Upcycled Leather Jacket No. 2: Dinosaur Edition

Last year I made a purse out of a leather jacket I found at a Goodwill.  It's pretty big, which is nice sometimes but lately I've been wanting a smaller purse to carry essentials in and not have to worry about stuff getting lost in an abyss. Naturally my first instinct was to go to Goodwill and find a leather jacket that I could use, and just my luck, I found exactly one leather jacket in the whole store. It was meant to be!

For this purse I ended up using one of the sleeves and the belt as the strap.

I decided I wanted a little bit of embellishment on this one, so I doodled a little dinosaur design and using a jewelers saw(for the first time) I proceeded to cut it out of some brass.

And here it is completed! I also ended up cutting some corner pieces out of some thinner brass to embellish the corners. I love how it turned out!

Here's a little peek of the inside. The purse has removable straps, a magnetic closure and a zippered pocket on the inside. I love how it turned out, and I can't wait to make a few more purses and whatnot from the rest of the jacket!

Congrats Grads!

Earlier this month, my baby sister graduated from high school and it's still blowing my mind... she's about to go off to college like an adult- so weird, I still see her as a snotty little kid, hah. Anyhow, I wanted to sort of theme the gift my boyfriend and I got her on the college, (UT Austin, woo, Hook em'!) she'll be attending in the fall. The first thing I made was some hand painted wrapping paper recycling the brown packing paper from some packages I had recently received.

Their colors are burnt orange and white, so I used orange paint and painted a sort of fish scale/wave design. After it dried, I used this tutorial to make a bow.

Here is everything all done! For her gift, we got her an orange Camelbak and I painted a longhorn on it in white. Our original plan was to completely fill that bottle up with one hundred $1 bills, but then I got a better idea. A money lei.

Here it is all wrapped up! Now on to the leis~

I was looking around online for different kind of leis that people would get for graduation, and soon I came across the money lei. How perfect, after seeing these I immediately decided that would be a way better way to give her the $100 that was originally going to be put in the bottle. I soon ended up convincing my mom and sister to give her money leis as well, with me making them of course. I wanted her to be completely swamped with these things. I decided to make 4 $50 leis so she could receive one from my mom, my sister, my boyfriend and myself. The tutorial I used used one hundred $1 bills, so I took colored paper(blue and yellow - her high school colors) cut them to the size of a dollar, folded them up and made 50 spacers for each lei. That ended up actually being way too many. The first lei I made alternated: dollar, blue, dollar, yellow, etc. and it ended up being very, very long, so I started making different configurations for each lei afterwards. For example, one was ten $1 bills, three blue, ten $1 bills, three yellow, etc. Also, instead of taping the dollars, I used two paper clips per dollar to connect each side of the bill. After hours of folding and assembling these things, I was finally done!

So many $1 bills all folded up and ready to be assembled.

Here's an in progress shot.

And here she is after graduation! Completely swamped, just as planned! :D All in all, I'm completely happy with how these turned out and how unique the leis ended up being; I was really surprised to see she was the only one that received anything like that!

Congratulations class of 2012!

Making an Ugly Sofa Beautiful

A few months ago, my boyfriend and I uprooted and moved one state over.  It was fairly short notice, so we just packed as much as we could into an SUV and drove to our new apartment. The only "furniture" we could fit in the car was a fold up table, tiny folding chairs and a blow up mattress. After living like this for a few days, I was finally able to go out to find a sofa. I ended up finding this nice camel back sofa with lion feet legs.

Isn't it beautiful?! Not. It had the ugliest slip cover, but a quick glance at the underlying fabric and I fell in love.

This is the story of how this ugly sofa turned into a beautiful piece of furniture.

I really wanted a darker colored sofa, but I figured I could paint it a la this tutorial and still have the pattern of the fabric show though. Unfortunately, when I got the couch home and removed the slip cover completely, there were a few problems.

The cushion was only covered by the fabric from the ugly picnic slip cover fabric. Yuck. While I brainstormed about what I could do, I just wrapped up the foam with an extra bed sheet cover. You probably noticed that the cushion looks bigger here than in the first picture, and that is true! I was able to score 4 pieces of high density upholstery foam for just $40. I was so excited. I ended up using two pieces on the couch and I'm going to use the other pieces to reupholster a little chaise lounge I got. But that will be a different post.

But back to updating the sofa - the first thing I thought I could do was to stick with the original plan and paint the couch. I figured I could paint it and then buy enough (almost) matching fabric to make a new cover for the cushion. Sadly this couldn't happen because I noticed small tears in the fabric that would eventually tear more and more as we used it. That must have been why they slip covered it in the first place.

