Two dresses for LuLu

Taeh and I had a sewing + brownies night. I made a couple of little tiny dresses based on a pillowcase dress pattern for my little LuLu, inspired by the little pillowcase dresses we made at my friend Valerie's Little Dresses for Africa party.

This dress is repurposed fabric. I loved the original dress for ages. It was vintage and beautiful, a long 1970s hippie dress. I wore it until the seams fell apart, then sewed them back up until I knew it was time to throw in the towel. 

Taeh sewed a little "L" on the back of the dresses, for "Lucy," of course.

I love the little flower applique I made for this one. The best part about these dresses is they will stretch for the better part of her first year, maybe two, just by letting out the straps. Sweet little Lucy, can't wait to meet you!

Table Revamp Featured at Mod Podge Rocks!

Hurray! We were featured on one of my favorite blogs, Mod Podge Rocks!

Check out the post here.

DIY duct tape dress form

...starring me from 11 years ago!

What you will need:

1. Duct tape (several rolls). I used traditional old robot costume duct tape, but next time I make one I am going to order this stuff from Spoon Sisters. If you're going to be keeping the form around, it would be nice to have it be cute, after all.

2. Scissors

3. A friend

4. An old tee shirt

5. Vodka (optional but highly recommended)

Now let's begin.

Step one. Put on the t-shirt. This is the easy one.

Step two. Have your friend duct tape a fashionable blouse a la Terry Gilliam's Brazil over your t-shirt. It needs to go all the way down to your thighs.

***NOTE: If this is for a special occasion in which you will be wearing different unders than the usual (e.g. a corset), wear it to create the form. I wore a sexy corset under my wedding gown and my boobs were like 3/4 an inch higher than they were on the form. Result: BOOB PUCKERS on my wedding day. Fortunately, no one said anything, and you can't really tell in the pictures, but since we had an out-of-town wedding, there was nothing to be done for it but more of step three.

 

Wrap all the way up, bringing the tape across boobage diagonally as needed to accommodate your lusciousness. Keep going!

Step three. Drink vodka.

Step four. This is where you really have to trust your homegirl. Have her cut up the back of the taped-up shirt, carefully.

I can see why he married me from this angle. Mmmm, curvy.

Step five. Tape that baby back together exactly where you cut it (but only not on your body this time).

Step six. Cover the holes with cardboard or paper or whatever you have to close them off.

Step seven. More vodka.

Step eight. Stuff that baby with some kind of polyester fill and close off the bottom with cardboard and you guessed it...more tape!

Step nine. Congratulations! You are all ready to make that gothic dress for the Cure tribute show.

Have a vodka to celebrate!

Shakespearean Fairy Princess Tiara

My favorite faveskies in all the world is Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Last year for my cousin Brit's special day, I made some Titania-inspired fairy princess tiaras (technically, Titania is a queen, but you get the point). In honor of spring, for which I am pining, here are some pics. They make a great party favor and are fun for dress-up, one of my other favorite things.

If you would like to make one, simply use silk or fabric flowers, some tulle, iridescent fabric or party paper, some cheap old dollar store headbands (the wider the better), and glue gun yourself silly. It doesn't matter if they look over-the-top; you are going for Elizabethan fairy queen, after all.

Enjoy the fairy tale silliness, and beware of love potions if you find yourself traipsing around the woods alone in fairy country!

Aunt Sandy (who especially deserves to celebrate; like my mom, she is afflicted with autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease) loved hers too.

Wizard of Oz scrapbook

In keeping with our use-less-stuff commitment, we make a lot of gifts. My Auntie S adores Oz-related everything.  In her home is a little kitschalicious shrine...one of those old China cabinets people put dolls in...she  loves it.

Earlier this year, I joined Auntie and my mom to see Wicked at the Tulsa's Performing Arts Center.  Although musicals usually feel pretty contrived to me (I don't get it...I guess that's one of the conventions of modern musicals, but it bugs me), it was still very fun.

Anyway, I made her a silly little scrapbook for her birthday. I used clip art, stickers from the scrap aisle, and greeting cards to put it together. Here are some pics.

