Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Storage Bed Done!


It's a gloomy day in LA! Still, I couldn't wait to post. I finished!!

I am really pleased with the storage bed. However, if I were to do it again, I would definitely sand, prime and paint BEFORE assembly! Those cubbies are deep!

Saturday, April 16, 2011

It's Not An Otter- Easter Bunnys for My Girlies

Did I mention that I love being an aunt? Well I do. I have yet to meet either of my east coast nieces, but I think about them all the time and get updates as often as possible. My little Sweet Pea is out of the NICU, home and thriving! Ava Baby is also doing great. I follow her adventures on Facebook.
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Naturally, I wanted to send the babies something for Easter. I have been eyeing rabbit patterns for weeks. Then one Saturday night I was feeling anxious and in need of some sewing therapy. I chose what I thought would be the easiest pattern. This Chenille Easter Bunny, but it was getting late so I decided to wing it and estimate the pattern. I used some minky that I had on hand for one and a piece of pink minky-like fur for the other. Neither was very planned out.
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At the last minute, I decided to add some taggies to the pink one. But, since I wasn't really thinking, we have what looks like a one armed rabbit. When Cliff saw them he said that he liked the pink one best. Then he said, "It kind of looks like an otter." That Cliff.

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Sweet Pea and Ava Baby- somebunny in California loves you very much!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Shara's Egg Swap

I participated in Shara's Easter Egg Swap again this year.
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I have always loved those sugar eggs with the window. I had wanted to make these last year, but I ran out of time. This year I was determined to make eggs with a window. Yet again, time got the best of me so I had to scale back my quilling plans. I created paper machae eggs using plastic eggs as molds. Then the question was, what to put inside?


Lacking in ideas, I fell back on my moss nest/birds egg filler of past projects. Once I had a bird theme, it was easy to make it up as I went along.IMG_3366


The little tub of Model Magic I picked up several years ago at the $ store is still going strong.  It has this weird gold glitter in it which is probably why it was at the $ store. Anyway, I thought about painting each egg and bird, but decided against it out of sheer "tone on tone is good" laziness.
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While it wasn't at all what I had envisioned at the beginning of the swap, I was quite pleased with the outcome.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Dying Fabric

Hello again!
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Not too long ago I needed a pink t-shirt for work. It was going to be customized with one of those ink-jet printer iron on transfers. I knew I would only wear it a few times. I decided that I really only wanted to spend $4 on this shirt. Walmart had several possibilities, but most were too nice to ruin with an iron-on. Others were in the $8 price range, which is still cheap, I know. Still, I had it in my head that I could spend $4. Have you ever gotten stubborn cheap? Well, I was. So I decided to buy a white man's t-shirt for $4 and dye it. Since I was buying for my colleagues too I ended up dying three of them.

Here is the t-shirt. The back shows all twelve teachers at our school who got pink-slipped this year.
Pink T- Shirts
I can't comment on darker colors, but I was impressed with how easy it was to get even consistent color with this Rit "Petal Pink". Out of respect for the other tenants who use our laundry room, I did the boil on the stove top method.  It was super easy. I wet the shirts in my tub and soaked them in hot water for a while.Next, I boiled them with the dye for about five minutes each. Then I rinsed them out in the tub and put them in the dryer to set the color.

As long as I had this big pot o'dye on the stove, I decided to try an idea from my Martha Encyclopedia of Crafts. I dyed some printed fabric. In this case I used some bits of vintage sheets.
Before and After Vintage Sheet Dyed Pink
Vintage Sheet Dyed Pink
I like this one the best.
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All in all, dying with Rit on the stove top was affordable, easy and fun. I already have plans to dye a shirt that I recently stained. I'll update after using the darker colors.