DIY projects: make a orange candle & cassette tape wallet

 Let’s start with how to make a candle with orange.

Things needed:

• an orange
• any type of oil like vegetable or olive oil

Remove/eat the middle portion of the orange, but be careful to leave the middle stem-like portion intact. Easy way to remove the middle portion can be done with a sharp knife by digging out the middle starting with the closest edge outside the orange . Fill the empty cavity with oil just below the center stem, like a wick. Light the center stem like a wick. This orange can be burned for most of the day.

Now head towards the making of cassette tape wallet

Cassette tapes may be outdated and a bit obsolete, but you can still enjoy your favorites or some kitschy titles with this easy cassette tape wallet. Whip this baby out at the checkout and reap the conversational rewards.

Thing needed

• An old cassette tape
• A scrap of fabric (At least as wide as your cassette and twice as tall.)
• Scissors
• chalk
• Hot glue gun
• Sewing needle and thread .

First, you’ll need to take apart the cassette tape. Depending on how old it is, this can prove to be a difficult task. My tape is a little old, so I needed to fetch a screwdriver to remove five screws that held the tape together.

More recent tapes will require you to pop a few plastic prongs that hold the tape together. To do this, slip a dull butter knife or flathead screwdriver in the center crack of the cassette. Pry it up until you’ve popped apart the glue holding it together. Be careful that you don’t crack the tape in the process… lots of tapes die this way.

Pick a felt or fabric lining that will complement the color of your tape or zipper. You won’t need much fabric at all for this, so dive into that scrap pile for some old favorites. Lay the sides of the cassette top to bottom and use your chalk to trace around them on the fabric. Cut it out and put your fabric aside for now.

We are going to attach the top of the zipper first, where the head of the zipper is. Don’t worry about trimming the extra zipper length right now.

Use your hot glue gun to lay down a line of glue inside one edge of a cassette half.

Very carefully press the side of the zipper into the glue, as shown. You need to be careful because if that glue gets into your zipper teeth, you’ll be spending some time picking it out.

Gluing the top of the zipper means you’ll have to negotiate the corner. To do this, make a little fold in the edge of the zipper, as shown.

Lay a strip of glue all along the top of the cassette, then carefully press on the zipper. After this is dry, dab a dot of glue under that corner flap and hold it down until the glue cools.

For the last side, you’ll need to make that folded corner again and glue it just as you did in the last step.

Lay down the glue right to the end, and press on the zipper even if it is too long and hangs over the edge of the tape.

Give the zipper a snip right at the bottom edge of the cassette. Now you’ll need to sew up the end of the zipper to keep the zipper head from slipping right off.

In this step, you need to be careful not to glue your cassette so that the halves of the tape are uneven. To do this, we’ll zip it up as we glue.

Unzip the zipper. Lay a strip of hot glue along the edge of the next cassette half that will be at the bottom of the zipper, as shown. Press the edge of the zipper into the glue, being very careful not to let the glue bubble over onto the teeth of the zipper.

When the glue is dry, zip up that part of the zipper. Glue along the top of the cassette, folding the corner over just as you learned to do in the last step. Again, watch that the glue doesn’t get on the zipper teeth! When the glue is dry, zip up the top zipper.

Finally, put a strip of glue on the last side and press on the remaining length of zipper, folding the corner as before. Add dabs of glue on those folded corners and press until the glue has cooled.

Trace a line of hot glue along the inside of the zipper. Lay your cut fabric to match the hot glue.

If you have extra fabric around the glue, clip it after the glue dries. You need to clip the extra fabric to prevent it from getting stuck in the zipper.

Repeat with the other side, carefully folding up the fabric to stick on the other side. Clip extra fabric as needed.

The side of the wallet with the tail of the zipper will have a wide opening when it’s unzipped. When it’s closed, it will be a hole that your change can slip out of. Nobody wants that.

Use a simple overcast stitch to close up this edge. Now your cassette tape wallet should be becomplete.

No matter what, be sure you keep the hot glue off of the zipper teeth. Even residual glue will give you trouble when you’re zipping. Try finding cassettes of your friend’s favorite bands. This is a great gift for someone on your list.