a Custom Medal

Want to make yourself a participation medal? Or just want or make something cool? Well here's a thing to spend some time on. It looks very cool if you take your time on it. Read through this all before going through.

with the ribbon folding, look at the picture that comes next for help.

do it

Step 1: Stuff You'll Need

Anything you see here.

here's a list:

A Dremel with cutting and sanding bits

OR

Scissors or Tin Snips and a File

Two or more tweezers for bending wire

Wire cutters

Ribbon- recommend stripes, grosgrain, and 1.5-inch width.

Secondary Ribbon- thinner

Thin brass sheet

About 20 gauge steel wire (or if want a different flavor of wire- but you don't)

Solder wire

Soldering Iron

Super glue or sewing skills

Epoxy or E6000 type glue - glue that will keep the brass on to ribbon

Scissors for the ribbon

A razor or some other sharp knife

a small cylinder

A larger cylinder

A pin. If you do FRC, use one from there.

The thing you're making a medal out of. Usually a circle, unless you want to be more creative and to something else. Make sure you've drilled a hole in the top. Chose the placement or size, but have one.

Step 2: the Wires

You will want a bigger cylinder and a smaller one. For a smaller one, I used a very thin marker, and a large one I bent around a large marker and a very big grinding bit for Dremel.

Use tweezers to bend one end of the wire around the cylinder.

I twisted one wire around another to make a cool effect.

Cut any extra wire off the cylinder for the bigger one, not the smaller

Step 3: the Smaller Wire

The smaller one should become an oval. to this by leaving a lot and just half curve a bit. Feed it through the hole on the medallion. Then curve the over half and cut the remainder.

Step 4: Soldering the Wires

This is hard to avoid burning your fingers. To avoid this, I set the soldering iron on the stand. Then I melted a decent amount of solder and left it on the iron tip. Then pressed the small gap in the wire onto it. hole the wire with tweezers if you don't care for minor burns. Then shape the blob with a file and the iron. For the larger wire, you wouldn't normally need to solder it, but to keep the wire from unraveling, I soldered each end.

Step 5: Cut Some Ribbon

C U T Y O U S E L F S O M E R I B B O N!

About 8 inches will do. you can have too little, but not too much. You will want about a third of the length you want the ribbon on the medal. If you got the right type of ribbon, it is grosgrain. Cut it straightly.

Step 6: Folding the Ribbon (Part One)

for starters, fold it in half. Then fold the top amount you want down. Glue or sew into place. Fold a bit ( an 8th-4th inch) amount and glue that to the top of a different side. The bottom part will be folded so let it be.

Step 7: Brass

Cut out a rectangle of a thin brass sheet. Have the width be that of your ribbon, the length of about a half inch. Use a file or sanding bits on a Dremel to make the edges straight and bevel them. It looks better with a bevel. Use about 400 or 220 grit to roughen up the sides.

the brass sheet makes it look nicer, include it.

Step 8: Folding the Ribbon (Part 2)

Use the E6000 glue to on the brass sheet. Just smear some on. Press it into the ribbon and wipe any extra. Make sure it is lined up with the ribbon edges. Put a bit of glue on the bottom edge of the brass and fold the last bit of ribbon onto it. Sort of folded that bit of ribbon on itself.

Step 9: Extracting the Pin

Bend the edge of a button with some tweezers. then open the pin up, and push it through the holes on the sheet.

Step 10: Modifying the Wire

Bend the pin down. This makes it closer to where ever you pin it and look better. The end of the pin clips into is what needs to be bent down.

Step 11: Secondary Ribbon

Cut about a half inch more than the width of your ribbon of your secondary ribbon. This should be a thin bit of ribbon that isn't grosgrain. Put glue on one side of it, put it on the top of the ribbon. Make it straight while you can. Smear a cuss ton E6000 (not really- use only how much as you need) and fold the ribbon over the edges and glue to the brass. Stretch it as much as you can.

Step 12: Folding Ribbon (Part 3 - the Revenge of the Super Glue)

This is what the folding is meant to look like sort of but flatter. Put super glue inside of that loop to keep it nioce looking. You have to push down the fabric with your fingers get glue on them. It is necessary. Also, glue or solder on the pin. Solder it on if you want to be that one person. Glue it on. I recommend pushing it into glue and then put some on top of it.

Step 13: Folding the Ribbon (part 4)

Fold in the corners. Glue a bit if you want. Glue from the back, glue the tip. You want to do an inside-reverse fold. If you have the correct- I mean the same ribbon as me, fold the corners up until middle stripe.

Step 14: It Should Look Like This

Step 15: Making It All Work

Stretch the loop out a bit, slip it into the loop in the ribbon. Pinch the loop so it won't fall out. If you want, close the loop all the way. Or close it off with some solder and another bit of wire

Step 16: Congrats

You're done. hopefully.

Step 17:

Medal responsibly. People will be offended if you make it look like an actual military medal. You should have a reason in mind for why you have the medal, or else your response to why you have will be an awkward silence. And that participation medal was a joke, don't make a participation medal, they are for the weak.