Giant Paper Flowers

With all the wedding planning going on (I’m in 3 weddings this year!), my bridal friends have been turning to a lot of DIY wedding ideas. My friend sent me a link to this, to which I immediately thought, that looks like a comically giant version of something I made.

I cut out a bunch of petals (too many, from the looks of the remainders) into a vague heart shape (not unlike most of the boys I date).

I curled the edges of the petals using scissors using the same method as ribbon curling.

I then put glue on the outer curved side, maybe 2 inches up from the bottom of the petal.

Then, I attached it to my stem, wrapping it with the petal curving outward. The stem is a basically a stick I found outside my apartment. Well, not basically a stick. It is a stick. What’s brown and sticky? Not this stick. It’s white and sticky. This joke is about to go horribly wrong.

I continued haphazardly attaching the petals to the stick until I reached maximum fullness for the flower. Maximum fullness is a size that I made up.

Then, I let it dry and then I took some flattering pictures of it.

This is the flower compared to the size of my head.

Eye Mask

You know that feeling you get when  you don’t get enough sleep? I like sleeping in the complete darkness, usually all the way under the covers. Unfortunately, my apartment has been far too warm for me to do this, so I’ve decided to resort to an eye mask.

I used the same way of making it as I made this one last year. I quilted an old saree I used for crafting onto the mattress pad. Quilting always seems like it’s going to take soo much time but, in reality, it takes maybe 10 minutes.

I cut it in a vague eye mask shape (this took several iterations as I held it up to my face and cut it some more, and it’s still square-ish on one side). I tore some more strips of that same saree (from the purple side) and then I pinned and double parallel stitched it to the quilted portion.

Then, I cut two more strips for ties to secure the eye mask around my head. Let’s hope I sleep well tonight. I’m going to save the pictures of me wearing them for myself. (I deleted them.)

DIY Bachelorette Sash

My friend’s bachelorette party is coming up (in New York City, no less)(the city that never sleeps)(is that Las Vegas? I keep forgetting)(anyway, I’ll need to sleep because otherwise I get pretty cranky), and I thought to make her a sash to wear around the city to let everyone know that she’s about to live her last few days as a single lady. (Put your hands up!)

I cut two long pieces of fabric (about 3.5’x4”) and then sewed them together on one of the shorter edges.

Then, I turned it right side out and traced “Bride To Be” from my computer using a pencil. The statement starts approximately 6” from the sewn edge.

See my very faint pencil markings? No? Look harder. You’re so lazy.

I painted over the pencil with hot pink paint. I didn’t have hot pink paint, so I frantically asked my designer friend how to make it out of the paint colors I did have. She didn’t answer (probably at work or something silly) and so I had to web-search it!! It is made of Red, White, and a dash of Blue. Who knew hot pink was so patriotic! I also used a flat brush for this so that the letter thicknesses would be mostly even.

Then, after the Patriotic Pink had dried (I renamed the color), I went over with with silver glitter glue to make it a little gaudier. (Did you ever notice that Gaudí’s architectural style could, by some people, be described as gaudy? I bring this up because Gaudí looks like gaudy, not because my sash is a forerunner in architectural expression. Words.)

There needs to be a glitter invented that actually photographs well.

Here is a picture of a random single girl I found to try this on. Put it across your shoulder and then pin it at the bottom (and trim any excess fabric in case you cut it too long).

 

Peacock Notebook

I recently deleted my Twitter because I have a lot more thoughts I want to keep to myself. So instead of posting all my thoughts on the internet, I decided to write everything down in notebooks. (PS, here is an article about writing vs. typing.)

I have had this green notebook forever, as you might be able to tell from the spiral, which has warped. I think I got it in 9th grade, when I was obsessed with lime green. Now I’m just obsessed with limes.

I wire-cut the spiral off and just twirled it out. Fun fact: when I was younger, I would stretch out the spiral and then make it into a tiara.

I covered the front and back with encyclopedia pages. For the front, I used “Cartesian” and for the back, I used “Cartel” – these pages were right next to each other in my encyclopedia from 1954.

Then, I used a needle and embroidery floss to re-bind the book.

I used some markers to draw a peacock feather on the front cover. This is now the notebook I keep in my bedroom for all the thoughts I have before I go to bed. It’s way better than Twitter.

Bubble Necklace

I’ve been in lust with this j crew bubble necklace for a really long time, and I could probably have afforded it a few months ago. But now, being funemployed at all, I can’t even afford the off-brand bubble necklaces that have been popping up everywhere for $30.

 

I decided to hap-hazardly attempt to make my own. I used Sculpey clay in white, tore it up to “condition” it or whatever, and made a bunch of nice round circles in two different sizes. I also had a couple of gold chains I had acquired a long time ago from a jewelry “grab bag” from a thrift store.