Ribbon necklaces, floral headband and sequin applique hat, oh my!

Cuteness reigned supreme today at the Collinsville Splash Pad, where super hot mama Jessica was rocking the DIY even in the oppressive red dirt heat.  Check out her fabulous sequin applique hat:

I also had fun showing off this adorable headband. I don't have a tutorial for it...I bought it. But I bet it would be super easy to make.  If you know of a tutorial, hook me up with the link!

But here's my favorite part, a goodie for you!  Really, this goodie is for Jessica, since she commented on how much she loved my necklaces and thought she'd like to go home and try them...

I made these little necklaces on my lunch break the other day.  I still have tons of ribbon left over from that amazing garage sale of dreams where I found it amidst the clutter and chaos of broken toys and furniture and dirty-faced children dancing around in twice-handed down clothes as some Staind-clones blasted from a grease-slicked cassette-radio atop a stack of cardboard boxes.  We were driving by slowly when among the washed-out monochromes of a north side Tulsa summer junk sale, something caught my eye...vivid reds and purples peeked out of a low-lying box like pansies blooming in a landfill.  "Stop the car!" I'd squealed, and manically, almost immediately leapt across the unkind ground, bare feet gliding across broken glass and broken tar, and had with lightning speed shoved my hands into a box loaded with vintage notions and bias tape and ribbons and breathtaking lace...the overheated sellers had told me, "Three bucks.  Fill a bag."  I had to stop myself from having a scoronary.  Breathe.  

When they realized I had every intention of filling the bag to the level of stuffed, they tried to stop me, caught the glimmer that something was wrong with their valuing of the old shop-blackened Levi's at five bucks and what I had for such a price, but I smiled.  The deal was done.  These people were hagglers, just shy of nomads. No need to restate the obvious.  

I grabbed me treasure and jetted.  Arrrrrrrrghhh.

Anyway, I have tons of the stuff, so I made these little cuties inspired by this May Arts post:

Here is another pic.

They were soooo easy to make and took hardly any time.  Love them?  I do!

Table Collage Revamp for Roo

We love our neighborhood.  Our neighbors are amazing, lovely people and constantly doing nice things for each other and looking out for one another.  


Case in point, during the terrible ice storm of 2008, I was pregnant and giant and slipped on the ice.  Although our street was an ice-carved ghost town, three women rushed from various homes to my aid within seconds.  It was astonishing.


One of those women was our next-door neighbor Mary, whose son is former city councilor Eric Gomez, and they are both all around great people. Recently, Mary loaned us a little kid table her grandchildren had outgrown, an indefinite loan as she might want it back if she has any munchkin additions to the family.  Arthur loves it: it's just his size and he loves eating meals there, drawing, even reading the newspaper (we're not sure why or how that works either but he enjoys it nonetheless).  

The table is great, but the kindergarten classroom primary colors, its taped and battered reminders that it's been well-loved, and Arthur's own artistic additions to it were starting to grate on me, as the toddler hub has become a staple in the great room.  If the table was to stay, something must change. 

And then, as I was trying desperately to arrange the back room of the house, which has since Arthur's birth become our communal craft/sewing/music room (literally my violin hangs on the wall above my Singer and next to a giant Kustom amp), the Mod Podge spoke to me.

 I popped over to Mod Podge Rocks to see if I could find something similar to what I was envisioning, where I found terrific inspiration from cuteness diva Kristi.  A short phone call to my girlfriend Eva, a couple of Cuba libres and a dozen and a half stories about our adventures in the crazy Jamestown house in the 90s later, we had this in the works:

We pillaged my wrapping paper, scrapbook paper, paint samples (Arthur picks them out and "buys" them when we go shopping at the home store...he loves it and the checkout clerks are happy to "scan" them...I've been hanging onto them like any good Level I hoarder waiting for the right change to use them) and vintage greeting card collection for colors and patterns and even characters we loved and then mod podged them to the table.  Because the surface of the table is a bit puffy, they kept wanting to peel up, wrinkle, and bubble, so it was something of a challenge, but we were hardcore.


