Stuffed shirts.

One last post to show you what I've made in preparation for my demonstration on Thursday night.  3 cushions covers made from men's shirts.  

The circle cushions are both (obviously) made from old button up/collared shirts.  The square one is made from an old polo that husby was throwing out.  I almost stopped breathing when I started to cut into that Ralph Lauren shirt (top left), but my dad assured me he would never wear it again and I could cut into it.  

I did my first button hole on the square cushion cover!!  It took me a good 20 mins to figure out how to even attach the appropriate foot on the sewing machine, but I got there in the end.  I probably could have made the hole a little smaller, but I am nonetheless pleased with my effort.  

I'll have to remember to take photos on Thursday night of all my demo items and display.  Husby also mentioned that he thinks the round cushions looks like old mens round bellies, and I have to agree.  Funny!  See ya!

A quick table display.

Once again, in preparation for my demonstration this week, I have something to share.  Today at church I was asked to do a table display promoting the upcoming activity this week.  I am really annoyed at myself that I didn't think to take a picture of my little display, but I didn't want you to miss out so I ended up setting it up at home to take a photo for you.  It looked great and I got lots of compliments from people who were looking forward to what I was going to demonstrate at the activity.   

And here are closeup's of all the elements.

That is the table runner that I told you about earlier in the week.  I just used some scrap fabric to tie around the vase, and spray painted some sticks with red & silver spray paint.

My first attempt at bunting!! I just chose some scrap fabrics that co-ordinated with the table runner and whipped it up in under an hour.  I am super pleased with it and will be making some again soon because it was so simple!

And then for the cutlery frame.  This one took a little more work.  I just painted a thrifted frame black.  Then I traced my cutlery placement on the frame backing, and drilled some nice narrow holes using the husby's electric drill.  

Next was to spray paint the wood.  I did it silver, but I think if I did it again I would use a more contrasting colour.  White, green, blue or red were some of husby's suggestions.  Next time!

I am happy how it turned out regardless!

I still have a couple of things to show you.  Hopefully I'll have some time this week to share it.  

TOPIC CHANGE!!  I am moving!!  Our lease is up next month and we are moving in with my parents for a year to save money towards buying a house.  So I am already madly going through the house deciding what to do with all of our stuff!!!  Some we are already attempting to sell, others we are putting aside to sell at the local car boot sale early next month.  Then I need to start looking at what do we put away in boxes for a year, and what will we still use while living at mum and dads.  We are going to have ALOT less room, so I need to be brutal and part with alot of our possessions.  Alot of the older electrical appliances will be going, a few bits of furniture, including our couch!  It's gonna be fun!

A new use for those old nasty ties!

I was in an Op Shop quite a while ago that was doing a HUGE cleanout of their stock and had their ties marked at $1.  I went to town!!!!  I think I bought about 10 or so.  Some were really fantastic.  So fantastic that I didn't get to keep all of them for my own upcycling use, because husby stole some!  I then put the word out amongst friends that when they do closet clean outs, to give me all their toss worthy items and I would see if I could use them or not.  Soon after a friend gave me a huge bag of old ties her husband has been meaning to toss for some time!  I was super excited. 

Now, I have been asked to do a demonstration at a womens church activity on how to decorate your home using the things you already have, or on the cheap.  I am pretty excited about doing this and have been whipping up a few extra things to demonstrate.  I will be showing some of these ideas to you over the upcoming week or so! 

First I want to show you what I did with some of my awesome old tie collection!  I was sitting on my craft room floor a few nights ago and spread all my awesome ties out in front of me.  I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but I knew that if I stared at them long enough, inspiration would EVENTUALLY strike!!  I was laying some of the co-ordinating ties by each other, thinking over some of the tie creations I had seen in the past - dresses, bags, skirts - and it hit me!!  A TABLE RUNNER!!  I picked my favourite colour combo and got started.  Husby thought I was nuts!  Here is what I ended up with.