The second thing I thought I'd try was to attempt to dye the slip cover black. I felt as though that was the only color that could cover the ugliness of it or at least tone it down so the plaid wasn't too bad (a.k.a. too noticeable). After ordering a bunch of dye only to accidently lose half of it down the drain before I even started dyeing the fabric and then having the fabric not take any of the color (yay for rushing things and not figuring out what kind of fabric it was) I decided to try a different tactic.

I found this tutorial and thought that this is the one that I'll do and I will make it work no matter what. I ordered quite a lot of this dark purple upholstery fabric and got to work.

I cut up the slip cover to make a rough pattern for the pieces and to take out the piping cording so I could remake piping in the new fabric. This picture shows after I sewed on the arm pieces.

And here it is almost done! It stayed like this for a while because, even though it was only a few straight lines I had to sew for the cushion, I kept psyching myself out. I only had enough fabric to attempt this once, and I was sure I would mess it up somehow. Eventually I decided to get the cushion done, so I glued the foam together so it would appear to be just one big piece of foam, I crossed my fingers and sewed up a huge rectangle. Thank. God. It fit. I had to enlist the help of the boyfriend to get the cover on, as the cushion is a foot taller than me, but we crammed it in there and it ended up being a perfect fit.

And here it is complete (or almost... I'm really tempted to paint the legs white)! I love it so much! I wish I had just skipped the whole dyeing debacle and went straight to this, but it all worked out in the end.

Delicious Chicken Pot Pie

I love cooking and I experiment a lot in the kitchen, so I thought I'd start posting some of my recipes whenever they end up tasting good. I try to minimize what I waste in the kitchen, so when I read about celery leaves and how they're perfectly edible and actually taste pretty darn good, I was excited to try them out in a recipe.  Here is the recipe for some personal sized pot pies I made the other day where I utilized this usually ignored ingredient.

Mmm, yummy!

Pot pie filling: 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cubed 1 cup sliced carrots 1 cup frozen green peas 3/4 cup sliced celery 1/3 cup butter 1/3 cup chopped onion 1/3 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 tablespoon chopped celery leaves 1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves 2 whole bay leaves enough chicken broth to cover chicken (it should be at least if not more than 2 cups) 2/3 cup milk salt and pepper to taste

2 boxes of 2 (9 inch) unbaked pie crusts (you'll end up using only 3 of the crusts) 6 (5 inch) pie tins

Egg wash: 1 egg 2 tablespoons water

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C.)

In a saucepan, combine chicken, carrots, peas, celery, thyme and bay leaves. Add chicken broth to cover and boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, drain making sure to reserve the liquid, remove bay leaves and set aside.

In the saucepan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent. Stir in flour and celery leaves. Measure out 2 cups of the reserved liquid and slowly stir it in along with the milk. (If you don't have enough of the reserved liquid you can suppliment it with more chicken broth, and if you have some left over you can save it and use it the next time you need chicken broth!) Add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Mix in the drained chicken mixture.

Unroll pie crusts onto a cutting board and cut in half. Take one half, place over the pie pan and gently press into the pan. You might have to coax it a little bit, but it should work out. Cut off the excess, roll into a ball and roll it back out to create the top of the pie. Repeat for other pies. Fill each of them with the pot pie filling. Cover with top crust, fold over the edge of the crust and use a fork to seal the edges. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape.

Whisk egg and water together. Brush the tops of the pies with the egg wash. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Filled, eggwashed and ready to be baked!

Fresh out of the oven!

I ended up only making four of these pies and saving the extra filling because I only bought one box of pie crusts, which supplied me with two 9 inch sheets of dough; just enough for four pies. Whenever I decide on making the last two pies I'll probably try my hand at making my own dough.

Knitting Up a Storm

Christmas is just around the corner, so what does that mean?  It's time to bust ass on your crafting projects so you can be done in time to give them out to all of your appreciative family and friends.  I hadn't knit anything in a while until recently when a friend asked me to teach them how to knit.  I've been working on knitting projects every day since.  I just thought I could write up a quick post and show you guys what I've been working on lately! This is a close up shot of the scarf I knit first.  I used a pattern I found off Ravelry.com but unfortunately even after digging around for it, I can't find the exact one I used.  If I come across it later I'll definitely post it. I actually messed up reading the knitting chart, but it still ended up working out.

I absolutely love how this one turned out.  It was my first attempt at blocking, and I think it worked out quite well.  I didn't really measure anything out, I just stretched and pinned, so some areas are kind of wavy but overall it looks good.  I used the Tiger Eyes Lace Scarf pattern I found on Ravelry.  Personally I think it looks more like owls than tigers.

This is my current project.  I found the pattern on, you guessed it, Ravelry, but I actually couldn't find the Ravelry link in my history- I could only find the direct link to the pattern.  So here it is!  It's actually grown about two feet since I took this picture.  It's quite a fast and easy knit.  I like how it's turning out so far.

