DIY American Girl Doll Sunshade

I'm back from a 2 week blogging hiatus.  Life has been crazy hectic lately and actually the last 2 weeks have been a little more mellow than they had been...but I still felt like I needed a time out from something.  Sadly, I wish that time out could have been from something else...like my 9-5, or cleaning, or cooking because I would love nothing more than to blog all day.  But life must go on so blogging went on the back burner.  

But I'm back and ready to share some projects with you!

I don't know about you but my nieces LOVE American Girl dolls.  I always love them as a kid and would day dream about having my own while I flipped through the catalog but I never had the chance to own one myself.  You could say that my nieces dolls are just as fun for me as they are for them.  It's like I'm a kid all over again!  For Christmas I made all kinds of accessories for them and I will gradually sharing them all with you.

First up are the sunshades I made for their jeeps.

At work we got in a huge case of Turduckens for our big Holiday Meal that we put on for the whole hospital.  They came in frozen wrapped in this insulated bubble wrap type packaging.

Can you spot the Momo?

As soon as I  saw it I screamed ..Sunshade!!!  It was perfect!

I had my sister send me the measurements for the doll jeep and I created a template that size with rounded edges and traced it onto the material. You will need two of these to create your sunshade since it is only reflective on one side

Cut them out and then take electrical tape that has been folded over onto itself to be thinner and not sticky and hot glue it onto the edge of one of the pieces.  Do another for the other side as these will be your tie strings for your shade.

Using plenty of hot glue sandwich the two pieces together.  Using electrical tape again, fold the tape as neatly in half all the way around the outside edge of your shade.  This will hold it together even better and give it the realistic piping edge look of a real shade

You're all done!  

At first I thought I would need velcro or something to hold it in place on the windshield since it obviously doesn't have visors like a real car to hold it in place.  Luckily though the windshield has a slight lip and it pops in nicely and holds in place

If you can't get your hands on material like this for free like I did you could always buy a sunshade for cheap at the dollar store.  You will get a few of them out of just $1 spent.