shirt rework

i have several shirts that are too big on me. i've been adding clothes to a pile of things that i wanted to rework into something. i love this pink floyd shirt and i hated that it was too big on me. so i took that t-shirt and 3 flannel shirts that don't fit right anymore and made something new. i meant to make a dress, but turns out they were all the same amount of too big so it turned out more like a tunic than a dress. i really like it though. i guess i could have added more panels of flannels on the bottom part to make it more of a dress, but i didn't think of that and it's very wearable like this. this was really easy to make. i just cut each flannel right where the armpit starts. i wanted to keep the pockets, because everything is better with pockets. i really hate how they're covering up the "floyd" though, so i guess i should have dropped the pockets, but still pockets are awesome. i have a serger and a regular sewing machine, so i used the serger to sew the flannel side seams together. then i pinned the flannel shirts to the t-shirt with right sides together, which i cut just below the "floyd". i didn't sew across the pockets. i turned it right side out and then topstitched where the pockets overlap. easy and it only took me about 20 minutes to do this!

Starlord's blaster

: one of Alex's costumes for Wizard World this year was Starlord from Guardians of the Galaxy. Stan Lee was scheduled to be at the event this year and this is one of his movies (he had to cancel due to pneumonia.) We didn't plan ahead very far this year since we weren't originally planning on attending, so i bought most of the costume. I did paint the blaster. I started with a toy that is complete with some lights and sound effects. My skills don't particularly lie in painting, but I'll get better with practice. I do like how this one turned out and it looked great with her costume.

sugar skull mask

this year i was asked to participate in the sugar skull mask show at work. i was so excited. i believe this was the second year the hispanic resource network group put together this show. they have a limited budget, therefore limited masks; so they ask a select number of artists from different departments around the company. i had a couple of ideas immediately, but went with a more traditional look for the sugar skull. i love sugar skulls by the way. i started by cutting off the jaws of the mask (i forgot to take a picture before i cut them off and put down a base white coat front and back.) i painted my design on the skull next and drilled holes at the forehead for the flowers to be added later. at the same time i started making little red and pink resin cast skulls that i put as the center of the roses (you can't really see them in the final piece because of the rose petals, but i still love how the resin skulls turned out.) next i started gluing on all those tiny little gems over my painted designs. originally i was going to cover the entire white part as well in gems, but i stopped because i liked the look with just the colored gems. and finally i glued the rose headdress into place. the show turned out great - we have some incredibly talented people here at work. happy (early) day of the dead (dia de los muertos.)

doodled shoes

i finally made a pair of doodled shoes. i have been wanting to do this forever and i've had those white shoes for years and just never got started. i couldn't decide what to draw. also, i had bought alex a pair of the natural colored toms for the art bin for our cabin vacation. i always pack a big bin of arts and activities and surprises for our vacation in canada - alex always is looking for arts and crafts to do and that's on a sunny weather day; if it rains for a week straight i need lots of activities to keep her from going stir-crazy. so we had fabric paint out one day at the cabin because we were freezer paper stenciling shirts and i decided on a whim to pull out our shoes to put down a layer of color before our doodles. alex's favorite color is green so of course she chose that and i'm a big fan of neon :). we let the paint dry and then just started drawing on them with fine-point sharpies. alex drew a picture of our dog and wrote all sorts of words about friends and family - very cute. i went with a sunflower theme and just doodled flowers everywhere there was paint (i did not cover the shoes in yellow - the heels are still white and a little of the sides.) i like how they turned out and i'm happy that i finally went ahead and started them. now i'm too scared to wear mine!

snowflake hair pins

alex is going to be elsa for halloween this year (probably along with every other little girl in the world.) we got a great dress from disney on sale already (although i took off the stupid medallion of elsa on the costume.  i don't really think if you're dressed up like the character that you should have a picture of the character on the actual dress.) i just bought some glitter toms on ebay for her to wear; they are the perfect shade of glitter and they will be really comfortable for her to trick-or-treat in (much better for her than those dress up shoes, which she'd end up complaining about.) she just had to have the gloves too, even though elsa doesn't wear the gloves once she's wearing the blue gown, but hey, it's cold in october so why not. alex keeps going back and forth on whether or not she wants to wear a wig, but she has been growing out her hair so she can donate it when it's long enough, so i bet we can get an elsa braid with her natural hair. once elsa is the snow queen she has that big side braid and it's filled with snowflakes, so i decided that's where i can customize alex's costume a little. so i found some small silicone molds of various snowflakes and made a bunch of resin snowflakes. i just used clear resin and mixed in irridescent glitter. i think they turned out fabulous. i then glued them to miniature bobby pins (colored for blonde hair.) i made a whole bunch of them so now we can braid her hair and put snowflakes all over her head. and we got tickets for frozen on ice, so i told her she can wear the full costume again when we go to that :)

