NEW WEBSITE!!!

This morning I was looking at my craft blog, and I was just SO OVER IT. The layout, the color scheme, the fact that I put 'adventure' in every blog title... It just all seemed so constrained, and boring, and BLAH. So Brant set me up with an actual website! No more blogger for me! It's a fresh start, and I am PUMPED! So please continue to follow me at (drumroll please)...

www.craftymariko.com

And definitely check out the new look--I love it! Thank you all for reading my posts, I really appreciate it!

Birthday Present Adventures!

Well, 2010 is well underway! I haven't been able to get much crafting done in the new year, unfortunately. Next week is the last week of the semester at school, so I have been really busy lesson planning and grading papers. But I did squeeze in one quick project for a friend's birthday present.

One of my friends is getting his Masters degree to teach Math (yay!) and so I thought this would be a fitting present. Maybe it will reside in his future classroom someday!

I got the idea for this clock several years ago when I was looking for funky English decorations for my own first classroom. I can't remember where I saw it, but the idea stuck with me.

I love all the different equations, it'll definitely make you think!

So, I have a non-craft related confession to make. I am obsessed with swimsuits. But not just swimsuits in general--vintage style swimsuits. And for the longest time it was ridiculously hard to find vintage style swimsuits! So I was absolutely thrilled to see amazingly adorable swimsuits at Anthropologie! Here are some of my faves...

The polka dot one is just divine. But the black one is SUPER cute!

I just love this green bikini top. And the high waisted bottoms? Amazing. Adorable. I love them all!

*sigh* Now if I only had $200 to spend on a swimsuit...

Dinosaur Prom Dress Adventures!

Happy 2010 everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful time ringing in the New Year--I most certainly did! As I have mentioned in this blog before, my friends and I love to throw themed parties. And for us, New Year's Eve is yet another opportunity to throw a really great party! And I have to say, this year's party was AWESOME! Our theme was "Dinosaur Prom", a theme we first came up with in high school. It was so neat to see everyones interpretations of the theme, and I thought I would share mine with you here!

For my Dinosaur Prom outfit I wanted to combine the two ideas. So first I needed a Prom dress. I'd already donated all of my high school prom dresses, so I went to Goodwill to see if I could find anything. And there, for only $5, was this beauty:

It was perfect! I was hoping to find a green floor length dress, and this one was cute as well!

I loved all the rhinestones on the front!

I wasn't a huge fan of the fact that it had an open back, but since the dress was a few sizes too big for me, it was extremely convenient. Instead of having to take the dress apart and alter it, I simply had to shorten the criss-crossing straps that ran across the back of the dress. Worked like a charm!

So now that I had my Prom dress, I had to somehow make it a Dinosaur Prom dress. I had two different ideas for how to do this: add spikes down the back, and add a huge frilled collar around the neck. I was hoping to be a cross between a stegosaurus, and a dilophosaurus (the spitting dinosaur from Jurassic Park).

For the stegosaurus part of my dress I made these spikes out of stiff felt. Each spike was made out of two pieces of felt with the top halves attached. I then folded the very bottom of the spikes over so that there was about an inch long tab, which I then glued to each other and then attached to the dress.

This helped give the spikes a little bit of dimension. I cut off the front of the dress to just above my knees so that it would give the effect of my dress having a tail! I loved how it turned out!

Now, for the dilophosaurus part of the dress I recalled a tutorial for a ruffled neck piece that I read in one of the blogs I follow. I used this tutorial to make a long black and dark green ruffled neck piece. But unfortunately it wasn't giving me the dilophosaurus effect that I had hoped for. But then I remembered that my dress came with a shawl. I then ruffled up the shawl, and it was the perfect length to go around the neck of my dress. And it helped give the other ruffle layers the "oomph" that I wanted.

I loved how the collar looked when I attached it to the dress. It was just how I had pictured it in my mind! I had some extra length of the black and green ruffled fabric, so I decided to sew it onto the front of the dress that I had shortened to get the tail effect.

So here is the finished dress, from the front:

And from the back:

I also made a bunch of dinosaur hairpieces for the party, including this stegosaurus one:

This was the most involved costume that I've made yet. And also the first time that I had a vision in my mind of what I wanted my costume to look like, and the end result actually looked like it! I was SO happy with how it turned out, and everyone at the party loved it!

And finally, here is a picture of my wonderful husband and I re-enacting that fateful scene from Jurassic Park with the dilophosaurus and Dennis Nedry (my husband's costume)