Even husby liked it once I had finished it all off!  I am loving it too!  I think it's just fun and different and colourful.  Not to everyone's taste, but that's ok!  I'll be back soon with more fun stuff!

Midnight Madness, YoYo Trees and a NEW Headband

#16
I have a few things to report on, but I will be careful and not put all my goodness into one post, cause for all I know I could have a creativity block tomorrow and have nothing to blog about.

Firstly, posting on my blog everyday for Blogtoberfest is really hard.  I used to post only twice or so a week.  It is starting to hurt my brain.

Secondly, I have actually got a few things done over the past few days.  I'll share a few.

Midnight Madness
Every year my church puts on a Christmas Craft Night.  They always put it on super early BEFORE the Christmas rush, and of course to allow time to finish the projects so they can be used at Christmas time.  Last night was this said night.  It goes from 6pm till Midnight - thus it's called Midnight Madness.  I only signed up for 3 craft classes last night.  In years gone I've done up to 6, so it was a quiet night for me.  I made Christmas cards and gift tags.

They were all relatively easy and as you can see, they're very effective.  Geez Kristy (my Stampin Up Lady) is clever.  You should check out her blog, she is doing Christmas gift ideas every week for 12 weeks up until Christmas (you receive the tutorials if you sign up to her email list).  She is getting married soon and I have to try and think of what to get her as the engagement present.  I think she's gonna need storage for her GIGANTOR stash of SU goodies :)

Next I did the Wooden Ginger Bread Men.  These little men made me a crazy woman.  They don't look like much.  But LET ME TELL YOU.  They hurt my brain in a big way last night.

I had instructions, but they weren't relevant because all the supplies they used in the tutorial, were not available on the night.  So I had to freestyle it, and that doesn't always work with me.  So I open my little bag of 5 wooden gingerbread men.  I sanded the edges because they were a little splintery (is that a word?).

Then I needed to make all the edges brown.  There was no brown paint, so I had to sponge it with ink.  It took over an hour to do this.  Holy hell, my patience went out of the window with those little guys in the inking process.  BUT I PERSEVERED and ate lots of kabana and drunk lots of delicious lemonade to keep my spirits in order.  (And I realise at this stage I should have photographed all this as I went so you'd have instructions ((unlike me when I did it)) on how to make them yourself, but oh well).

Then I chose my papers.  As part of the pack that I bought to make them, I could choose 3 double sided patterned papers.  I had to like 5 of the 6 sides of paper.  So I picked my papers and traced the men on the papers and cut them out.  Then using PVA (or you could use Mod Podge, but PVA was what was provided) I glued the paper down to the men.  I then trimmed the excess paper overhang on the men, which was incredibly annoyingly fiddly.  Followed by sanding the edges to give it the rustic feel and to neaten up the look.  It is a great effect but of course took an hour to do all 5.  By this stage it was close to midnight and I hadn't even started to think about decorating them with embellishments etc.  Oh and did I mention I had fluid retention in my hands?  Yeah, it felt AWESOME!! haha!!

Then disaster struck.  But I didn't know it until it was too late.  I had one TINY picture to use as a guide for decorating.  In the picture the men had faces drawn on.  So I copied.  After I had finished all 5 faces I realised it looked TERRIBLE.

They looked like scary evil weirdo Gingerbread Men.  And at this point it was AFTER midnight.  So I just pretended I didn't care (but was so incredibly mad at myself inside for ruining them) and helped the ladies pack up and went home.  I showed the husby, and he too agreed they looked evil.  So guess what I did this morning?  Re-did them all over again.  From scratch, on the other side.  I didn't have enough paper from the night so I had to use some of my own too, which was difficult finding the right colour combinations because they papers to choose from last night were all co-ordinating becuase they were all from one set.  But I managed to work it out, and this is the new transformed Gingerbread Men that I am finally happy with.  Actually that's a lie.  I didn't need to pierce the holes on their heads and didn't realise that till I'd done them all but I'll have to get over it.  I finished them off tonight (after a really long day which included assisting in my brother's proposal, having a migraine, sleeping & baking) and have worked out where I am going to hang them for Christmas.