neon shirt crafting

i always bring lots of crafts and surprises and activities on vacation with us since it's in the back woods of Canada and if there's rain, you need stuff to do. we had a nice mix this year; it started out chillier and rainy and then warmed up, but not too hot. so we didn't do a ton of crafting (time always goes by so fast on holiday), but we did make quite a few shirts. since i like to screenprint i'm always buying blank shirts on sale and setting them aside for later, so i had a few packed to play with. and last year i bought some glow in the dark fabric puffy paint and some neon splatter fabric paint (and last year we did not get around to making a single shirt.) alex and i made 3 shirts each. i love her neon splattered white shirt; so 80s. i tried using the neon splatter on that dark grey shirt which didn't work that great, so i ended up pouring it on pretty thick since the fabric was just soaking up all the color. i also painted some neon striping on one shirt; masking off with blue painters tape. alex really enjoyed using the glow in the dark puffy paint: you can see a drawing of her dog, a shooting star and her bff. i made a little pointilism houndstooth design on one of my shirts with the puffy paint. we had also trying the bleach pen first on that grey shirt and another black shirt: total fail. the bleach did absolutely nothing! we tried a second layer and let it sit overnight before rinsing, but it rinsed out and did not even take away the tiniest bit of color from the shirts. so we reused those shirts with the neon.

cut glass

here's a couple of glasses that i cut down and are now holding some of my craft supplies like washi tape and twine and little scissors. these are cut lambic bottles - which i have found to be the most successful bottles to cut. other bottles have been too thin or too thick making it iffy to cut. if they're too thin or too thick they often crack off from the score line and are then trash. i've tried with champagne bottles, which would make a really nice thick little dish, but have yet to succeed at cutting one of those. so the method i use to cut bottles is with my ephrems bottle cutter. the ephrems cutter is set up so you can lay your bottle on it's side on some roller things. you can adjust the length/height to where you want to score your bottle. you apply a little pressure while rotating your bottle and a little blade scores a line - don't go around more than once it does not help that score line at all, it actually hurts it. you will notice when you've come around full circle because you'll hear a tiny little crunch and you will feel a difference as well. now i've tried the candle method and butane torch method, but what has been most successful for me is the hot water technique. For this process, you boil some water or get it really hot and alternate pouring the hot water along your score line with cold water from your faucet. be patient and take your time. the thickness of your bottle will dictate how many times you have to alternate back and forth with the hot and cold water. and when it cracks along that score line you will hear it. if it's a clean crack you will be able to just simply separate the two parts of your bottle. and to finish off the edges and smooth them down; i use grit with a little water added on top of a piece of old glass. put your glass upside down and rotate around in small little circles on your grit slurry mix until smooth. then take some fine grain wet sand paper to the edges of that cut to bevel just slightly. and you're done. with these glasses i also etched designs on them with armour etch cream. i create a negative with sticker vinyl, stick that to the glass, apply the cream, wait and rinse. oh, and the best way to get all the gum residue from the label off the bottle in the first place is with goo gone :)

fabric flower headband

alex just loves wearing headbands, we have a ton. and we've lost a few along the way so i'm always looking to add more headbands to the collection. plus i needed to test make some fabric flowers for another project. i had already ordered some fun elastic to make those little knot pony tail holders that seem to be everywhere these days (which are super easy to make and super cheap and great to use for kids' hair.) i let alex pick out which elastic she wanted to use and which scrap fabric she wanted for the flowers. the top fabric is scrap from when i made her vintage suitcase (it has A's on it and flowers and of course, it's mainly green) and the second fabric is scrap from my pillow case that i absolutely love love love (pantone fabric from penny candy on spoonflower.) i started by cutting out 2" felt circles - 2 for each headband. i measured alex's head for the elastic, adding an inch for overlap. and finally cut out 3" fabric circles - about 18 for each flower. i sewed the elastic to one felt circle - overlapping the inch of elastic - and make sure not to twist your elastic when sewing the second end onto the felt circle. then on the other felt circle you start sewing your flower petals. fold a fabric circle in half with wrong sides facing, then in half again. pin 5 petals around the circle of the felt piece with the petals about a half inch in - see photo below. 