When we finished the job, we attacked our table with stickers and other clip art.  We even hit it with a few inked-up stamps.  After Eva left, I coated the whole thing with glitter podge.

Although we plan to coat it with the world's thickest layer of polyurethane, the final project looks like this up close:

I will probably finish the chairs later this week when I can recruit more Eva.  The best part is that it took about an evening and was super extra fun to have the kids help while we sat around chatting it up.

If you try this project, be sure to poly coat it, and post a link to pics for me!!!

Find lots of cool mod podge projects on Mod Podge Rocks.

All the pretty colors...

I woke up this morning to see that some little gnomes had left me a present in the front window.  They must have been inspired by this Filth Wizardry post.  Check out that family's blog...aren't they super?  Our window isn't quite as fabulous as theirs, but it sure does brighten up our living room!  I think Johnny Cash is even smiling a little for once.  Look carefully...

You may have noticed the papel picado hanging in our living room and wondered why it's there.  Need I remind you that we take bubble baths in the swimming pool and practice indoor glamping?  Maybe we've been to a few too many Flaming Lips concerts.

 

Little Dresses for Africa and Valerie from My Own Crafty Wonderland

Hi everyone!  I have been slacking on blogging lately because I have been working long days on the most amazing project up at the community college and our first deadline is about to steamroll us...very soon our Online Writing Lab (OWL) project will be fully armed and operational!  I don't have time to post a proper blog, but I would like to give some massive super duper mad props to my girl Valerie over at My Own Crafty Wonderland!  I met this amazing little lady four or so years ago through the wonderful world of scooters and she is definitely one of the coolest chicks I know.  She is cute as a button, extra crafty, and big-hearted.

For Valerie's birthday this year, she wanted something very special.  After reading about her request--she wanted her friends to bring pillowcases and make them into dresses for little girls in Malawi via an organization called Little Dresses for Africa--I really wanted to help out.  I put out a request and TCC represented...I love that school...amazing people and I'm so lucky to be part of the team over there with terrific people like Little Ms. Librarian.

My girlfriends Fallon and Cassie joined me and between the three of us we managed about 34 pillowcases!  I brought some vintage lace and rick rack and several of those little cute fabric flower doodads in case anyone wanted to put them on their dresses as embellishment--and to my surprise almost every one of them was used! To be honest, I somewhat notoriously (in my family, at least) failed home ec in middle school...I had done all right with the orange juliuses and sugar cookies, and I still wear my simple apron to this day (it was hemming and attaching ribbons, for pete's sake), but my poor little Pentecostal Prom Princess jumper never saw the light of day, instead ending in a crumpled mess of lovely pastel fabric I'd so adoringly chosen, bemoaning to the world my quiet failure to reconcile the academic and domestic...so I wasn't sure if my flowers would be as cool to anyone else as they are to me.  Needless to say, I was happy to see that other people enjoyed them and that they looked very cute on the little dresses.  Take that, Ms. Murphy.  Stick that in your hot air balloon hat.

Uh, where was I?

Oh, here you go!  Fallon took these wonderful photos...my camera died on the first shot.  Too bad I didn't listen to hubs when he warned me not to buy discount batteries!  I couldn't find the rechargeables and I was in a hurry...but I learned my lesson!

Here I am checking out the little red one I "made"--does it count as made if someone else did the sewing?  On that note, major extra mad props to those hardcore mamas who kept up with the sewing.  Go girl power!

It's hard to tell in this pic, but that little dress was red gingham with hearts, and the little bow is white with red hearts.  It was extra rad.  On the dress directly to my right, you can see one of my little flowers.

Left to right: Fallon, Cassie, me, Valerie.  What a great group of girls!  I had such a terrific time.

Aren't these dresses just beautiful?  They will grow with their wearers and as Doug, Valerie's hubs, pointed out, if they look this cute on the line, just imagine how sweet they will be with little precious sweetie pie girlies in them!

The one on the right here is mine.  You can't tell in this photo, but it has two little pink fabric flowers on it.

What a great day!  Thank you, Valerie!