Here's a close up of the knit.  It reminds me of rice. :)

I like to consider myself as an intermediate level knitter, I've knit some scarves, gloves, socks, hats... but there's one thing that will always scare me.  Sweaters.  It is my goal to knit a sweater soon.  Here is the one I'm going to attempt to knit: Hundred of sheep, but I decided that I won't start a sweater until after Christmas so I can use my time to knit more gifts for people.  Here's hoping I won't chicken out!

Halloween Costumes

So Thanksgiving is a few days away, so what am I posting? My finished Halloween costumes of course!  Sorry it took forever to get these photos, my sister took them and she has been quite busy with school so it took her a while to send them my way.  Well, better late then never!

So as most of you know, I decided on Poison Ivy this year.  I dyed my stockings, I made my gloves, I made my boots, I made the leafy eyebrow pieces and I made some fake lashes to top it off (which I did wear for the party I went to, but I forgot to bring them to take pictures of the costume a few days later unfortunately). 

Full body shot

Close up of my face.

I ended up being invited to another Halloween party last minute, but I didn't want to reuse the same costume (mostly for comfort reasons - those boots killed my feet) so I pulled out my old wind up key that I made for Halloween a few years ago and two petticoats I made - one for Halloween and one for a friends bachelorette party and a little flower ring I made - and threw a costume together.  I made the black circle skirt on a whim a few days before I was invited to the party and thought it would fit the costume perfectly.  I decided the color scheme would be black and pink because the belt, one of the petticoats and the ring were hot pink (my friend had a Barbie bachelorette party).  I poked a hole through the back of the belt and stuck the wind up key through it.  They day of I actually curled my hair and my sister loaned me a pair of pink and white socks.  I also had a different pair of black flats.  I went with contacts as well because the fake eyelashes were too big to be contained by glasses.

Here is a kind of crummy picture of the costume the day of the party so you can see my hair (kind of), the socks and the wind up key.

My sister needed a costume to wear at her extra curricular activities and whatnot and after finding some awesome fabric at the store she decided she wanted me to make her a simple cloak so she could be a wizard.  I also ended up making her a want too as seen in this post.

Here is what the fabric looks like with the wand.

I found a lot of patterns for "circle skirt" type cloaks but I wanted to do something fairly simple because I didn't have that much time and I only had two yards of fabric.  I ended up finding this website that explained how to make a cloak very simply and with a maximum of 2 yards of fabric, yay!

And action shots:

I made the hood come to a point.

 The fabric flowed nicely and looked awesome when she walked around.

She just wore her street clothes underneath.

I actually really loved how the cloak turned out.  I'm half considering being something next Halloween that involves a cloak of some kind so I can make myself one!

Freaky Friday!

So I've been pretty busy with crafting especially with Halloween right around the corner, and thankfully I've actually managed to take some pictures for you guys to see!  I was meaning to make this post earlier but time caught up with me so here we are.  Sorry about that!  To make up for that, this is pretty much going to be three posts in one!  I have two parts of my costume I need to show off as well as a semi tutorial on how to make a wand for my sister's costume. So here we go!

I'm going to be Poison Ivy from Batman this year.  So first things first, for my costume I decided I wanted to wear some sort of heel.  I wanted to see if I could score some green pumps from Goodwill, but I ended up going home with these:

I decided I could just cover them with some leaves and be done with it, so I ended up with these:

Which look... okay.  I tried them on with my dyed tights, but I didn't really like how they looked with everything.  I was just going to suck it up and deal with it, until one day I decided that I NEEDED some knee high super villain looking boots.  I looked up some tutorials for converting high heels into boots, and found a simple boot cover tutorial by Sarcasm-hime.  Easy enough!  I got green vinyl from the fabric store (it was half off! Score!) and got to boot-coverin'.  I've seen where people just sew the bottom up and leave a hole for the heel, so you can just slip the cover off and on, but I opted for a more permanent solution.  I used hot glue to secure that sucker down.  Here they are:

They ended up kind of wrinkly since the vinyl fabric wasn't cooperating very well, but I think they'll work out just fine for my costume.  This actually worked out a lot better than I thought it would, and I'm probably going to attempt to make more boots sometime.

So next!  I wanted some long gloves to make this costume complete.  I had no idea on how to make gloves, so I started trying to search for some patterns online.  I found some really complicated ones, and I even found how to draft a custom glove pattern that I tried out (with muslin!) but I got some of the measurements wrong and I decided that those types of gloves would be too much work for a little Halloween costume that I'd wear once or twice.  I didn't want to make gloves that were as easy as just tracing around your hand and sewing along that line, but I didn't want to waste time doing the super complicated gloves, so lucky for me I found something that was in between those two.  I ended up finding a video that taught you how to draft a pretty easy pattern for gloves.  Click here to see!