then sew the tips of the petals to the felt circle. pin a second layer of 5 petals to the felt circle, in between the first row petals and in a little towards the center, stitch those petals. then one more row of 5 petals filling in most of the felt area. i then folded 3 more petals per flower and stitched the tips together (separate from the felt.) then glue the 3 last petals to the center of your flower and let dry. your flower is done now (optional: i've seen places where they say to place random drops of glue in the flower petals and scrunch for some added fluff.) to finish the headbands, just glue the bottom felt part of your flower to the felt elastic headband circle (sandwiching in the elastic ends of the headband section.) once that's dry, you're done! yay, alex loves it and has been wearing one or the other every day since (of course, the glitter rainbow one is her favorite - while the neon with pantone flower is mine.)

flower rings and hair clips

i made all these while on vacation in the back woods of Canada. they're so easy to make and much cheaper than if you bought them from some boutique. you can find the resin flowers in most craft stores or online: i believe i got some of these at JoAnn's and some at Amazon.com. i also got the stretchy ring blanks and bobby pins thru amazon. then all i did was glue them on using e6000. and they're done!

carnival goody bags

i showed you the shirts i made for alex's carnival birthday party. on the shirts i had screenprinted some silver ferris wheels. i used the same screen to create all her goody bags. i bought some super cheap natural fabric bags from oriental trading company. and then i printed the ferris wheels on all of them in black. i like them simple and plain like this with plenty of room for any size goody we decide to stuff them with. of course, alex thinks i need to add more color to them and print "carny" on these as well, but that's unlikely to happen.

chunky knit capelet

i am always freezing at work. so i wanted to make some capelets that i could throw over anything i'm wearing and warm up. this one is from a pattern from karen clements that you can find here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/61638159/magnum-capelet-4-knit-pdf-knitting it's chunky knitting so it goes kind of fast. it's really cozy. i wish i had made it a little longer, but i like it.

coin purse

check out this super cute coin purse i made. i love the oversized yellow bobbles on it and the vintage style floral fabric is great. i actually bought this as a kit from purlbee.com because one, i love the clasp and two, i wanted to learn how to attach a purse/wallet to one of these style of frames. the instructions are in japanese - i seem to always pick out kits and products that only come in japanese - however purlbee has links to translated instructions for you. i hand stitched the fabric pieces - that was part of my plan, i wanted a project that i could work on while vacationing. then there's a technique with a thin rope and glue and pliers to get the fabric fit into the frame. i did not do such an awesome job with actually putting it together, i should have taken it back apart and tried again. you can see some raw edges inside and the purse is slightly askew. i don't think you'll even notice these faults though once i have something inside the purse. and bonus with this kit is that there was plenty of leftover fabric that i used some to patch up a teddy bear, which turned out fun.

Carnival Birthday Shirts

last week, i showed you the skirt i made for alex to wear to her carnival themed birthday party http://boogiebeans.blogspot.com/2012/09/super-easy-carnival-skirt.html and here are the shirts i made for the party. i made one for all three of us, each slightly different. first i drew the ferris wheel on the computer. i used the ferris wheel to prep a screen for printing. i printed these shirts in a silver on black and dark grey - i couldn't find a shirt i liked for alex for the winter in a grey so hers is black (which actually works better with her skirt i think.) the silver turned out great on these dark colors. for john's shirt i left it at that - it's a dark grey shirt with a silver ferris wheel, nice and simple. for alex and mine, i embellished. when i was on the committee for our company picnic two years ago our theme was carnival. we had these great shirts that had a circus tent and since i was on the committee the back of the shirt said "carnie" on it and i had two shirts. so i recycled those shirts onto these. i cut out the pieces of the work shirts that i liked and were applicable (which left out almost all the nice text, but it didn't make sense for alex's birthday party.) so the pieces that were usable were the tent and the "carnie" lettering. i used light fabric glue to place the pieces to the new shirts and then i used embroidery floss to stitch around the edges. i also stitched around the star on the circus tent with the embroidery floss. i was so happy to be able to reuse those company picnic shirts for something fun :)

vacation crafts

we had beautiful weather at the lake this year, so there was not a whole lot of crafting. here's a sampling of stuff we made though. first is my neon headband. i have some plain, generic headbands for general crafting and i got some neon embroidery floss and just wrapped it and adding a drop of clue every inch or so. next are the googly eyed rock rings. alex had a great time collecting rocks - she's always enjoyed finding rocks. and then all we did is glue them to some ring blanks and then glue on the googly eyes (which are supposed to be peel and stick but we were not able to peel off the backing on any of them, so glue was used instead.) and then are the sun prints. alex collected aldl the leaves and flowers herself (it was so dry that flowers were hard to come by) and she arranged them on the paper all by herself and put them in the sun. they turned out so well that i'm going to find some fun frames to hang them.

