DIY Authentic Looking Championship Belt

This post is a sponsored by Oriental Trading. As a Brand Ambassador we receive products for review. All opinions and projects are my own.

Does family game night bring out your competitive spirit? Sometimes bragging rights just aren’t enough. That is why we made our own Authentic Looking Championship Belt! 

Several of our family members keep a Yahtzee competition going year round and their belt is always changing hands. My mother-in-law is usually the champ. Our grandchildren love playing board games when we host big dinners at our house so I decided to surprise them with our new Authentic Looking Championship Belt.

How To Make A Championship Belt 

If you have visited this blog before, you may know we shop Oriental Trading for party supplies but did you know that Oriental Trading has plenty of crafting supplies too?

You know how sometimes when you are in search of the perfect crafting supply it doesn’t seem to be anywhere? We were able to find the perfect flags for this project while shopping Oriental Trading! The design inspiration for our Championship belt is one of the WWE World Heavyweight belts which has world flags in the plates on the sides. The flags chosen for our belt represent the United States of America, Japan, Great Britain and Canada. 

Supplies

• 1 piece white foam board
• Graph paper
• 2 sheets of gold sparkle craft paper
• 1 sheet of silver sparkle craft paper
• 2 sheets of red sparkle craft paper
• 1 sheet black craft paper
• Small Flags of All Nations 
• Self adhesive jewels 
• 1 1/2 yards faux leather fabric
• Sharpie® Gold Marker
• E6000 glue
• Elmer’s® Glue

Our Championship belt began by creating a template. We are working from scratch with our own design.

First we used graph paper to create the template for the main part of the belt which we are calling the buckle. Because one sheet of graph paper isn’t large enough, we taped multiple pieces together. Our buckle is about 7 1/2″ tall and 12 1/4″ long.

Also using the graph paper, we created rectangles with rounded edges for our flags. Each rectangle is 4 1/4″ tall and 3 1/2″ wide.

Next we traced the designs of both the buckle and the rectangles onto our foam board and using a sharp crafting knife made the cuts.

Now we use the cut foam board to trace around the edges onto the gold craft paper. Cut and set aside.

Use a Gold Sharpie® marker to color the edges of all the foam board for a nice finished look.

We ordered the wrong size letters and wound up making our own so a word from the wise, be sure about your letter sizes prior to placing your order! 

That graph paper is a handy tool to have around for die hard crafters who do not own a Cricut! Someone please tell Santa to send me a Cricut this year! If you have a Cricut or similar machine, use it for this step! If not, you know the drill. My hubby drew the letters free hand then used them to make the cuts on the red sparkled craft paper. 

Cut and glue the gold craft paper onto the cut foam board pieces. We used E6000  to attach the gold craft paper but I’m sure Elmer’s would have worked just fine.

We used a cup from the kitchen to create the circle on the silver sparkle craft paper then glued it at the top of the belt buckle. The black shapes on either side of the circle were cut from black craft paper. 

Begin glueing all of the pieces into place as seen above. The flags come attached to a stick for display purposes. We cut the flags from the stick and then trimmed them down to fit our rectangle pieces.

One of everyone’s favorite things about our DIY Championship belt is the bling from the stick on jewels. We selected larger jewels so they would stand out. 

Now for the faux leather fabric and a little bit of sewing. Fold the fabric in half. Our finished belt is about 48″ long.

My hubby centered the buckle of the belt onto the fabric and using a sewing pencil marked the lines for the hem on the rounded part at top then used a straightedge to mark down the sides. 

There are some curves in our belt design but those are fairly easy to maneuver while sewing. Cutting notches on the curves as shown will help the fabric to lay flat. Be careful not to cut your notches too deep.

Pin, pin, and pin down your fabric to hold it in place before beginning to sew the hem. Lots of pinning will help your fabric not to pucker.

Even though the bottom of the belt is where the fabric was folded in half, I did run a hem along that bottom edge for looks. You can see that in the close up photo below.

This faux leather is really thin and did not require a different needle in my machine. I was pleasantly surprised! After sewing the hem around the edges, trim off the excess.

Now we glued down all of our Championship Belt designs to the front of the faux leather using the E6000. Once we had them all glued down, we placed heavy books on top during the drying time. 

We left our Championship belt open without a closure because our crew likes to show it off over their shoulders plus winners come in all sizes! You can easily either sew or glue velcro to the ends for closure.

The first person to win our new Championship Belt was our handsome grandson Connor after a lively game of Clue. What board games do your family enjoy playing? Clue is our current favorite but Monopoly has been known to take center stage also.

Head on over to Oriental Trading for crafting supplies to make your family a Championship Belt! Shhhh, don’t tell them what you are making. It’s a great surprise! 

Find the Oriental Trading craft supplies page here.

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