So here's my drafted pattern.  I messed up on marking the thumb.  The bigger curve is the correct one.  If you want to know how to do this, please watch the video I linked to above.  He's much better at explaining it than I would be!

My master patterns!He recommends using tissue paper to draw your pattern on, so I grabbed the closest tissue paper I had around me.  Primary color polka-dotted tissue paper, ftw!   I pinned the tissue paper onto my stretchy knit fabric and started sewing. When done sewing, you cut out the thumb hole and then just rip the tissue paper right off!  One finished glove! And here's what it looks like on.  Pretty wrinkly, but it will serve its purpose.

I actually liked making the more complicated gloves, but I'll probably try those out again with better fabric and more time.

So on to the last part.  My sister wanted to be a wizard, so I ended up making her a long hooded cape and a wand.  I don't have any great photos of the cape yet, but she will send me some soon.  I did, however, take photos of the wand.  So many, in fact, that it serves as a sort of tutorial!  So here we go:

It started with a stuffing stick.  I got it in a bag of poly-fil.  You could just use a dowel or a disposable chopstick or something.  If you use a dowel you'll have to sand down one end to make it tapered.

I wanted to add decorative elements, so I whipped out my trusty hot glue gun!  You can do whatever you'd like.  The stick is pretty skinny, so I was limited, but I just added some bands and dots and stuff.

Here's some of the decorations.  Don't worry, it'll look better I promise.

I wanted to make a sort of handle and I had left over leather strips from my purse, so I ended up hot gluing it to the base of the wand.  Lookin' pretty snazzy!  Now pull out your paints! (You should probably wait until after painting to do this step, but I wasn't thinking.)

I just used some acrylic paints I had laying around.  I didn't have brown, so I mixed the primary colors together-red, blue and yellow, and it made a nice brown color for me.  Slap that paint on there!  I showed my sister the wand at this point and she thought I had carved the decorations out.  That means it's coming along!

To make the decorations pop, I painted them with some gold acrylic paint.  I actually wanted to add some gems or something like that on the middle decorated part, but I had none so I just stopped there.  I was pretty pleased with how it came out!

Here's the (folded) cape and wand together!  When she gets those pictures to me, I shall post a better picture of the cape.

Phew! That was a doozy of a post!  Sometime next week I'll post photos of my completed costume as well as my sister's.  I hope this post was helpful to you guys! If you have any questions just leave me a comment and I'll answer it to the best of my ability! :)

Upcycled Leather Jacket Purse

I've been craving a leather purse recently, but they're always too pricey for me, and I would feel too bad about buying a brand new leather purse when there are plenty of used leather things sitting at thrift stores just waiting for a new life.  While browsing through clothes at a Goodwill while I was out of town last week, I found a jacket that I was convinced would work perfectly for the type of bag I wanted to make.  My boyfriend thought it wouldn't be enough material, but he was wrong - he should know by now not to doubt me. :) So here is the jacket I bought.  A nice deep brown leather jacket.  $13.  Perfect. 

I've actually been lusting over a specific purse, so I thought to myself that it would be good to use that bag as a rough blueprint for the purse I was going to make.  Here is that purse:

The Lucky Brand Abbey Road messenger-type bag.  It's convertible.  You can use it as either a cross body bag or you could tuck the longer strap away and use it as a hand held bag with the smaller straps.

And it's $178.

So that was my mission, to make a similar bag with the jacket I got.

And I think I did a pretty damn good job of it for my first time working with leather this way.Front.  I used the existing pockets to my advantage.  You can never have too many pockets on your purse.The best part about making your own purse while using an inspiration is that you can put things where you want them.  In the original bag, the zipper was in the front and hidden by the folded over flaps, but I prefer the outer zipper to be on the back so it's more easily accessible to me.

Here's what it'd look like if I were to be holding it with the smaller straps.  I made the short straps just long enough so I could put it over my shoulder if I felt like it.  I believe the straps aren't long enough to do that with the original bag.Adjustable length straps.  Even though I'll probably only use one length every time I use it, at least I'll have the other option.And opened!  You can probably see some parts where I could have put it together better, but I wasn't sure how.  Example, the stitching along the top, on the lining.  It was to attach the top piece of leather with the straps.  It was kind of a "plan B" thing.  I originally wanted to attach it by folding the leather in and doing a nice top stitch across it, but I didn't cut the piece long enough and I didn't have enough left over to cut that shape again.  So thought I'd just leave it with the raw edge and do a nice decorative stitch over it so it wouldn't look too bad.  Good idea, not very good results.  My sewing machine didn't appreciate trying to do decorative stitches with thick-ish leather.  Oh well.  I just sucked it up and dealt with it.  I was getting too frustrated with it and didn't want to take it all out and try to redo it because it would poke too many holes in the leather and I was worried it would make it too weak there and possibly tear.Here's a close up of my little tag I made.  I have tags made out of ribbon, but I thought it wouldn't match the purse very well.  In the original bag they have their logo stamped out on leather.  Unfortunately, I don't own a leather stamping kit.  I decided to do the next best thing, which was to burn my name into the leather.  I don't know what happened to my wood burning tool, so I used my soldering iron to do this.  Very. Carefully.  You can't see it very well in this picture, but the letters are slightly recessed which makes it look very nice.  This is probably the part I'm most proud of.

