Friday, December 23, 2011

The Glitter French Mani

This might just be the lamest post ever, but I am so so so excited about it. I’m wearing nail polish for the first time in years (not counting My First Manicure in October) and glitter is all the rage this season.

2 coats of a gold sparkle with 1 half coat of red sparkle (the top half). I’m really skilled of taking pictures of my hands. I don’t know what I was thinking; I should have been a hand model. What am I doing with my life?!

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Happy Festivus! 

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Sparkle Mini-Dress

I went to the thrift store again this past weekend because I’m addicted now apparently (I need to get the patch probably) and bought this lovely … (maybe top of a 2 part) 80s dress thingy. So many beads. I thought, “Wow, I could totally rock this as a mini-dress!” Too bad I got home and realized my torso is longer than I thought it was. Oh well. Still trying.

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I cut out the shoulder pads and cut off the sleeves. Then I took the sides of the dress in a few inches so it would be a tiny bit more fitted. The sleeves were hemmed exactly where I cut them so it would fall a little farther off my shoulders than a regular tank top would. Then I forgot to document these steps in a pictorial so I’ll give you a close up of some beading.

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Yeah! It’s obscenely short so I’m wearing it with leggings as pants.

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And here I am, bringing sexyback. I wonder how many times that joke has been used to describe a showy back. Probably enough that would make this joke non-creative.

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And here I am modeling the dress with a blazer! Maybe I can wear it for New Year’s Eve. And if there were any doubt in your mind that I hadn’t watched the video from The Ring, check out my face in this picture.

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In other news, I just painted my nails with glitter and it looks like Edward Cullen threw up on my hands.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

The Sparkle Sweater Skirt II

Another sweater skirt! I started off with this beautiful gold sparkly sweater from the thrift store. I bet it would fit incredibly well with the shoulder pads and all.

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I cut off the sleeves and neckline, and pinned the sleeve area into a more skirty shape.

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Then, I folded the top over and sewed it about 1.5 inches down to make a waistband.

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Then, I found this old valence in my fabric stash and made a waist ribbon out of it. (Sidenote: I didn’t buy this to use as a valence. I bought it because the fabric was just so gorgeous.

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I cut some holes for the ribbon to go through the skirt waist.

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I need to figure out a different way to take pictures of myself. It took me maybe 6 times to take this picture and it is still sort of sucky. Maybe a roommate?

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Bokeh! Hey new camera! (Nikon Coolpix, amazing.)

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Sparkle is the best part about the holidays.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

The Sparkle Sweater Skirt

I am obsessed with sparkles. I bet that’s probably because it’s holiday season and sparkles are almost always in style during the holiday season.

I went to the thrift store to see if I could find something super sparkly to alter for New Year’s Ever, and I ended up with more sparkles than I should have. I got this wonderful black sweater vest with built in gold sparkle thread.

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I sliced off the bottom of the sweater under the armholes for the bottom of my skirt, and I cut up a slightly smaller length rectangle for the waistband.

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I sewed together the sides of the waistband and then folded it in half and sewed it to the bottom part of the skirt. I initially tried to do this with my sewing machine, but this material was so stretchy that the fabric didn’t move at all with the machine’s feed dog. Hand sewing commence!

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Once this was done, I threaded the waistband with a couple of pieces of yarn to act as the drawstring.

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I wore this skirt out last night with some friends and asked one friend to take a picture of me. My face would say otherwise, but I promise I haven’t watched the 7 days video in The Ring.

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No, I’m not wearing this for NYE. I bought something much much worse for that. I’m planning on destroying that soon and I  am really nervous that It won’t end up being wearable. Here goes nothing…

Sunday, December 4, 2011

French Pouf

I saw this tutorial for making a poufy thing on …love Maegan before summer ever started. Procrastinating for approximately 7 months, I finally got around to trying making this pouf.

I had this gorgeous dress from my freshman year that I bought for an 80s prom party. Actually, looking back, I don’t think it was an 80s prom party. I think we just dressed that way. Hmm. Gorgeous, right? Dig those fishnets. This was 7 years ago. I feel old. I have lots of better pictures than this but I’m not sure my friends would appreciate having terrible pictures posted of them  in public. (It took me maybe 20 minutes to find this picture. After I realized that it was taken before Facebook pictures was invented, I had to pull out the old external hard drive and dig through 13 folders all named ‘My Pictures’.)

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I cut out the innards of this dress, which is a sort of petticoat thing made from heavy tulle and some sort of nylon thing. Really expensive fancy materials.

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I cut these into circular type shapes, mostly by folding over so I only had to cut 4 times. I made approximately 20 tulle circles and 10 nylon circles.

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I ~folded each circle over twice and started sewing them into a circular type shape. I used a layer of 4 tulle, 4 nylon, 4 tulle, 4 nylon, 6 tulle.

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Then, I sewed a canvas backing on and added a safety pin.

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It looks almost romantic. I showed one of my friends and she told me it looked like a tacky prom dress. Hahaha. It kind of is.

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Saturday, December 3, 2011

Garlic Grilled Cheese

Yes, it’s approximately 10:30p on a Saturday night, but I just finished my dinner. I had the brilliant idea to use my (mostly) empty fridge and make grilled cheese…of the garlic variety.

My cheese didn’t fit the bread exactly, so I tore it up and mosaicked it so that it would sort of fit. My theory is that when it’s mosaicked, it will melt and cover the bread so there aren’t any voids once it’s melted.

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Then I ate it using dipping sauce that I had leftover from Dewey’s last week.

