Avant Cardigan

Deconstructing...what? where? when? how? why? Creating new clothes from old clothes...at Nidhizzle's...Saturday evening...scissors, sewing machine, thread, seam ripper...to create new fashions. In case you are wondering, I'm guest blogger Bethany from SoOhblog.blogspot.com. I'm an avid crafter and tinkerer just like Nidhi and she was kind enough to host a Deconstructing session at her humble abode. I had the distinct honor and pleasure of blogging about our creations.

We started with these jeans that are circa 1998. I'm sure you can tell because of the pale-blue-washed-out-stretchy look of them...shudder. We decided to use the material to create a necklace which Nidhi took the lead on and will be posting on. I took the lead on creating these delightful "thong-chaps"

Just kidding! They are quite avant garde, but unfortunately not practical in Ohio. Overall I think we were going for practical avant garde, so I decided to abandon the "thong-chaps" and concentrate on the waistband....
Meanwhile, Nidhi is working away on this easter yellow sweater.

Nidhi had been wanting to own a yellow short-sleeved cardigan for quite some time so thus the avant cardigan was born!

She started with cutting up the middle and lining it with this nice satin shiny material.

The final flourish was adding a pleated collar and bow. Tres chic! (Nidhizzle's note: I got the idea from here)

The master seamstress that she is, she was even able to sew it to fit properly. Well done Nidhi!

Now back to the jeans…the question was how do I create a jean-clothing item that doesn’t make you think who ever is wearing it loves the 90’s. Here are a couple failed attempts…

The jean tie…? Nahhhh

The jean wrap….? Definitely not!

The Jean Collar….oh yes!

Nidhi and I are bringing denim back! This well structured button collar is stylish, sophisticated and fun. I plan on making more of these fashion forward collars and putting them in my shop at sooh.etsy.com, so keep your eyes out.

Thank-you again to Nidhi for hosting such a successful Deconstructing session!

Pi Day Pie Day

At work tomorrow, we are having a Pi Day Pie Day (totally nerdy, and totally my idea, haha) and I made French Silk Pie. (Sidenote: the party starts at 1:59p since π = 3.14159… and one of my coworkers decided he wanted to repeatedly email me about changing the time to 2p since he had a meeting until 2p…)

I used this recipe and while it was super easy, I’m afraid to eat this pie. The crust is made of flour and shortening. Now all my kitchen utensils are greasy from the shortening. So gross.

Since I sucked 3 times at rolling the dough into a circular shape, I placed the ball of dough into the pan and just squished it into the general shape of the pan :\.

Then, I accidentally baked it for too long.

I mixed all the filling ingredients using this awesome electric hand whisker that my mom got for me. So convenient – I wouldn’t have been able to mix the filling without it. The filling, oh God, it’s sugar, butter and a bunch of other heart-stopping ingredients. So afraid to eat it.

But I do think it looks pretty delicious :)

Also in honor of my nerdiness, I crafted a bunch of nerdy mathematical symbols (i, infinity, zeta, and pi). Pi is going to be on display on Pi Day!

Pendantized around my neck! Love it. I bet it matches everything I own.

Happy Pi Day!

The Last Snow of this Winter

Ok, we all know that Cleveland will soon get destroyed with more snow just because I jinxed it with this blogpost title, but I’m ok with that.

The snow on Friday was very unexpected, especially since it’s March in the Midwest and we never get snow at strange times of year (??).

The snow settled nicely on the branches around town, so I decided to take some pictures after work on Friday. The first picture was my favorite, taken at the forest by my worksite. The rest of the pictures were taken in my ‘hood.

This is all fine and gorgeous, but I really hope it was the last snow of this winter. I’m ready for summer.

Happy 100th Blogpost Day!

Along with some other things that make this a significant day (Fat Tuesday, International Women’s Day), this is also the day that my blog gets 100 posts!

In honor of today, I would like to share with you the newest addition to my gallery wall. I collected this leafiness from outside my apartment last fall and stuck it between the last pages of a heavy book to flatten it.

I then glued the leafiness to a blue painted piece of wood. After that glue was dry, I modpodged over it to create a seal. BUT when I first collected the leafiness, it was ~maize. It somehow turned brown with time D: But it still looks pretty nice.

Happy 100th Blogpost Day!  

A Sticky Situation

I was getting many questions from my visitors about why I had a stick glued to a piece of wood hanging up in my bathroom. I initially had it there because it made my bathroom look more like an outhouse, but as of late, I’ve decided I don’t want my bathroom to look like outhouse.

A stick glued to a piece of eco-friendly stained wood is silly. But, if there are leaves painted on it, it’s perfect bathroom decor. Actually, it would go with much of the decor in my apartment, not just the bathroom.

If you look very closely, the white leaves are the ones that are still attached to the branches, while the gray leaves are the ones that are falling/have fallen off.

I love the dimensional aspect of this design.

Save the Label!

For a while, I saved labels from beer bottles and wine bottles that I thought looked cool. The way I decided to display these was to make tiny art pieces out of each one by using colored tissue paper, book paper, and quilling. These are hung up above my stove.

“Every object tells a story if you know how to read it.” I’ll tell you the story of each of these labels.

This is a wine bottle label that I received as a hostess gift from some friends who came to stay with me for the Summer of Light reunion last summer. I chose red and black because it matches the label as well as the connotation of a glamorized “naughty girl.”

The next two labels are from drinks that some friends brought for our one-year anniversary party for Edison (the only one year anniversary I’ll ever have). I love that the Magic Hat #9 label comes off as a circle, when it looks like an oval on the bottle.

This label came from a bottle of wine that someone brought to the party as well. He was really excited that there was a giant cock on the label.

