I've been making jewelery!

College football season is upon us, for better or worse. My favorite part of football season is seeing what the trendy clothes and accessories are for the games.  Despite having season tickets for Oklahoma State, I won't be going to a game until Bedlam, on Thanksgiving weekend.

I was inspired by this on Etsy and decided to have a go at one for my Hokie Mom for her birthday.  Then as my hubby was preparing to go down to an Oklahoma State game, he won 2 extra tickets and was going to give them to his mom and sister, so I whipped up a necklace for her, using a custom bottle cap from Jess Boutique who lives down the street from me.

Inspiration: 

My versions:

MIL wound up not going to the game and evidently wasn't in love with the necklace. I plan to steal it back from her when we go to the Bedlam game on Thanksgiving.

I made my little Lava Girl a pink bracelet this ribbon/bead style but haven't taken a  picture. 

IF YOU WANT A TUTORIAL ON THIS BEAD/RIBBON NECKLACE, LEAVE A COMMENT ASKING FOR IT!

Since I was sending something to MIL I felt the need to send something to SIL so I whipped up this bracelet. It's a good thing I had ordered these bottle caps from Jess Boutique before, for these projects, but then once the bracelet was made, I decided I needed an image on BOTH sides of the bottle cap, so Super Jess took it back and added the 2nd image. Evidently MIL and SIL both really liked this, so I doubt I'll be able to steal it but with any luck they'll let me borrow it for the game...

I bought all these beads LAST YEAR to make jewelry with for this football season, so now when we are down there again in the land of everything orange, I'll buy more. There just isn't enough orange stuff up here in the land of limited craft supplies.  

Ribbon Revelation

I have been collecting ribbon for over 3 years now, for making the DreamSlings as well as for other projects, like hair bows, which I have yet to really get into. This means I am constantly looking for a better way to store it.

I was looking at storage solutions online, but nothing was big enough. As I looked at this one, I thought there had to be a way to make one on a larger scale.

See the HOLES?   They made me think of pegboard, and I just happened to have one on the wall in my craft room. It wasn't being used to its best potential, so I ripped it off the wall and started poking ribbons through it.  It would work, but I needed a way to contain the mess of ribbons hanging behind it. I considered a pillow case type idea on the back of it, but that would take work. Then, as I looked around my craft room, I saw a cheap hamper which had become a landing place for unorganized (waiting to be put away) pieces of fabric, ribbon, etc. It was even ripped and waiting to be repaired. The rip actually made it perfect. I used ribbon to attach the plastic pegboard to the side of the hamper and had a way to contain the oodles of ribbon behind the board. 

As I worked on this I thought of another solution, had I not had these supplies on hand. I could have drilled holes in the lid of an under bed storage box and done the same thing. 

I'm hoping to eventually have my sewing room organized enough that I can show you all the whole thing, but for now, here's the fabric and ribbon section.  I have tons more ribbon to poke through the ribbon dispenser but for now, at least a solution has been found!

Pillow Case Dress Success!!

My friend's little girl is having her birthday party on Sunday. I've been thinking of making this dress for her forever and it took me ages to go get the fabric and then get the guts to sew. There are pillow case dress tutorials all over the net, so I won't bore you with that.  I did it "old school" style, with ribbon at the neck, no elastic. People who sell these have gone to elastic necks, with bows for decoration, because of the strangulation hazard of actual things that tie near the neck. ugh, as morbid as that is, I'm pretty sure people have survived pillowcase dresses for hundreds of years.

It's a dinosaur theme because this pretty little girl is in LOVE with dinosaurs and bugs and everything icky and slimy and gross. Here's a close-up:

I attempted to make a ruffle around the bottom, but the ruffler and I were NOT getting along, and then the serger ate a bunch of fabric and thread broke and blah blah blah, I got frustrated and just made it a coordinating bottom rather than a ruffled bottom.

The sash is a copycat design from Fray Baby Bibs and More.  I don't know if she does hers with elastic at the neck or not. I LOVE the ribbon she uses at the shoulders, but it's pretty hard to get, even online.

I have no interest in selling these, so if you want one, please support "Fray Baby Bibs and More" through facebook. I don't know the owner personally, but I love her work and she has really inspired me to try new stuff in the sewing room.

Curly Ribbons

One day, while surfing the 'net for who-knows-what, I came across The Ribbon Retreat and it's free tutorials for ribbon crafts. They are a ribbon store, and they want you to have lots of uses for their ribbon. 

Before stumbling upon this, I had NO IDEA how korker or curly ribbon was made. Since I had some dowels and some clothes pins, and some ribbon, I gave it a go. Then, quickly, ran out and bought more clothes pins and more ribbon! It's too easy!! I'll let you go to their page for the actual details, but here are the basics:

Twirl ribbon around dowel, securing in place with clothes pins. Put in oven (get details on The Ribbon Retreat)

Remove from oven, let cool a bit, unwrap, have curly ribbon. Wow!

Here, I was experimenting with wrapping ribbon around a hair clip, but then it had long tails, so since it is metal, I figured the oven couldn't hurt it, so wrapped the tails around the dowel and stuck it in the oven.

It's been about a month and I haven't gotten any further on that green clip project...

I did use some of the corkers I made to decorate Kaila's Easter pigtails:

The %&*@$# Doll Stroller-finally fixed!

So, I'm pretty anti-stroller to begin with. They are so inconvenient and unnecessary about 70% of the time. The major exceptions would be going shopping for clothes, and working out to fit into those new clothes.

Regardless of how I feel about them, every little girl in the neighborhood has at least one doll stroller, and they all fight over them, so, naturally, I had to get one for Lavagirl for her 2nd birthday, last August. Instantly, it was the bane of my existence. The seat part is removable, and was removed 89% of the time, leaving a bare bones stroller frame for poor little baby dolls to perch on. After a month or two it got chucked into the garage, with plans to eventually glue it on or something.

So recently, a neighbor kid spotted the stroller frame in the garage and demanded that I put it together. A couple weeks later, I found the $%&*#@ seat part, and we started going through the same removal, fix, remove, fix, remove process. ARRgh!!!!  One morning, fully caffeinated, I had had enough of the whine, whine, whine, fix my stroller, blah blah blah. Luckily I was having to look around for glue, and it hit me. If I glued it, I wouldn't be able to take it off and wash it if, lets say, someone decided to use it as a wheel barrow.  So, I grabbed some ribbon, sewed it on, and tied it with knots onto the frame.

YAY!!!  NO MORE WHINING!!  IT'S BEEN ON FOR A FEW WEEKS WITHOUT BEING TAKEN OFF!!