And here's an action shot of it so you can see how big it is and where it sits on the body when worn.

Aside from a few little things, I love how it turned out.  I love that I was able to upcycle some leather and make a decent bag out of it, and I think I'm addicted now.  I'm already getting ready to make another upcycled leather bag for my boyfriend's mom.

Published again!

Look what I got in the mail today! How exciting!  About two years ago, I was contacted by Lisa Butterworth, Associate Editor of BUST, about putting a tutorial for my cassette tape coin purse in issue #61 of BUST Magazine.  Of course I said yes.  It was very cool to see my work in a big magazine like that.  Fast forward to about 5 months ago and I was contacted by Debbie Stoller, Editor-in-Chief of BUST, about a book they were putting together that is a compilation of the best DIY, how-to and advice articles from the past 15 years of their magazine, and I was included!  After the book was completed, they sent me a copy, and I received it today!  Sooo pretty!

I'm really excited about it, and I plan on going through the book this evening and marking each project I'm interested in doing.  Yay!

If you're interested in buying the book (and helping me make a few bucks as well) you can buy the book here!

Horny Hair Clips

I'm planning on participating in a Warrior Dash next year, but I need to train so I'll be able to run and do the obstacles in a decent time.  A lot of people dress up as viking warriors for the race, and I thought it would be cute to just have horns, since there's no way I would be wearing a costume or a viking helmet while running.  I'd die.  I didn't want to make a headband with horns on it because I was worried it would just fly off during the race; headbands always fall off of my weirdly shaped head, so I decided some hair clips could possibly work! I decided to make them now because firstly, they would make for a good addition to a costume that involved horns of some kind, and secondly, if I see them every day on my desk it will remind me to keep up with my training.

Here are the materials:

• Felt
• Hair clips
• Needle & thread
• Stuffing

I cut out four horn shapes from the felt.  Not pictured, I also cut out four triangular shapes- two to help shape the horn better and two for the bottom of the horn.

Here I am sewing up a horn.  I sewed up the sides and two edges of the bottom and then flipped right side out, stuffed it and sewed closed.

Sew onto the hair clip.

And ta da!  Clip in your hair!

And there you go!  They stay in very well, I shook my head and ran around trying to gauge how well it would stay and it didn't budge at all.  We'll see how well it stays in the race though...

You could definitely make different kinds of horns or animal ears or anything like that with hair clips, they're super cute!

DIY Fake Lashes

Need some gigantic eyelashes sometime soon, say, for Halloween, and don't want to pay almost $10 for them?  Well I got the tutorial for you!  I found a tutorial on youtube on how to make your own false lashes with just a few materials that most people have around and got to makin'. Materials:

• Another fake eyelash (this is just to give you a guide at how long you need to make the lash.  You could also just take a small piece of paper and measure your eye that way)
• Eyelash glue (Not everyone will have this item; I didn't, but it's fairly inexpensive for a bottle of some, especially considering just how many eyelashes you can make with one tube)
• An old makeup brush (Mine had really stiff bristles so I would never use it because it poked my face all the time.  Be sure to wash it before using it!(Thanks MissVass on reddit.  I assumed this would be common knowledge but better to be safe than sorry!))
• a plastic work surface (I used a tupperware lid)
• Something to help you manage the bristles when you inevitably get glue on your fingers (I used a disposable eyeshadow swab thing.  In the video she uses a spatula.)
• Black eyeshadow(not pictured)
• Hair spray(not pictured)
• A curling iron
• Scissors
• Any little things you want to add to it for  decoration (feathers, glitter, sequins, etc.)

Using the other eyelash as a guide, draw a line of eyelash glue.

Take a little bit of the makeup brush and snip it off at the base.

Spread it out carefully with your fingers and place the cut edge into the glue.  Use your "bristle managing" tool (in my case the eyeshadow swab thingie) to hold the bristles down so you can let go of them without taking too many back out.  I found that the bristles kept sticking to my fingers, so that tool was very important.  Repeat this a few times until you made them as thick as you want.

Use your tool to really press the bristles into the glue.  You'll want to wipe down the tool every once in a while because as it gets more glue stuck to it, the bristles may want to follow it.

Once it's dried for a few minutes, put a dab of glue on the end of your tool and carefully coat the top of the edge of glue.  Let dry.

Once dried, CAREFULLY lift the eyelash up, holding on to the edge of the glue strip.

