Three Flowers - with Mini Tutes!

Well, it's been a busy week so far. My at-home business is just starting to pick up some speed, and on top of that I managed to have a nice, creative, crafty weekend. On Sunday, I think I went for seven hours straight, just knocking out project after project on my to-do list. I'll get pictures of all of them up eventually, but for now, I'll start with my favorite part:



Three flowers, each different in materials and construction, but alike in...flowery...ness. We'll tackle the one on the right first.



Cut slightly concentric circles from two coordinating fabrics. I traced around the bottom of a plastic cup, then cut just inside the trace line for the yellow circle, and a little further inside the trace line for the plaid circle. I did not worry about being exact, because this will all ruffle up anyway.



Fold the two circles in half together and cut a half-circle out from the middle. Again, preciseness is not necessary or relevant at this point (are you noticing a theme with my crafts yet?). Then you end up with this:



Next take some leftover lace - you really don't need much at all - and begin sewing a long running stitch along the edge of the inner circle you just cut, sort of catching the lace with your needle as you go. You can feel free to bunch up and fold the lace as much as you need to, because again, it's going to be ruffly. Ruffly is really good at hiding mistakes! I love ruffly!



Finally, get out your hot glue and use it to glue a pretty shank button into the center of the flower. Take one of the circles you cut out of the center of the flower and glue it onto the back. Finally, glue a pinback on it to give it ultimate versatility. The combination of fabrics, laces, buttons, sizes and shapes really makes this an exciting project.



Next! The easiest of the three: a book paper flower brooch.



Not so much a traditional-looking flower, but it kind of has a chrysanthemum appeal to it, I think.

Get thee several sheets ripped from books you no longer want or need. I recommend outdated tax law books, Windows 3.1 how-to manuals, or diet fad books that ended up killing more people than they saved. I used one of many Reader's Digest books I was given and can't seem to get rid of no matter how hard I try. I can't give these suckers away! So I'm making stuff with them.

Trace and cut seven circles out of the book pages, seeing if you can score big words like antidisestablishmentarianism or floccinoccihilipilification. You might not be able to find any of these words, but take a look anyway.



As the picture shows, you will begin folding them into sixths. So basically take a circle, fold it in half, then fold that in half, then fold it in half again. Crease firmly so they keep their folded shape. Do this to 6 circles (leave one circle unfolded - this will be your base).

Glue those suckers onto the base radially, as in, glue them so that their points are in the center of the base and it looks like you have little folded paper spokes all the way around it. Unfold the not-glued-down parts of your petals, and fluff! Glue a pinback to the back of the base. (I LOVE PINBACKS.)

Finally, the largest and possibly weirdest one: the toilet paper roll flower.

Get yourself an empty toilet paper roll and press the sides together until it's folded in half. Using very sharp scissors, cut six (or more, depending on how full you want your flower to be) slices, roughly 1/2-inch wide, off one end. Because of the fold you created in the tube, your slices will already be roughly petal-shaped.

Arrange them together and glue so that they look like a flower, like so:



I was lucky that my toilet paper rolls were a nice, not-unattractive shade of white. If yours are brown and you don't want them to be, I would recommend doing some painting at this point.

Next, glue the whole shebang to the right side of some pretty fabric (I used my yellow again). Now, I went to the great and tremendous trouble of hot-gluing along the edges of the petals and placing them carefully, one at a time, on the fabric, lamenting every spill, burn, and leak in the process. DO NOT DO THIS. It wasn't until I was done with the hot-gluing that I realized that spray adhesive would have worked MUCH BETTER. So use that instead.



You may also want to iron your fabric. Or not.

Then, carefully cut away the excess fabric around the flower, leaving only what's glued to the petals, so you have something that looks like this:



Again, it's okay if you're not really precise with your cutting, but try to get as close as you can without losing your eyesight or making your fingers cramp.

At this point, I needed a way to sort of clean up my edges a little, so I threaded an embroidery needle with some pretty pink embroidery thread and just looped it around the cardboard petals, which not only hid some of my hot glue mess, but also provided a little extra strength between the cardboard and the fabric.

Finally, I took another tiny scrap of lace and ruffled it up using the same flower-ruffling method from the first tutorial. I glued it and another fabric scrap to the front and - you guessed it - a pinback to the back. This one is considerably larger than the other two, so I would recommend it as an embellishment for a winter coat or a large bag. It's a bit too much for daily wear. But hey, it's a way to use up toilet paper rolls! If you, you know...have a need to use up toilet paper rolls. Like...I do.



Anyway, there you are! Three handmade flowers you might not have thought to make before but might try now! If you do try, I hope you'll post pictures or at least link me to your blog or Flickr stream so I can see it! Hope everyone's having a great week!

This post has been linked to the following link par-tays:

A Thrifty Home's Penny Pinching Party


Me and My Bucket’s Show Us What You’re Workin’ With Wednesday


Someday Crafts’ Whatever Goes Wednesday


The Trendy Treehouse Creative Share Blog Hop


Women Who Do It All Idea Sharin’ Wednesday


Blue Cricket Design Show and Tell


My Backyard Eden’s Make It Yours Wednesday


Sew Much Ado’s We Did It Wednesday


733 Blog’s Sugar and Spice Weekly Link Party


Fine Craft Guild’s DIY Linky Party

The "Tetris" Shirt

I have a lot of "if only" statements attached to this project. If only I'd made the blocks smaller. If only I'd gotten another color involved. If only I'd put together the different Tetris shapes patch-work style before attaching them to the shirt. If only I'd sewed them on instead of hot-gluing them. But nonetheless, all of these "if only's" add up to a failed shirt. I'm actually wearing it today, though, because it's Friday and I need to figure out if I'm going to keep it or not. But here's a picture:



Doesn't look so bad, I guess. Here's one on me:



The picture makes it look worse on me than it really does. It's not precisely flattering, but it's comfy and unusual, so it makes a good casual Friday shirt, I think.

