DIY Scrapbuster Lanyard

Are you tired of losing Library cards? Here’s a DIY scrapbuster lanyard to help you and your kids keep track of them!

We recently had another child receive their own library card, and quite frankly, 4 library cards were too many for me to keep track of. So, I decided to make some easy lanyards to hook the kids’ library cards to so that I don’t have to worry about them getting lost or going through the laundry. Lucky for me, the project was totally free since I just used scraps that I had laying around.

So, here’s my DIY Scrapbuster Lanyard tutorial with not much sewing jargon, since I can’t really sew anything other than a straight line…

DIY Scrapbuster Lanyard

First, measure the fabric against the child. You want to make sure it is long enough to get over their head easy, but not too long. I found that 35″ was the perfect length. I tried using both a 2 1/2″ and 3″ wide strip. They both look great, but the 3″ strip was definitely easier to turn back the right way after sewing.

Sew the whole long strip with right sides together. Line up the fabric with the inside edge of the presser foot.

Flip it inside out so that the right sides of the fabric are showing. Now, this can be extremely time consuming, or you can watch this video, and it makes the whole process MUCH easier! (I just used the eraser side of a pencil).

To make the project to look more finished, top-stitch along each side, again lining up the fabric with the inside edge of the presser foot.

Next, hem up the ends (which I suppose you could already have one end closed and top stitch it, but I didn’t think that far ahead while making this).

Lastly, squish a little 5″ or so piece of elastic in between the two hemmed edges and zig zag stitch it together.

And boom! It’s done! Simply hole-punch the library cards, loop the elastic through the hole and over the library card. Make it nice and tight and you’re good to go!

These lanyards are the best way we have found to keep track of all the millions of cards and passes we have. We are currently still using them for library cards, but also have some for pool passes now too!

How do you keep track of your library cards?