Powder the front and back of the strip of glue with black eyeshadow.

Cut off excess glue strip.  Be careful not to cut of too much, you'll lose too many bristles!

Trim the lashes into the shape you want.  In my case it's shorter towards the inside of my eye, and thicker towards the outside.

Use a hot curling iron to shape the lashes.  BE CAREFUL!  I was using tweezers to do this at first to keep my fingers safely out of the heat, but I misplaced them as I was taking these pictures, so I'm using my fingers to show what to do.  Luckily my fingernails are long enough.  After they're curled as much as you want them, generously spray some hairspray all over them.  Of course by the time I was taking pictures I had run out of hairspray, so I have no pictures of this process, sorry.

And here are your lashes!  In this picture you can see the difference between the hairsprayed lash(left) and the un-hairsprayed lash(right).  They keep their shape much better when they have a good coat of hairspray on them.

This is also the point where you would add decorative features if you want.  Maybe some glitter along the glue line, feathers glued onto the bristles, the possibilities are endless!

Here are some action shots:

All in all, I really liked making these, and I plan on experimenting with more materials.  Definitely going to make some that fit the theme of my Poison Ivy Halloween costume!  The best thing is that you can trim them down a lot to make false eyelashes that you could potentially wear on less costumey occasions.

If any of you guys decide on trying these out, I'd love to see!

xoxo-chez

Dyed Tights with Food Coloring

For Halloween I decided I was going to be Poison Ivy from Batman.  I needed green tights, and of course the one time I need them, there aren't any green tights at all.  Frustrated, I bought a pair of opaque white tights with the intention of dyeing them with food coloring.  I had seen people dye yarn this way, what would be the difference?

Here are my materials:  white tights, food coloring (I used green and yellow), vinegar, a stainless steel pot and a measuring cup.

Pour water in the pot.  It varies for how much you're dyeing.  I used about 4 cups.

From what I read about yarn dyeing, people added about one tablespoon of vinegar to each cup of water.  So I used 4 tablespoons.  The vinegar makes the color really stay in the fabric.

I put the tights in some water to soak for a bit while I mixed and heated the dye bath.

Add your food coloring to the water/vinegar mixture!  I wanted it to be a very greenish yellowish and I was worried the tights wouldn't take the color so well because of the material it was made of, so I used a lot of food coloring.

That looks about right.  Now heat it on medium heat until it simmers

Squeeze the water out of the tights and throw them in the simmering dye bath.

Make sure to get all of the material submerged.  This was kind of hard for me because the fabric kept floating up to the top.  You're supposed to stir it every once in a while as it dyes, but I overestimated just how long it would take to take the color, so I didn't get to stir it at all, which caused an uneven color.  Fortunately that's not a big deal for my costume, but if you want an even color, make sure to stir it every few minutes.  I'm pretty sure I could go back later and re-dye it later anyway.

You know when it's done dyeing when the water is pretty much clear.  You can kind of see in this picture, the water is significantly clearer than before I added the tights.  It's a pretty bluish green color.  I probably could have left it in longer to get more color but I was satisfied with what shade it was so I turned off the heat and let it cool.

Once cooled enough for you to touch, rinse it with water and a tiny bit of dish soap until the water runs clear.

Rinsing!

And here they are!  You can really see how uneven the dye job was in this picture.  Overall I'm super happy with the results, and I'm planning on dyeing more and more tights and things.  Hopefully with time I'll get better at achieving an even color.  Maybe I'll even be brave and attempt an ombre sometime!

I will eventually get an action shot of these tights, but it will probably come after I get the whole costume done.

xoxo-chez

Fancy Magnetic Pin Holder

I had never really thought too much about how I stored my pins.  I'd keep them in the little plastic box thing that they came in and of course, whenever I'd open the thing, I'd pull on it too hard and end up tossing pins all over my work area.  I would always tell myself I should really get better storage for them and finally I did.  While lurking around on the internet I found a few examples of people taking dishes and gluing a magnet underneath so you could toss your pins in it with no worries.  I thought it was brilliant and ran to Goodwill to snatch up a small dish to use!

Here are my materials.  A soap dish, a very strong magnet from an old harddrive and my handy dandy E-6000.

I had originally intended on getting a dish with a foot that was sunken in more so I could glue on the magnet and have the dish sit flush, but there weren't any dishes like that available and I wanted to make it NOW!  So I grabbed this soap dish will the intentions of cutting out the bottom with a dremel tool.  However, to my surprise, the magnet slid right in!

I somehow got the magnet back out and squeezed a good amount of glue inside the hole and put the magnet back in.  Using another piece of metal on the top of the dish, I guided the magnet into the middle.

So here is the finished product!  I love it, and the magnet is so strong I don't have to worry about the needles coming off at all!

One thing I like about not having to dremel out the bottom of the dish is that I can later hang it on the wall using the two holes.