This label is from a bottle of Oberon, my favorite beer. I made this art piece last August during the timeframe of the Feast in Little Italy. I had just finished when I got a call from one of my friends to meet him in Little Italy for the fireworks. I rapidly left my apartment and once the fireworks were over, I came back to this dried up.

This isn’t from an alcoholic beverage, but I thought it should be displayed in the same way. It’s from the takeaway container from the restaurant Momocho. I love this restaurant. It is so delicious. And they have this matador on their takeaway box. It’s literally from a stamp.

I guess there is one good thing about being labeled.

A Little Black Dress and a Complementary Headband

I needed a new little black dress for no apparent reason, but this one was too little. Ok, I may have hacked off the bottom so I could do this particular refashion, but like I really liked that joke!!

Luckily I had this really old skirt. I took the lace bottom off the skirt and sewed it to the bottom of the dress.

I love it. It fits incredibly well. And my gorgeous new black pumps are so fun! I just got them in Florida. Too bad I don’t have anywhere to wear this dress in the near future :( Anyone want to go to a fancy dinner?

I also made this headband out of pearl string and gold cording. It’s twisted up and beautiful. I love a fancy headband.

Fancy.

Team MacGyver 321: The Ruby Gold

For Engineers Week (last week), we had a competition at work to see who could build the biggest and baddest Rube Goldberg machine. The point of the machine was to have a light bulb screw into a socket and then turn on.

We decided to build our machine in one of the mostly uninhabited buildings at Nela Park. We have a large library on campus, and there we decided to build our machine using materials found mostly in that building.

The library has many books. I’m not entirely sure that it gets used that often, with the advent of the Internet (and/or Wikipedia).

We walked into the adjoining room and discovered it was a beautiful studio that would be perfect for building our machine.

Here, someone is setting up the cassette tapes that will be domino-ed to set off the next step. I’m not sure who is setting these up because I don’t memorize my co-workers’ clothing.

Here, Joe and Alex are perfecting the screwing in mechanism.

Check out our machine! After 32 or so runs, we finally got it to (mostly) work! Alex had to help it along a little bit but it almost went off without a hitch.

Unfortunately, my team didn’t win, but we did come in 3rd place!! (Out of 4 D:)

Spring Break 2011 Part 3

This last Spring Break 2011 blogpost is more of a hodgepodge of the rest of the pictures I would like to showcase in my blog.

The pool at our hotel was amazing – an outdoor pool on the rooftop, it had an Olympic-sized pool (I’m guessing, I don’t really know how big Olympic-sized is) and a Jacuzzi that cycled between scalding and lukewarm. I did a bunch of laps in the pool. Ok, I did 10 laps in the pool and then I got tired. I wish I had access to a pool in CLE!

We took a 3 Hour Tour around the river in a boat called the Jungle Queen. It stopped us at a little Jungle Island, where they had an alligator wrestling show. I don’t know about this guy…I would never let my head get that close to an alligator’s mouth – remember the 3k lbs of force it can generate!

This trip included many walks on the beach. I discovered that I’m not really a fan of long walks on the beach. However, I do like drinking cappucinos by the beach, eating dinner by the beach, going into the water by the beach, and laying out on the beach. I’m sure I could be convinced that I like running on the beach. But long walks on the beach? Forget it.

Since my dad’s birthday is on March 10, we decided to go out for a surprise birthday lunch. It was supposed to be a surprise birthday dinner, but the place we wanted to go to didn’t take reservations and they had hour+ waits both nights we tried to go there. My parents and brother got veggie enchiladas, and I got Chile Rellenos. Mmm so good.

My dad was so excited that we celebrated his birthday that he gave me a really weird hug.

My brother and I take really nice pictures together. My mom wanted to take this picture so that I could show off the gorgeous sundress that she bought me.

Fabulous trip. Now I’m en route to CLE and 30 degree weather .30F, not 30C. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

Spring Break 2011 Part 2

Another day of our trip yielded a short jaunt to the Everglades for a mini-tour and the rest of the day spent at South Beach, Miami.

I found this awesome alligator necklace in a souvenier shop. I guess the necklace isn’t really as awesome as the alligator jewelry holder. Man, if someone proposed to me with this alligator as the ring holder, I would definitely say yes. Also we would have to have been dating for a while and spoken about marriage beforehand.

Look! An alligator! It’s so lazy looking. They barely move but apparently if they snap their jaws shut, it generates 3k lbs of force!

I took this really awesome picture of a rooster. Yay for macro mode on my camera working. My mom thinks the top of the rooster’s head looks like a raspberry, and I’m inclined to agree with her.

An Asian family tradition – bring an excess of meal food on your trip so you don’t have to eat out as often. My mom brought bhel – a bunch of crunchy things, mung beans, potatoes, and chutney mixed together. She brought chutney! I would never think to bring chutney on vacation with me. I also would never think to bring meal food with me.

After lunch, we went to MIA. (The city, not the airport; I can see how you could get confused, though.) Imagine my surprise when I saw an outdoor bar on Ocean Blvd. called The Clevelander! I wonder if LeDouche goes here when he’s feeling homesick.

We got first dinner on Lincoln Blvd. I drank a cappuccino and my camera macro mode was on its finest behavior. My bro inexplicably decided that he likes cappuccinos as well and drank half of it.

Lincoln Blvd. has a bunch of clothing and jewelry retailers. I really liked this display in one of the windows, with the mannequin heads fashioned out of faux-light bulbs. This is definitely something I want to emulate, especially with incandescent light bulbs being outlawed.

We took a walk on South Beach after walking around Lincoln Blvd., and my mom and I took this adorable picture. There was apparently a Food+Wine festival on South Beach the weekend before I was there starring many Food Network stars, including Paula Deen. I’m guessing that whatever Paula Deen contributed to the festival was not aligned with the South Beach diet.