So there they are.  The feral annoying Gingerbread Men.  I'm sure I'll forgive them for being so annoying in due time.

You also may have noticed I never ended up doing embellishments.  I didn't trust myself to do it without ruining them all over again, and also decided that simple was better.  Really I was just glad to have them over and done with.  I love the effect and will do it again, but have learnt what to do and what not to.  Hopefully  next time it won't be so jolly frustrating!

Goodies in the Mail
I had a suprise in the mail for me yesterday from the giveaway I won at Kiwi at Heart last month...

And it had this inside!

Thanks for my Mini YoYo Christmas Tree!! I love it!!

NEW Tie Headband
So I have found another use for my old Thrifty ties that were 50 cents.  I will admit I broke the needle on the sewing machine so I realised I needed to handsew it together which was alot of work but definately worth it.  Do you like it?  

I likey.  Do you?  I might make another this week in a brighter coloured tie.  I was also thinking of doing this with a Christmas tie to wear on Christmas Day :)

**********

I'll save all the other goodies I've been working on for my posts over the next few days.  

Hope you had a great day, and don't forget to enter my giveaway if you haven't already.  There's hardly any entries so far so you're in with a stinkin good chance this time!! 

Oh and I have a new button that my husby has been working on so I'll have to get him to get it all up and running tomorrow and show you.  It's the same as I have now but just jazzed up a little.  Next on the to do list for him is to do my name sign off coding doovey lackey, and then he is building me a website.  It'll only take 5 years to get it done :P

Until tomorrow...

Christy

Stashbusting Confession #1 & Stashbusting Creation #2 - amongst other things.

As some of you may know, I'm participating in The T-Shirt Diaries Stashbusting September.  Conditions of participation, are that you will not buy any new crafting supplies for the month of September, and only create with what you have in your "stash".  IF you cave in and buy something during the month of September, you MUST name and shame yourself.

Well here I am.  I am weak.  Yesterday I bought Christmas paper.  BUT along with my confession comes justification - and it is quite valid.

I sell ALOT of my cards that I make.  I am always having to replenish my supplies of cards up for sale.  I am going overseas very soon... for a month.  I will be out of the country for the most of November, and part of December.  So I need to make my Christmas cards NOW - so I can start selling them and will have a good stock pile to sell even whilst I am out of the country.  So I think that this is an exception to the rule.  What do you think?

On to the next thing.

So you might have noticed that I haven't blogged about my Stall at the Fete last weekend.  I've ummed and ahhhed about whether I will bother.  Let me outline why I feel this way.

- My spot at the fete cost me $30.
- I had to finish work 3 hours early on Friday (which my boss wasn't thrilled about) and got to the Fete early to set up.
- The carpark wasn't close to the hall I was to set up in.
- I went back and forth four times to get everything inside carrying as much as humanly possibly on each trip.
- It was drizzling rain and humid, I got very sweaty and wondered why I bothered wearing makeup.
- My sister was really sick and couldn't come help me.
- BUT - my brother's girlfriend came and helped for a couple of hours which was super nice of her.
- I did end up standing there by myself for a few hours which was disastrously boring.
- A kid stole a bracelet off my table.
- A woman searched through my entire card range - there was at least 70 cards and was picking out all her favourites which was making me super excited.  She ended up buying one card.  I had to pretend I wasn't about to cry.
- I only made $26.50 - over a 5 hour period - which means I didn't even break even, let alone make a profit.
- I couldn't even go to the toilet.
- I had a hard time getting people to even stop at my stall to have a look, let alone eat a lolly out of the bowl on my table.
- I was starving and thirsty but food was a good distance away and couldn't leave my table (I didn't trust other stall holders to watch it.. I'd only known them for like an hour.. and getting to know them consisted of "hi, how is your stall going? and pretending to be interested in Enjo")
- I had to pack up and drive myself home and try to not cry because of the disappointment and tell myself this was the first time and the first time is always the hardest.
- I got home to no dinner.