Socks socks socks!

     I taught myself how to knit, so I've never been really adventurous with my knitting projects. I pretty much only knew how to knit and purl so all of my projects were scarves, and even then I can probably count on one hand how many of those I've finished. So what got in my head about knitting some socks? I think it was when I was digging through my yarn stash and came across a bag full of alpaca yarn that my boyfriends parents got for me while they were in Peru. To me it looked like it was the perfect weight for socks and I had just found a few sets of double pointed needles. It was obvious, I had to knit some socks. I had to. I only had sets of 4 dpns all in different sizes, but almost every pattern I came across called for a set of 5 dpns. Finally I came across Silver's sock class. Using this pattern successfully made my first sock!

Unfortunately it was a tad too big. I used the directions for sock weight yarn. I decided not to waste my time and yarn making a matching sock for that one. Instead I jumped right into another much more advanced sock making technique. I had heard about people knitting two socks at the same time, one inside the other on dpns, and I was determined to try it myself. I took some progress pictures along the way so I could share them with you all!

Humble beginnings.

Working on the gusset.

Here I've flipped the other sock out to show that I really am doing two at once, one inside the other.

Toes!

Instead of trying to do the kitchener stitch with both socks on the same needles(I knew I'd probably accidentally sew them together) I moved the stitches around so each sock had it's own pair of needles. I stitched the inside sock, then the outter sock.

Yay socks!

I've been thinking about dyeing them though. They look a little too ketchup and mustardy to me.

Crafting Fail

I'm trying to revive this poor blog, and to do so I plan on posting more entries from my phone. I'm excited because I will be able to be more spontaneous with my posts. This post right now is going to be about my current crafty fail. Recently I've been having a string of craft fails, most of them involving knitting somehow, but today it involves a project that I've done before. A while ago I told my sister I would make her a braided bracelet with black embroidery thread, and while looking through my crafting pile of crap I found some black embroidery thread so I figured I could make her bracelet right then! I got everything together, cut the thread and started braiding. I hadn't made one of these in a while so it took a bit for me to remember how to braid it onto the chain, but once I got it I flew through it. And then it happened.

I ran out of thread. Noooooooo. Guess I'll be running out to the craft store later today! In the mean time I'll be attempting work on my next knitting project- socks- which I've never done before. I don't know if this is a good idea.

Feathery Earrings

If you hadn't noticed, I've been in a crafting slump.  The other day my younger sister showed me some earrings she wanted to purchase for prom but she didn't like the wooden beads on them.  I guess my craft starved mind needed sustenance because before I knew what I was doing, I told her "I'll make you some!"

And I gathered my supplies...

And then decided I'd share the process with you all!

The materials: -feathers -jewelry findings -jewelry pliers -jump rings -spacers or beads -easily bendable wire -sturdy wire* -hoop template*

_{*These are optional - I made my own hoops because I couldn't find any big enough.}

Here are the inspiration earrings.  From Asos.

Mark three inches from the tip of the feather.  See my earrings?  Made those to test this process out :)

Cut on your mark.

After cutting them I stripped the barb about 1/4" from the end.

Cut about 3 inches off of your bendy wire.

Wrap the wire about the end of the feather.  I got this technique from Corrine over at Craftovision(yaay, she's back!). Check out the video here to see how do do this.

Here they are, all wrapped up!

Here I took the sturdy wire and used the template to help shape it the way I wanted. Not pictured, I used my jewelry pliers to loop around one end of the wire.

I strung the feathers and spacers on and then looped the other end of the wire.

Connected with a jump ring.

Attached the earring finding and voila!

I sure hope they work for her!  I enjoyed making these earrings so much that I ended up making a few other pairs that I'm going to put up in my Etsy store, so if you want to pick some up then you can head over there!

UPDATE: I moved my store from Etsy over to Storenvy! The new store is located at: http://chezlin.storenvy.com/

Also, these earrings are sold out!

As seen on Etsy (again)

UPDATE: I moved my store from Etsy over to Storenvy! The new store is located at: http://chezlin.storenvy.com/

It's been a while, but I finally put some more items on my Etsy store.  Go check them out!

Here are some of them:

Snow Owl

Creepy Eel

Butterfly

The Bite

Singing Bird

Busy Bee

Cute Black Clutch Wristlet Thing

In the days before my friends bachelorette party I searched high and low for a semi-cheap black clutch or wristlet or purse to carry around with me.  For some reason this task was impossible, so a few hours before I had to leave the house I had the bright idea to make my own.  I had everything I needed here anyway, or so I thought.  I had a zipper, I had a tupperware full of fabrics I could use as a liner, I had some length of chain that I could use for the strap, but low and behold, I didn't have any suitable black material.  After the quickest trip to the fabric store that I've ever done, I was ready to create. And here it is, my cute little black clutch/wristlet thing.