pattern weights

another project that i found on pinterest, and what a genius idea. i never thought of pattern weights before and i absolutely hate pinning my patterns down - so i never do and then my cuts are off which of course makes assembly difficult and wrong. i should have realized while watching project runway that they were using pattern weights and i did wonder what something mondo was using once, but i didn't think about it too hard and the moment passed. i saw a pin on pinterest where someone did this exact thing and i had to do it. the pin i saw used larger washers, but this size (i think they're an inch and a quarter) were what my hardware store had and i'm sure they'll work fine. i haven't used them yet, but i have a project to start in the next couple of weeks that will be much easier with these. i did look up the price of store bought pattern weights and they were insane at $16/4 pack! these are probably less than $10/10. i just wrapped embroidery floss around each washer and tied off - that simple. i cannot wait to try them, and they're so bright and colorful - i love that.

soft hair curlers

when i was little, my mother used to put my hair in soft hair curlers before bed on special occassions. if i remember correctly they were those foam pink rollers with the plastic pink frames. she would do this before weddings and holidays; and she would put just my pig tails in rollers when i had a gymnastics meet the next day. i had really thick, straight hair when i was little. you'd sleep on the rollers and the next morning you'd have beautiful curls in your hair. i've heard of different versions of this including a sock roller and i've seen soft rollers in the drugstore lately, but they're little and plain and don't look like they'd do a very good job. i also wanted a way to have fun, fancy hair when i'm vacationing in the back woods with no electricity. so i designed a cut and sew fabric to make my very own soft rollers. you can go to http://www.spoonflower.com/designs/1092481 to buy the fabric to make your very own bright, patterned curlers. one yard of fabric makes 29 rollers, which is enough to do all my hair - and i have a lot - and my daughters hair as well. the cut and sew lines are right on the fabric along with markers for the buttons and buttonholes.

first, wash dry and iron your fabric; i made my curlers with the kona cotton fabric. cut out all your pieces, since the cut lines are right on the fabric you're able to take this with you anywhere you want; i like to do my cutting when mindlessly watching tv. next, fold your pieces in half with right sides together and stitch along all the dashed lines leaving open the space between the dots at the end of the longer skinny side. turn them rightside out (that stick that comes in your fiberfill is really handy here.)

stitch a line across the curler creating a small tab at the end. stitch your button on that tab for all your rollers - i used fun colored buttons to make each roller even brighter. add your fiberfill. fill the larger section with stuffing to your desired stiffness - i made mine rather firm. stitch across the curler closing off the stuffed section of the piece. fold in the open ends and stitch closed. stitch your buttonholes where indicated on the longer tab. trim your threads, cut open your button holes and you're done! i love my sewing machine for a lot of reasons, but it is the best when making buttonholes. maybe most sewing machines are this easy for buttonholes, i don't know, but all i have to do is put a button in the back of my buttonhole foot and press go and the sewing machine knows exactly what size to make the buttonhole and stitches it and stops when it's done. then you carefully take your seam ripper (and a pin if you want to be safe - put pin at the end of the buttonhole as a stopper) to open up your button holes. now, just roll your hair, sleep on it (which is surprisingly comfortable, like sleeping with your pillow attached to your head), wake up and unroll to beautiful curls. and these are the prettiest soft hair rollers i've ever seen :)

baby boy shower gifts - part 2

so, here's the rest of the baby boy gifts that i made for my sister-in-law. first, on the whole top row, is the crocheted viking hat that i made - isn't that the cutest thing ever? in fact, it's so fun and cute my friend who is a minnesota vikings fan wanted one for himself (i'll show you that one another time.) i'm not highly accomplished in crochet so it took me a minute to understand the pattern, but i got it after a few tries. the horns are filled with stuffing - i cannot wait to see the baby wearing this hat (it is for around 6 months old or so though, so i'll have to wait a bit on that.) now for the onesies/shirts. the two with appliques had a little logo on them that i wanted to cover up and screenprinting wouldn't have done that, so i added a pocket to the business tie onesie and a sherriff star to the bandana onesie. i love that sherriff onesie, i screenprinted the red bandana and then stitched/appliqued on the star with scrap fabric i had. the tie is also hand stitched/appliqued on with some fun scrap fabric i had and the pocket is actually a functioning pocket (although rather small, not sure what you'd fit in there.) the keg stand shirt is actually printed upside down like it's shown here - because of course if the little tike was doing a keg stand then the shirt would read rightside up. i love the rocket print, and in fact made one for alex also on an extra shirt i had for her. i experimented with alex's version a little with some glow in the dark paint which did not turn out quite right but still pretty awesome and she loves it. the "argh...change me booty." is fun and i think my skull is pretty darn cute. and finally the "i cry when ugly people hold me" is just good old funny. i want to make a version for myself that's slightly different, since i don't make a habit of letting people hold me :)