I did take a photo of my table and will post that when I get home, as I don't have my cord with me right now.

So I have somewhat gotten better at hiding over the disappointment of my unsuccessful attempt.  On Monday whilst driving home from work I drove past the local Uniting Church and saw on their sign out front they were having a Car Boot Sale the weekend after next.  It was really hard to write down all the details as I went by so I had to turn around over and over again and drove past it 4 times before I got all the info I needed hehe.  I gave the fellow a call and I'm in!  They have been running this sale every second month for as long as I have lived in the area.  Get this... my table (which they are providing) will only cost me $10!!  Much improved.  So if I make $10 plus the $3.50 that I didn't make at the last stall I will break even.  Downside is I have to get up at an unearthly time of morning cause it starts at 7am (and I'm only groaning cause I don't have kids) and set up time is 5:30am.  Yuck!  Fingers crossed for good weather and success second time round!!

Now, I have already been busily preparing for the Car Boot Sale.  This is where my Stashbusing Creation comes in.  I have been busily making jewellry.  Mostly earrings, to fill my awesome new earring stand I found at the Op Shop for $4!!  Can't go wrong there!  I have so many beads stashed away.  Making jewellry is not my most favourite craft so I spend more on beads then I probably should because I rarely make stuff, but I'm pretty sure this is the case with most crafting fanatics.. we have more stash then we have time and motivation to do something with.  The photo is bad quality, but is all I have for now.

When I showed my husband the stand when he got home he said "Whoa that's alot of earrings".  I think that means that is going to be enough.  But I'm still going to make more incase...  I've also made a few necklaces, bracelets and matching necklace/bracelet/earring sets.  I'll plug away at the jewellry for another day or two, then move onto cards.  I'm running low on my essentials let alone making Christmas cards!! (with my new delicious paper hehe).

I also have a supportive father/boss.  I work for my dad in an Accountancy office.  It's as boring exciting as they come and I work 3 days a week.  The other week he built me a trusty little stand so I could put it on the Reception desk and hopefully sell a few cards here and there.  I painted it white and put in a nice long nail to hang the cards on, and it sits just to my left.

I've only sold two so far, but at the end of the day, it's an Accountant's office.  Can't expect huge things...

Let me think if there is anything else...  Oh yes, I'm having a Stampin Up! party next month.  I have the most awesome demonstrator who conveniently is a good friend of mine.  You should check out her website as she has HEAPS of awesome classes and demonstrations and hosts a truck load of parties.  My party will be on Saturday 23rd October - no time yet but I'm thinking morning.  Kristy will be showing us a whole heap of the new products from the new catalogue so I'm super excited about that.

And I think that's it for now.  I will still do a post with pictures of my BIG card stand for my stalls and how my table looked last week... but for now this will have to do!

Until next time..
Christy

Stash Busting Creation #1

Incase you haven't heard, Robin over at The T-Shirt Diaries has a MAD competition going on!! It's called Stashbusting September... which may come across as an odd or alarming title. BUT... it is a fantastic idea. Basically all you have to do is take a pledge that you will buy copious amounts of fantastic supplies not buy any new crafting supplies for the month of September, and dig through your "stashes" and be creative with what you already have. So if you want to participate (cause there is a prize!) head on over to Robin's blog. Hurry, time is running out!
 
Now for what I've whipped up. I have HEAPS of fabric. Now for those who may have only just started following my blog, let me fill you in a little about me. I do not buy new fabric from fabric stores. It's my general rule. I prefer to buy my fabric in the form of old quilt covers, old sheets, old clothes, scraps etc etc - from Op Shops (Thrift Stores). That way everything stays fun and different and I like it that way.

I started off with a bunch of fabrics that I thought went well together in a fun way...

....and made these!

I love them!  What do you think?

Happy crafting... (and stash busting)