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#bacheloretteFrog

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Book Packaging

So I borrowed a book from a friend like last March, and completely forgot about it until I found it in the depths of my art studio apartment. Yeah. It’s November. I should have returned it ages ago but I didn’t.

I decided to package it up all nicely for her as a tiny surprise if/when I decide to give it back. Ughhh.

I started with a brown paper bag in which I had received some vegetables or similar.

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I cut it into a belt that I glued around the book. As soon as I did this, I was reminded of the Harry Potter book The Monster Book of Monsters. I don’t think that this book would ever try to bite me, but who even knows.

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I used some (surprise) encyclopedia paper and created some paper stars using this tutorial. Ok, so maybe I learned how to do it in 8th grade from the girl who sat in front of me. The things I remember about her are that she knew how to make paper stars and that she wore faux glasses with yellow lenses. This was before hipsters were cool. 
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I glued these paper stars to the book belt and wrote “Thank you!” on it. In case you’re wondering, I still have absolutely no idea how to carry out a love affair. 

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Another thing about the paper stars: I was obsessed with making them in 8th grade after I learned how. I made a bunch and would show them to everyone in my classes. Then, this kid that I had a crush on stuck a paper star down his pants. I didn’t have a crush on him anymore. Ewww.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Keep your head up, Oh oh

So there’s this song by Andy Grammer that I don’t like at all, it’s called “Keep your head up” or something similarly dumb. I put all songs that tell you not to be sad in the same vein as “Bad Day” by James Blunt. U. G. H.

Anyway, I have a friend who is going through a rough time right now, so I did what any craft princess would do: instead of comforting her or offering my shoulder to cry on, I made her art to show her I love her.

I found an encyclopedia page in my vast collection of encyclopedias (5) about French literature. Doesn’t something about that just scream fancy?

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I cut out magazine pages for the lettering. I wonder if whomever reads my blog things I’m really uncreative for reusing the same materials over and over. I don’t care, actually, I just really like pretty things.

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After cutting these letters out, I arranged them in a way that they spell ‘Everything will be Ok.’ Yes, the ‘G’ is only hanging off because I didn’t measure everything before gluing and otherwise it would be hanging off the page. I mean, it adds a sort of artistic elegance. Yup, that’s my radiator, it’s where all my good artwork is displayed.

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And now, since I apparently have the flu, I’m about to drink a Thera-Flu and fly off into la-la land.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

A Thank You card

Next week, I graduate from the the 2-year rotational program that I’ve been on at work. I made a “Thank You” card for the manager of this program and my manager for two years.
I was originally going to make this card approximately 5x7”, but certain members of this program wanted to make a “huge” card. I compromised and decided to make one that was 8.5x11” – out of a manila folder.
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I cut out rectangles from magazine in a ruby color and then glued them to the front of the manila folder.
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Then, I cut another manila folder into a bunch of strips and created outlines of “THANK YOU” on the ruby cutouts. (Sidenote: Today, I learned that Aluminium Oxide with a dash of Chromium turns into Ruby. Did you know that Aluminium Oxide is a ceramic?? I did.)
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I surrounded the THANK YOU with quilled spirals. The “quilling tool” I was a nail. I used to use a knitting needle as my quilling tool but I lost it. The basis for this design is a quilled “IMAGINE” that I read on one of my blogs. It’s not quite as detailed or amazing, but now I’ve had Imagine stuck in my head for the past few days. You may say I’m a dreamer…but I’m not the only one.
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On the inside of the card, I have a picture of my graduating class and our manager. I used this tutorial to create the photo corners.
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I found out today that my phone-camera has ~MANUAL FOCUS~.  This thing keeps amazing me. I can’t believe I ever bad mouthed it. Yes I can. It still isn’t very good in compact fluorescent lighting. I should get make an incandescent photobooth for it.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

30 Crafts in 30 Days: Day 30

It’s here! The last day of my saga. I wanted to do something epic, a very large project to commemorate my last day of this series. Of course, I instead got sidetracked by my dinner and the Internet.

When I was younger, I used to read the book The Rainbow Fish all the time. At the time, I didn’t understand that the theme was vanity and/or sharing. (I suppose I still don’t really know.) I just kept wondering why the rainbow fish gave all its beautiful scales away. It looked so dull with only one scale left!

I am devoting my day 30 craft to the rainbow fish. I have absolutely no idea if it’s illegal to sort of copy an illustration. Hmm. Help?

I sketched the fish out on that same manila folder that I’ve been using for the past few days.

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Then I colored it in with colored pencil. I colored the background of the fishy part (the sea) (or the ocean? maybe even a pond) with crayon. In retrospect, I should have colored the entire thing with a crayon, but I wasn’t really thinking. Colored pencil looks pretty sweet though.

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I went into the glitter section of my craft cabinet and found my silver glitter glue. (The glitter section of my craft cabinet is a little tray on top of my craft cabinet with 12 glitter glues on it. Yes, they were a set.) I smeared the glitter glue on many scales of the rainbow fish. I apparently didn’t learn anything from the book.

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According to Wikipedia, “Reviewers have called this a "cautionary tale about selfishness and vanity" and a reminder that "sharing brings happiness and acceptance," but the moral of the book has become a hotly debated topic. Interpretations include rejection of individuality and promotion of Socialism.” Hahaha. Ok, yeah, I suppose if you look at it from a different angle ;)

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That concludes my 30 Crafts in 30 Days. I hope you enjoyed reading my posts as much as I enjoy eating and crafting!