In order to attach everything together, I used the chain as a sort of “hinge” between each piece, and pressed a little more polymer clay on top of each piece in order to secure the chain to the clay.

Then, I baked the clay per the instructions on the package and/or may have left it in a little too long because it apparently started turning brown :(

I painted it turquose using a mixture of acrylic paint, glue, and water.

Here is what it looks like, finished, on encyclopeda pages. This is the best picture I could get of it, since I am apparently terrible at taking self picturess of my décolletage (see next picture).

In retrospect, I would have used color clay instead of using white and then painting it. This is probably more of a summer necklace? How do you wear it in the winter because scarf season! SCARF SEASON!

reIntroducing reTreasured

Helloooo from the world of funemployment.

And in this free time of job searching and pretending to clean my apartment, I decided to re-launch my Etsy shop, reTreasured by Nidhizzle.

You can find lots of fabulous artwork made from recycled materials, including tributes to your favorite alcoholic beverage.

And of course, with a new business, I need business cards!

I took my old business business cards and covered the parts that have my now-defunct contact information on them with interesting images I found in an incredibly misogynistic magazine called cosmopolitan.

The fronts:

The back:

Thanks for reading! And remember, any of the pieces from my shop can be used as a fabulous stocking stuffer. Support your local funemployed poor artist. <3 <3

Patching a Hole in your Jeans

So one day, you put your favorite pair of jeans and check out your butt and notice that your jeans suddenly have purple lace sticking out of them. What?! How did you rip a hole in your favorite paint jeans!?

I decided to patch things up with these jeans so they wouldn’t be mad that I didn’t wear them anymore. I cut a piece of scrap denim and sewed it to the inside of the pants where the hole was.

Then, I zig-zag sewed the hole together. It still looks kind of dumb but at least you can’t see through it anymore.

Paint jeans! Patched up! Wearable without seeming slutty!

Pink Damask Paper Shoe-Box

I love boxes, so I collect shoe-boxes. You can put basically anything in them and it’s amazing. This also means that the more shoes I get, the more boxes I get. So you know I have too many shoe-boxes.

I covered the shoe-box in the same pink Damask paper I used to make the Wedding Card in the previous post.

For the top, I wanted something different. Also, I didn’t have paper wide enough for covering the entire top without having a seam, and we all know that seams are terrible, so I instead covered it with white scratch paper and then added a “ribbon” type thing going down the center.

I like that it’s not one big Damask-y mess, and instead has the element of surprise! And by element of surprise, I meant something totally different probably.

I should acquire more stuff so that I can store it in my shoe-boxes! Just kidding. Fools.

Wedding Card

For my friend Lauren’s wedding reception last Black Friday, I chose to make a card for her since I am lazy and too poor to buy one.

I started with this manila folder that said “review” on the inside. I almost gave up but then I remembered that I had an eraser and I  could erase it. So I erased it. That was stressful.

I cut out this damask print (drawer liners that I had bought from AAPTO I think) and glued it to the manila folder. Then, to fancy it up, I added the ribbon from her Save-the-Date and made a pink flower out of the damask paper.

Some bling-bling for the flower…

Then, I took the Save-the-Date and cut out their swirly design and used it to seal my envelope!

Happy Wedded Bliss to Lauren and Patrick!

“And you can wear it again!”

I am sure that as soon as you read that, you thought, “She must be speaking of a bridesmaid dress!” and in thinking that, dear friend, you are absolutely correct. Can you wear it again? I was about to try.

I wore this J. Crew Silk Taffeta Mika dress for my friend Steph’s wedding in July, and the dress was absolutely gorgeous. I just thought that as a blue dress, it was very bridesmaidy and also may or may not have reminded me of another doomed relationship since I met the last boy while wearing it.

I did some extensive research using my bff the Internet on how to dye Silk Taffeta. The Internet told me things like, “Don’t do it, girl! It will remove the shinyness” or “The fibers will all be ruined!” but guess what! I did it anyway, because I am a badass and I really wanted a black dress. I used Black Rit Dye (liquid) and cooked my clothes.

Here it is, drying. It was soooooo wrinkly after it had finished drying so I ironed it using the silk setting. After that didn’t do anything. I went all the way up to linen or whatever. It didn’t ruin the dress but I also moved the iron very quickly. For like an hour.

The taffeta had lost a lot of its stiffness but that makes the dress actually look a lot better than it had before. I wore it to my friend Lauren’s wedding reception (hehe, another wedding) on Black Friday. I dyed the dress black specifically for Black Friday. Here I am doing Gangnam style, very poorly indeed. I like this dress much better in black.

Yes, you CAN wear it again! But no young whippersnappers this time.