after that I admitted defeat. I didn't even attempt to design any more pages because I didn't want to risk the book falling apart again.

I think the pages I was able to complete turned out really well, and I'm still disappointed that I wasn't able to do more with this project. I'm also disappointed because I was looking forward to customizing the rest of my notebook keychains. But that particular project will likely be put on hold indefinitely. After all, who wants to put time and effort into something if it's just going to fall apart?

Okay, done ranting for now.

Signed, Treesa

The Most I've Ever Paid For A Keychain

(Note: This post has been in draft for a while and is now a little outdated, even more so after last year's trip to Walt Disney World. But I didn't want the work I put into it to go to waste, so I decided to upload it anyway.)

When it comes to buying keychains, I'm pretty much a cheapskate. I rarely pay more than a dollar for a single keychain, at least nowadays. If I remember correctly, back when Basic Fun Inc. was at its peak I was easily shelling out between five and seven dollars apiece for their Barbie keychains and their mini board game keychains. But the last time I bought something in that price range was when I got my World's Coolest Polaroid camera keychain.

(Note: This statement is no longer true. See my Walt Disney World Vacation post.)

In fact, if I hadn't wanted that Polaroid keychain so badly, and if it hadn't been a similar value to my old Basic Fun keychains, I don't think I could've justified the cost to myself. So, $6.99 is pretty much the maximum price that I'm willing to pay for a new, unused keychain. That is, until now.

I fell in love with this notebook keychain the first time I saw it. The cover is made of leather, and the pages inside are stitched into the spine, rather than being glued.

I found the keychain at a little shop called East Meets West. It's the type of place that sells incense, dreamcatchers, and dragon sculptures. My Dad, who has a rock and mineral collection, also likes to look at the store's assortment of stones and crystals.

This style of keychain was available with a number of different cover designs, all of them having some sort of fantasy motif. I specifically remember a dragon design and a pentagram design. However when I looked at the price tag, I went into sticker shock. The cost was $9.99 plus sales tax, for a single keychain. I couldn't justify spending that on such a small, frivolous purchase. But when and where was I ever going to find something like that notebook keychain again? That's when it occurred to me that I might have another option.

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my sisters likes to go to the local Renaissance fairs. I'd only been to a Renaissance fair once, and the experience was off-putting for me thanks to the number of costumed performers who came up to me out of nowhere and tried to involve me in their routines. However I knew there were a lot of vendors and craftspeople at these events, trying to sell their wares. Maybe my sister could find a similar keychain for me at a lower price the next time she made an excursion.

I showed the keychain notebook to my sister and explained that I was hoping she could find me one for less money at the next Renaissance fair. My sister told me that she had seen similar keychains at the Renaissance fairs, but that they were priced higher there than what the store was charging. Even after hearing this I still managed to find the willpower to put the keychain back on the rack. But deep down, I think I knew it was just a matter of time before I bought one.

The next time my family was in the area I went into the store, just to look. At least, that's what I told myself. I immediately looked for the rack with the leather covered keychain notebooks. It had been moved since the last time I'd shopped there, and there were a lot fewer keychains on the display. I was hit with a new feeling of urgency. If I waited any longer to buy one of these keychains the store might sell out before I could get one and they might not restock them. I felt like it was now or never, so I bought one.

I'm not sure why I picked the unicorn design cover. Like I said before, there were a lot fewer keychains when I got back to the store, so the cover options were also more limited. Maybe it has something to do with seeing The Last Unicorn film too many times during my childhood. Regardless, I don't think I'll be spending $9.99 on a single keychain again any time soon.

(Note: Famous last words)

Signed, Treesa

Other Uses For Photo Keychains (A DIY Project Showcase)

The appeal of photo keychains seems to be that they give people a way to carry pictures of their loved ones with them wherever they go. However in order to stay portable, photo keychains must be small. Therefore, the pictures that go inside them must be equally small, sometimes smaller than the standard 'wallet' size. Trimming down a photo to fit inside a keychain, while also making sure that the subject of the photo stays properly centered, can be frustrating. I find this is especially true for frames that have heart-shaped 'windows'.

Over the years, I've bought a number of photo keychains that I thought were interesting or pretty. Most of these keychains were still empty until recently. I just wasn't up for the challenge of trying to find photos I could fit in them. Then one day I was at a flea market, examining yet another photo keychain, when inspiration struck. That past Christmas I had personalized some photo ornaments to use as gifts, filling the frames with patterned paper and other, flat embellishments instead of photos. What if I took what I'd learned on that project and applied it to my photo keychains?

My first attempt to adapt this idea used the same photo keychain that I'd been studying at the flea market. The keychain 'frame' is made from silver tone metal, with the words "Forever and Ever" engraved on the back.

This inscription led me to go with a 'love' theme for the project. With this theme in mind, I pulled out a sheet of leftover Valentine's Day stickers. The stickers were on the older side, and over time they'd actually become fused to the backing sheet. However the artwork on them was so beautiful, I just couldn't bring myself to throw them away. For this project, the fused backing actually ended up working to my advantage, since it let me use the sticker without having to mount it on a separate piece of cardstock first. I just used the piece of clear transparency that came inside the frame as a template to trim out one sticker with the attached backing. Then all I had to do was slip the sticker with the backing inside the frame and slide the transparency into place over the sticker to protect the image.

Since this particular photo keychain is top-loading, the keyring helps to hold the design in place.

