Alpha Xi Car Dangly Thing!

Who out there has something dangling from your rear-view mirror in your car? Well, in my hometown, it is the cool thing to have your graduation tassel hanging from your rear-view mirror and me attempting to be cool has had it up there since I got it a little over two years ago.

As I've gone through my college career, gotten married, joined a sorority, and gotten even more involved in church, my life has gone way beyond my high school graduation. And I decided it was about time for my car dangly thing to show that!

So I set out upon my quest! My mission: make an Alpha Xi Delta car dangly thing for as little cost as possible! So I went where anyone would go on this kind of mission: Hobby Lobby! I decided while standing in the scrapbook paper aisle that I would layer the paper with dark blue as the border color and a lighter blue with some sort of pattern as my main letter color (because our colors are light blue, dark blue, and gold)! Here's what I got:

When I got home I planned out what I wanted it to look like exactly (while watching a fantastic House episode!) I played with some different stuff, I could cut out each letter and attach them all with ribbon, I could cut all the letters as one piece of paper, or I could do the letters horizontally. I went with the cut the whole thing as one piece! Here was my planning paper (I know it's basically picasso) ;)

Then I just free-handed the letters with a pencil and cut them out with scissors (I would recommend using a stencil from the internet instead of free handing, I went through quite a few attempts before I got something I could live with)...here's what the background part looks like: (remember to cut these bigger than you will want the actual letters to be)

Then I cut out the patterned paper to fit the background...I don't have an exacto knife yet and I couldn't find our box cutters so I had to cut them out with scissors which is why they look a bit weird in the middle parts. Of course as soon as I was finished I found the box cutter...doesn't it always happen like that!

Once I had them laid out the way I wanted, I put a dab of glue to hold them in place and I modpodged the whole thing!

I got the glossy kind but if I had to do it over again I would get the matte finish stuff. I've never used mod podge before so I don't technically know what the matte looks like, but I think the glossy makes this look a bit cheap...which it was...so I guess it isn't that bad :)

Then I got some yellow ribbon...well it really isn't ribbon, it's more cord I guess...and I hot glued that to the back of my Alpha! (remember to measure before you go to gluing, because you need to have enough length to get the cord around your mirror) Then I went outside to see how it looked.

 It was a bit long for my taste...so I tied a little knot in the top to decrease the length without having it permanently fixed to my rear view mirror:

Then it was too short....Dang it!

So I re-did my knot a little looser and got this:

And I think it's juuuust right :)

So what do you guys have hanging from your rear-view mirrors these days? Have you had that something up there forever? Or do you like to change things out from time to time?