Father’s Day Keychain

Full instructions on how to make a Father’s Day Keychain! Take your kid’s precious drawings and notes and turn them into a darling keepsake for dad! 

I’m always looking for fun unique gifts to give to dad for Father’s Day! This year we are doing these leather keychains that are customized with heat transfer vinyl saying from a kid’s note! I’ve got the full instructions here so you can make your special guy a totally sweet keychain too! You can take the basic instructions and turn those handwritten notes into a cute sign as I did here if you don’t want to do a keychain! 

Pair these keychains with these free father’s day card printables

How to make a father’s day keychain with a special saying

Supplies you need to make a leather keychain

I grabbed all these supplies from Hobby Lobby but you might already have some on hand.

• Leather (more down below about the leather/pleather)
• Heat transfer vinyl
• Keychain rings
• E6000
• scissors
• electronic cutter (Cricut or Silhouette)
• iron, heat press, or easy press.

Let’s talk leather quickly. I ran into 3 different types of leather/pleather at Hobby Lobby.

• First They have a whole leather section. Real leather.
• Second. There are also faux leather sheets that are with the felt sheets.
• Third: There are faux leather rolls over in the ribbon department (the purpose is bow making I believe)

For this craft, I used the faux felt sheets. The price was right and so was the color! I have ironed on vinyl onto a leather bookmark before and it worked! So you can use real leather! If you scroll to the bottom, I have an example of what the HTV looks like on the roll of faux leather! No matter what option you get, they all will work! 

How to make the Vinyl Decal

Gather your hand-drawn messages! To make sure that you get the best cut with your cutter, a black marker on white paper is recommended. You can take a black marker and trace over something that was already drawn. 

Take a photo with your phone and upload it to your electronic cutter software!

If you are using a silhouette Cameo: Here is a whole post about tracing in the silhouette cameo 

If you are using a Cricut: Upload the photo and remove the background. It was as easy as that! 

Once you have it sized down (I did my keychain about 3 inches long by 1 inch tall!) Send to your cutter and cut out with Heat transfer vinyl. Since I wanted mine to stand out on the leather, I did the offset to create a border around the words.  Weed away the excess vinyl. 

I was a little nervous about whether the easy press would melt or ruin the leather (or pleather). But no matter what kind I used (and I tried them all) they worked great! 

I did put a multiuse paper over the project to protect the iron from actually touching any part of the leather. 

I followed the time and heat that were recommended on the instructions of the heat transfer vinyl. (The vinyl I used was flocked, holographic, and regular so they all vary. )

After both layers were done, I peeled off the carrier sheet

How to make the father’s day keychain

I cut one long strip in the leather. 

I folded it over to where I approximately would want the keychain and cut it out so only a notch was intact. This makes it so the front and back are both nice leather sides. 

I slide the keychain on. 

Covered it with e6000 and immediately sandwiched it back together. 

I placed a book on top and let it sit for 24 hours. 

After it was set up, I took my scissors and cut out around the words. You could use the offset and have your Cricut or silhouette pro to cut it out for you but it was so easy to just loosely go around it with scissors. 

Finished!

And that’s it! Super easy way to take your kid’s precious drawings or notes and turn them into something dad will cherish! The perfect Father’s Day gift! 

Leather Experiments

Let’s take it one step further! I wanted to try out this roll of leather that Hobby Lobby carries! I wanted to see if the iron would work on it! 

And it totally did! How cute is this pink keychain? Perfect for Mother’s Day! 

But since the rolls of leather that they have are pretty limited in the color- I took it ONE more step further and pressed heat transfer vinyl on top of the letter to give it another pattern! And that worked as well! So these are heat transfer patterns, pressed onto the pink leather. With the handwritten message in iron-on vinyl layered on top! 

I had such a blast making these! If you want to save this post for later here is an image you can pin:

I have lots of father’s day gift idea posts! Here are some of my favorites!

• Giant Dollar store trophy
• Father’s Day Mad Libs
• Shrinky Dink Tie Tack
• Funny Father’s Day Spinner
• Father’s Day gifts that kids can make!