A couple months ago I was making some gifts for family and friends, and wanted to make a paper quilled cat keychain. I did a google search for some inspiration and found these adorable cats made by Larisa:
These looked so cute and customizable! Plus she has an in progress photo so you can see a little better how to make it. Click here for the page on her blog with the details!
With keychains I worry about the design being handled a lot, banged around, etc. Even if you apply a sealant it is much more delicate than a typical keychain. So I decided to insert it into a blank acrylic keychain for strong protection. I didn’t get any great photos of the cat I made, as I forgot to take photos before I inserted it into the plastic, and the lighting wasn’t very good either. But you get the idea! I chose colors based on the colors of the cat of the friend that I gave this to.
Be careful when buying acrylic keychains online. You want to make sure you get the ones that have a depth to them. Most are just flat, made for inserting a photograph or other picture. Just a few are made to insert charms, quilling, etc.
The keychain I used is not currently for sale at Custom Quilling Store and I can’t find it on Amazon either. I googled around, but I can’t find it elsewhere either. I’ll keep looking and try to remember to update this post if I find it elsewhere! It’s a pity they are hard to find!
At Custom Quilling Store you can get this fancy one from Quilled Creations which looks fun! They also come as lockets for necklaces.
If you are looking on Amazon, be careful, as most there are just made for putting photos in. I couldn’t find any acrylic ones that had a depth to them on Amazon. You can find the fancy Quilled Creations keychain, though, and some similar ones:
The depth for the acrylic one that I used is 1/8″. But the face of the cat has two layers. So for the head I used all narrow pieces of paper, while for the body I used 1/8″ width. The two layers of narrow paper fit just perfectly. Whew! For the narrow papers I used grey and silver grey from Lake City Craft, as well as black, white, and yellow. For the body I used the same grey shades as well as black and Steel Guitar from Little Circles. Speaking of which, just check out how many shades of grey you can get from Little Circles!!! One of these days I’ll have all the Little Circle colors. For now I have a few, and I love how they give me more shades to work with overall.
For the whiskers I cut narrow paper in half, though I wish I could have cut it even more narrow. It is so tiny, but it looks wide in the photos! I should have taken a photo of it in my hand. Of course if you made a larger cat, the whiskers would look thinner by comparison! The biggest strip of paper I used was for the body which was 6″ long. The rest were 3″, 1 1/2″, or even shorter.
Thanks to Larisa for the cat pattern!
Have you made any keychains?
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*All products and supplies mentioned in this post I purchased and/or made on my own.
*This post contains some affiliate links (amazon and Custom Quilling), and some non affiliate links. If you purchase products through the affiliate links I get a small percentage (at no extra cost to you!). I only link to products that I believe in and/or love to use myself. Thank you for supporting my blog!
View Comments (7)
Having 3 cats (and 2 dogs, yes, I know, I'm a traitor !), I appreciate particularly your post. I've got to try to create some of these cute little pussy cats asap !
Can you tell me any other site where I can find these acryllic Keychain with depth
You can check the local craft shops where you live :)
Hey, thanks for this article! :) None of the links to the keychains are working for me- I get the following error message:
"Not Found
The requested URL /shop/product_info.php was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."
Thanks! I have updated this post now, so the links should work. I have many posts on the blog to update, as the sites that I link to have updated their links as well.
Dear Honey, I'm desperate to find those acrylic 1/8" depth lockets for keychains. I searched online for a long time and didn't find any. Since your post, did you find a supplier for them? Hope you're well in these difficult times with the Corona Virus.
Here, in Québec(Canada), we're struggling to prevent any further contamination. Compared to other countries, we're able to keep it under control and maintain a low contamination / deaths rate but we're still not out of the woods yet. In the province, they closed every region border so we can't travel from one region to another. Only for essential services like pharmacies, hospitals, etc... Non essential businesses and schools are closed all over the province. I pray that our world will soon be rid of that horrible thing. Stay safe!
Hi Renée! Sorry for the late reply, I've been so busy that my blog has slipped from my priority list! Here in Malaysia we are just now getting into the worsening part of Covid, ugh. We have been staying at home for almost a year now, not traveling, visiting, etc. But not enough people are staying home and being safe, hence the growing numbers!
It is a bummer that it can be so difficult to find the supplies one wants. Amazon does have some of the correct depth lockets from Quilled Creations: https://amzn.to/39mJwNz
But that is the fancier locket, not the simple keychain type. Here is a simpler one, but it's still glass. It's called a floating locket, you can use that term to search for similar items: https://amzn.to/3qLooWS