TETRIS SHIRT IS A FAIL. I'll try it again sometime, but I'll do it, you know...right.

My Fail Equals Your Pleasure

So last night I was inspired to alter a t-shirt for my brother for an upcoming birthday. He's a hard dude to shop for, so when inspiration strikes this time of year I jump on it. I pulled out an old navy blue t-shirt and began to cut out large-ish squares from solid-colored material and assembled a Tetris board on the front. I was going to be SO PROUD to show it to you today.

After about an hour of hot-gluing, it was done. After about 10 minutes of looking at it from all different angles, I hated it. I mean, it looked kind of cool, but it definitely did not look like a Tetris board. Instead, it looked like that time Grandma's quilt exploded in a frenzy of creative overload and splattered its intricately-cut squares all over your shirt - remember that? What a mess that was.

Now I'm stuck with this weird patchwork shirt that I suppose I'll have to do something with and no post for you.

So here's some stuff other people have done that's way better:


You may have seen on Craftzine yesterday this truly badass Twister gameboard raincoat that Nicoleeoliee_4_Life on Craftster.org (where else?) made in response to one of the site's notorious monthly challenges. I cannot express adequately how very much I love this, but sadly I don't think I'll be making it for myself. My husband would have too much fun with it. I can almost hear the "Right hand red!" jokes now.


A couple of weeks ago Heather of The Salty Pineapple produced these beautiful paper lanterns, which is definitely going on my "kids projects" list for the summer. My daughter recently came into a good-sized supply of beautiful origami paper that I think would be just perfect for this craft. With the right color combination, this could make an easy and elegant addition to any party. We like parties.

Finally, another Craftster find (but this one I found all on my own). Before I post the pictures, I need to let you in on a little secret (it's probably not that big a secret). I am kind of a nerd (I am a completely ridiculously impossibly hopeless geek). I occasionally enjoy playing video games, reading comic books, and I dabble in cosplay (I play Magic: The Gathering and the Star Wars tabletop roleplaying game on a regular basis, and I am listening to remixed video game music right now). As a result, certain crafts that relate to any of these little hobbies make me smile (I am totally geeking out over these pictures, and I can hardly contain my excitement).







AREN'T THEY CUTE??????

These lovely t-shirt recons were created by Serene in the clothing reconstruction section on Craftster, and I am so very deeply impressed. And she's cute as a button too!

How can I do this? Where do people find these shirts? How many times do they practice a certain design before cutting into the shirts themselves? Why can't I get the confidence to do and wear stuff like this? And other important questions!

Thanks for looking. Hopefully I'll have something for you, perhaps a new tutorial, by next week! Have a great day!

Anthropologie really IS inspiring.

First of all, I'd like to extend another special thank you to Stephanie at Under the Table and Dreaming for featuring my Nifty Fold-Out List Notebook on her blog yesterday. Click the Under the Table and Dreaming button under "I Was Featured!" to the right.

Now, on to the crafty stuff.

I've been seeing a bunch of "Anthropologie-inspired" stuff on various crafting and sewing blogs and forums, and to be frank, I always kind of stayed away from it because of all the hype Anthropologie was getting. So it wasn't until yesterday when, bored and itching for inspiration, I began to browse some of their wares. And I'll go ahead and say it:

I get it.

Now, a lot of that stuff is clearly designed for people with no boobs, which I am...not. And the price tags made me snort coffee out of my nose. But I guess that's why Anthropologie makes for such good creative fodder. You can take a brilliant idea and make it fit you perfectly at a truly miniscule fraction of the cost.

I did find something I really liked right away.


These Seven Day Bermudas seemed like the perfect solution for a pair of yellow jeans I have that are just a hair too short to look cool.

Here are the offending pants:


They were a gift from my husband's grandmother - she'd bought them and never worn them. I wore them once and loved them, but the first time I washed them they shrunk and the color faded. I guess I'm okay with the new color (but they used to be so bright and happy!), but the shrinking is not okay. I don't care how many magazines say it's okay, I do not like jeans that expose my ankles.

So I chopped off about six inches from each leg - I wasn't too fiddly about getting them exactly right or straight - then turned them inside out. According to the website, there's a bit of green fabric edging either side of the outer seam on the wrong side of the pants - so it shows when the edge is turned up. I hand-stitched a strip of green plaid fabric and let a little hang off the edge. Then I turned them right-side out again and folded up the bottom of the pants. I sewed the green plaid to the outside of the pant to hold it in place, then tacked it at a few spots around the leg.

A pretty simple operation that took about 45 minutes (just because I hand-sewed instead of using my machine), and here is the result:


(Note the "I'm so awesome" pose.)



So there we have it: the first in a line of probably many...many Anthropologie-inspired wardrobe makeovers which will give me the quality of being completely unique just like everybody else.

Blog Updates

First and most importantly:

I have a follower!!! Thanks so much Stephanie! I'm way more excited about this than I have any right to be.

However, it did spur the motivation in me to add a Google Friend Follower list, which is in the right-hand sidebar.

You may also find in the right-hand sidebar a bit of code you can copy if you wish to add my button to your blog. If you do, let me know and I'll gladly add yours.

Or hell, I'll just add yours if you ask me to. Leave me a comment with a link to your blog and I'll see that your button ends up on my sidebar.

Finally, if you look across the top of the page, I've posted several links to different pages within the blog. One page will contain a list of all my tutorials (which you can also find in the right-hand sidebar), one page contains a list of my favorite vendors, and finally a list of other people's tutorials, projects, and tips that you really should be looking at.

Thanks everyone! I'm starting to actually get a little excited about this blog.