baby boy shower gifts - part 1

my sister-in-law is soon to have her first baby...and it's a boy! i haven't had a boy to craft for yet, so i immediately went to work creating onesies. this is only part 1 of all my crafting, there's another shower this weekend where i'll be gifting the rest. at the first shower i gave six onesies and a reversible bib. isn't that fabric adorable? i had the pantone color fabric already with no particular plan in mind for it. i found the dinosaur fabric and thought it was too cute to use for a baby boy. first with the dinosaur fabric i cut out and appliqued a dino onto a pin striped onesie. i used fusible facing to adhere the fabric to the onesie and then i hand stitched the edges - i would have used a machine to top stitch but the onesie is so small and stretchy that it was just more enjoyable to hand stitch it. i sketched out a simple bib shape and cut that out with two different fabrics. stitched them with right sides facing together, turned them rightside out and top stitched around the entire bib. i then hand stitched on a snap closure. as for the rest of the onesies here i screenprinted each of them. i keep saying onesies, and you can't tell from this photo, but there is actually a mix of shirts and onesies here. most of the onesies i got are from gap (including the pin striped ones and the airplane patterned onesie) and the rest are american apparel shirts. in the past i had made the "new" onesie before and the copyright onesies which have always been a big hit so i recreated those - changing the year, of course. i drew the plane because it seemed boyish and i didn't have another idea to put on that great plane patterned onesie. the train graphic is one of my favorites and was perfect because my brother-in-law was really into trucks and trains when he was little (like most boys i assume) and in fact still has his train set. and the dump truck is just fun and silly and cute with that whole double entendre thing happening. screenprinting is always at a risk of not printing well or having mistakes and so forth, but i got pretty lucky considering how many gifts i printed this time. most of them came out really nicely and the ones that had mistakes were pretty fixable (and i'm not going to point out the mistakes because i'm not sure they've been noticed.) and i'm super excited to watch my sister-in-law open the part 2 gifts this weekend :) and then show them to you all next week hopefully.

shirt sleeve wine bags

my husband makes his own wine, and people love it, so we gift a lot of wine for the holidays. it came upon the holidays this year and i didn't have any wine bags, or they weren't big enough for the large bottles, and i wasn't going to run out to the store last minute. at that point i remembered an idea i saw on pinterest...shirt sleeve wine bags. we had a few old button down shirts that we threw into the paint shirt pile that really didn't need their sleeves to be useful to a five year old painter; and i went into my closet and picked out a few button downs that really don't fit me well anymore and i was holding on to them for no good reason. then i simply measured approximately how tall the bottles were, adding an inch or two for the bottom of the bottles and cut the sleeves off the shirts. turn them inside out and stitch the bottom seam closed, turn them rightside out again and voila you have a fun, unique wine bag perfect for gifting. plus for an added bonus, the buttons on the cuffs make the perfect spot for hanging your gift tag.

Beach Birthday Goody Bags

alex had a family only birthday party, but still wanted to bring goody bags to her friends at school. so we kept with the same theme of or orange, blue and white beach. we also brought in cupcakes for everyone, i didn't take photos, they were just chocolate (alex's favorite.) i found these orange cotton bags that were the perfect size for holding all the goodies. i previously posted about the coloring books and mini pencils that i made for the bags as well as the noisemakers: http://boogiebeans.blogspot.com/2011/12/some-beach-birthday-prep.html and http://boogiebeans.blogspot.com/2011/09/beach-party-favors-coloring-book-and.html. you've also seen my trials and tribulations with the royal icing cookies, and here's what i ended up making for the cookies - they look like happy little fish crackers. i was going to make the faces with royal icing too but decided i was not up to that skill level and used a food pen to simply draw the faces on a plain orange fish instead and i think they turned out cute and more importantly they taste good. i put the cookies in those blue and white striped bags and sealed with some orange tape. i also got some push pops from the local candy factory to add to the bags and i found orange fish shaped crazy straws - how perfect is that?! i made some stickers from the same graphics i made for the coloring books and pencil labels. and with those same graphics i made a button for each bag. alex wanted to add a happy birthday card to each bag so we made a sign of sorts that we pinned to each bag with the button. alex was so excited to hand these out to all her friends.