Crafty Present Adventures!

I gave my friend her crafty present yesterday, so I can finally blog about it here! Remember the Facebook gifts that I blogged about in August? Well, it turns out that I forgot about someone! I felt so bad that I kinda went overboard with this crafty gift. Once I started making fun crafty things I couldn't stop! So here are all the different parts to her present:

First I covered some colored pencils in dictionary pages that had their different colors on them.

This was my first time trying this, and I love how they turned out!

I also covered some more pencils in security envelope liners. I love how they look. I definitely want to continue making these!

I was going to stop there, but then I decided to make a pad of paper to go with the pencils. I took some pages from an old daily calendar and tried a new way of making a pad of paper. This pad will allow each of the pages to rip away quickly and easily!

For the back of the pad I used some cardboard from the packaging for my husband's Kindle. The letters were done in a gloss coating, so they only show up in the light. I love how it looks!

Again, I was going to stop there, but then I got another fun idea. The last time that this friend was over to my house she commented on how my paper butterflies would look really cute as hairpieces. So I decided to do just that!

I like how you can see the word "Introduction" going through this butterfly

And the butterfly with the feathers and netting looked great in her hair!

So this would have been a logical place to stop, right? But then I wanted to make some kind of bag to put everything into. So I went through my fabric scraps and found part of one of my husband's old shirts that I had previously used to make a skirt out of.

I used the existing buttons as the closure for the bag, and then re-stitched the pocket to the front of the bag.

The pocket was just perfect to put the pencils in!

I had so much fun putting together all of these little crafty gifts! Sometimes having a reason to craft is the best way to get inspiration. Right now I'm going to focus on putting together Christmas presents, which I probably won't blog about here until after they have been received. But I'm sure I'll have enough side crafty projects to keep this blog updated between now and January!

The Skirt Adventures Continue!

Yesterday I created a new version of the simple elastic waist skirt I love so much. Let's call it Skirt version 2.0 shall we? This new version was inspired by this skirt from Anthropologie:

The one thing I didn't like about my skirts before version 2.0 was that the elastic waist wasn't the prettiest thing to look at. That's why I liked this skirt from Anthropologie so much! With the cute sash you can tuck in a tank top it looks great. So I decided to make one myself, using one of my husband's old dress shirts. Unfortunately the dress shirt didn't have enough fabric to make both the skirt and the sash, so I decided to alternate panels of the shirt fabric and some extra scrap fabric that I had laying around. I was pretty pleased with the end result:

I apologize for the poor picture. I forgot to take a picture of the skirt before we went out with friends last night, and this was the only pic from that night which showed the entire skirt. But here it is! What do you think?

4th of July Adventures!

I hope everyone had a fabulous 4th of July weekend--I know I did! B and I went up to Gig Harbor with a bunch of friends for the weekend. The weather was beautiful, the food was delicious, the fireworks were slightly terrifying, and the friends were amazing as always. Just an amazing weekend overall! Before we left on our 4th of July adventure, I did hem up the skirt I made from a men's dress shirt:

Before I had just used the shirt's original hem, but it was very obvious that it was from a shirt.

So I decided to hem up the bottom of the skirt so that it was even all around. Since the sides of a men's dress shirt are hemmed higher than the front and back I had to hem it up quite a few inches. I was afraid that would make the skirt too short, but I actually like the length!

This was such an easy project, I will definitely have to do it again!

Adventures in Shirt Refashioning!

I was recently looking at Urban Outfitters online and came across this skirt:

My mind immediately went to a pile of men's shirts in my craft room. When we moved I had my husband toss out all the shirts that he doesn't wear anymore, and of course I couldn't just get rid of them. I am a terrible hoarder--everything has crafting potential in my eyes! So today I decided to try to turn a men's shirt into a skirt. I'm not quite sold on the finished product, I don't know if this is something that I would wear out in public:

What do you think? Is it too obviously the bottom half of a men's shirt? I might try sewing a straight hem on the bottom instead of using the existing hem. Any feedback would be most helpful!