The one key feature I absolutely wanted was to have the chain connecting to the zipper in such a way that it couldn't accidentally zip open while I was dancing or something.  The only way it could unzip was if I took it off of my wrist and unzipped it myself.

While I was out, unfortunately the chain worked its way out from the little loop on the side, but I was able to rig it back together with the help of my friends keys.  Haven't had any problems with it since!

Here's a shot of the inside.

Before I made this, I figured it would end up being a little throw away clutch that I would use only for this occasion, put away somewhere and forget about its existence.  In the end I actually ended up liking this thing quite a bit and plan on using it more in the future.

How to Wind-up Key

UPDATE: I made an updated video version of this tutorial! Check it out! Hope this is helpful!

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So, it's been a while... stress filled senior year of college.  Anyway,  I've received a lot of comments asking for a tutorial on how to make this key for a Halloween costume I had made a while ago.  I had started to create a tutorial for this but I ended up moving and all that stuff got packed away, but I just so happened to find all my stuff the other day, so I figured I'd throw this post up before Halloween so hopefully you guys can make yours in time. :)

The parts:

Here are the parts for the wind up key.

A few inches of dowel (really the length and size of the dowel are up to you.  I used what I had, which is a 1/4" dowel which I cut to be 2 1/2" long.  You'll need to drill a small hole into one side of the dowel in order to fit the metal rod of the wind up mechanism.  I used a small drill kit that I bought from the local hardware store that looked like a screwdriver but with interchangeable drill-bit head things.   Be slow with this part, or you may split the wood like I did.  Don't panic if you do though, it should be okay once we glue it all up.

The next thing you'll need is a piece of foam core board cut to resemble a wind up key.  Cut the little notch at the bottom to be the same width as your dowel.  In my case it's 1/4".  I imagine you can use something other than foam core board, but you just need to make sure it's lightweight, or else it will bog down the tiny wind up mechanism we're using.

Speaking of, the third thing you'll need is the wind up mechanism.  To get it, I took apart a dollar store wind up toy.  Usually there's a little piece of plastic at the end of the metal rod that makes it easier to turn with your fingers that you need to remove so you can stick it in the dowel.  I just used some pliers and squeezed it a bunch until it broke off.

I used some quick drying epoxy to glue everything together.  You need to make sure to use some heavy duty stuff because people will be cranking that thing all night and you don't want it to start falling apart on you.  If you choose to use epoxy, be sure to do so in a well ventilated area because this stuff reeks!

Epoxying in progress.

Here it is, now attached to the mechanism.  Be careful not to drop epoxy or glue down into the mechanism or else it may screw up the gears and whatnot inside and it won't work anymore.  As mentioned before, I had split the wood somewhat during the drilling progress, so here I also squished some epoxy down into the crack to make it stronger.

And here it is painted.  I just used some craft paints on this one.  The very first one I did was spray painted, so really it's up to you on how you want to do it.  If you spray paint it though, be sure to tape up the mechanism really well beforehand.  Or you could just paint it before you attach the mechanism.

Now, when I used this in a costume I ended up carefully duct taping the mechanism onto a piece of cardboard(to help stabilize it) that was a little smaller than the width of my back and a few inches high, then I proceeded to duct tape the cardboard onto the tank top I was wearing.  I literally duct taped this thing onto me for the whole night(it was hidden under my corset thing), but that was the best I could come up with at the time.  If anyone else has any better ideas on how to wear this thing please let me know, it would be much appreciated! Thanks :)

Hope this helps you guys out!

New Suede Shoe-Slipper-things

I was lurking around on the internet the other day and came across these viking shoes.  As I scrolled through the post, I saw it was a tutorial on how to make them, so of course I had to make some myself.  I went out to my craft store and bought some leather remnants for less than$5 and hoped there would be enough to make a pair of shoes. Before I cut into the leather, I made a pattern out of felt and put it together.  I made some modifications to the original pattern to try to make them into flats instead of sandals and I wanted to make sure it would work.

Here's the pattern all put together

Drawing the pattern out on the leather.  I had JUST enough!

All cut out.

Rounding out the little tab things.

With a marker, I marked out where the holes should go.

Here I am, wishing my boyfriend still had his leather hole punch.

The exacto knife worked alright, here are the holes!

The leather cord was more expensive than the scraps of leather I bought!

Lacing up the back.  If you make these, make sure you pay attention to how you're supposed to thread it, I messed up a LOT on this step.

Lacing up the toe area.

Almost done!

All done and pretty comfy!

Back.

Front.

I think these things are pretty cute and they're quite comfortable.  It's just thin leather though, so these ones are more suitable to just be house slippers.  I'm thinking about ordering some thicker leather and maybe a shoe sole or something to see if I can make something that would be fit for wearing outside.