This next project was a little more challenging, since the blue, faux alligator skin frame has a heart-shaped 'window'. This time I decided to use patterned paper from my scrapbooking and papercrafting stash, instead of a sticker. So I rummaged through my box of paper scraps, trying to find something that would coordinate with the frame. After pulling out several different papers that I thought seemed promising, I slid out the piece of clear transparency that had come with the frame and laid it on top of each paper, trying to get an idea what the different parts of the designs would look like inside the frame. I finally decided to center my design around a flower with a blue center that I thought coordinated nicely with the color of the frame. Using the piece of transparency as a guide, I trimmed around the flower, then slid my patterned paper square into the frame.

It looked okay, but the design still needed something. After some thinking, I pulled out a pack of clear stickers with quotes printed on them. After trimming the word "smile" off the end of a quote, I reached through the frame's heart-shaped 'window' opening and positioned the sticker word on the patterned paper. After the sticker was in place I slid the piece of transparency back into the frame on top of the patterned paper. I later decided to sandwich the patterned paper between two pieces of clear packing tape, for added durability.

The photo keychain pictured above is referred to as a 'Sparkle Sphere' on the tag. There's a price sticker from a store called Zany Brainy on the back of the tag. I remember this store very fondly from my childhood. I especially remember the Carousel Kids wooden 'paper dolls' and the wide variety of toy food that the store had for sale. I also remember how disappointed I was when the store closed.

The 'Sparkle Sphere' keychain is actually made in two halves that twist apart. Each half has a chamber filled with water and glitter. When a photo is sandwiched in between the two halves, it results in sort of a snow globe effect. This design also means that the keychain is double-sided, with space for two separate images.

Playing off of the snow globe idea, I selected some stickers based on the Disney movie Frozen that had come free with a mail-in offer. Free is always good, but by far the best part was that the stickers were already circular. I just had to trim them down a sliver so they would fit inside the keychain. I used one sticker of Olaf and one sticker of Elsa, adhering each sticker to thin cardstock to make it easier to work with. After the stickers were trimmed, I placed them inside the keychain back to back.

This next photo keychain is also double-sided.

For the front, I took a Santa Claus design postage stamp that I'd saved from an old Christmas card and, after carefully steaming off the remaining piece of the envelope, I adhered the stamp to a piece or red cardstock that I'd trimmed to fit the keychain. The stamp wasn't quite wide enough to fill the keychain on its own, so the red provides a nice border. Besides, I needed to mount the stamp on a separate piece of paper anyway, both to make it sturdier and to give me a blank canvas for the back of the keychain.

Speaking of the back, here's how that turned out. The holly design was paper pieced by stamping the design onto the red cardstock, them stamping it again on a separate piece of dark green cardstock and cutting out the leaves. In hindsight, I think the holly might've looked better if I'd used a lighter shade of green cardstock.

This photo keychain was purchased for me by my sister K. at Dorney Park. Planet Snoopy was one of Dorney Park's attractions, and the back of this keychain actually features a Snoopy design that looks like it was etched into the metal. Unfortunately, thanks to the metal's shiny, mirror-like finish photographing this design has been impossible for me. Regardless, I thought it would be fun to put a picture of Snoopy inside the keychain. So I cut one out of the Sunday newspaper. Once I'd trimmed the newsprint to the correct size to fit in the frame, I carefully sandwiched it between two pieces of clear packing tape, to give it some much needed durability. An interesting side-note, this frame is actually held closed with magnets, one of which already came loose and had to be glued back into place with extra strong craft glue.

This picture frame keychain featuring Goofy with a life preserver actually ended up in a box of 'spare' keychains that I was planning to sell. I couldn't remember where I'd gotten it, and at the time I had no idea what to do with it. However, I decided to take another look at it when I was in the midst of trying to fill my other photo keychains. I created the Finding Nemo themed insert for this keychain by applying a rub-on transfer to a piece of cardstock for the background, and then adhering a Nemo character sticker to the center. As usual, the insert was sandwiched between two pieces of clear packing tape to make it more durable.

I think the picture frame keychain shown above is a good example of why my photo keychains stayed empty for so long. In order to fit a picture in this frame, that picture would've needed to be cut into a circle. Combine that with the small size of the keychain and I would've been tearing my hair out if I'd gone the traditional route and tried to put a photo in the frame. Instead, I cut a circle from pale purple cardstock and used a small flower stamper and several colors of ink to create a background. The word "Pretty" was spelled out using tiny letter stickers. I wanted to go with a beauty theme for this project because there's a small mirror on the back of the keychain.

For this last example, I thought the design of the combination flashlight/picture frame mimicked the look of a handheld video game. So I chose an oversized Pikachu sticker for the image. The sticker was actually a little too long for the frame. But this ended up being a good thing, because the sticker also wasn't quite as tall as the opening for the picture. So after carefully measuring and cutting a piece of cardstock to the right dimensions, I peeled off the sticker and centered Pikachu on top of the cardstock. Then I trimmed the edges of the sticker, using the excess to cover up any remaining exposed cardstock.

I hope you enjoyed this 'DIY Project Showcase', and I hope I've inspired some of you to 'think outside the frame' and experiment with new ideas for photo keychain inserts. Whether you decide to use some of my suggestions or come up with your own, I'd love to hear about your creations in the comments section.

Signed, Treesa