Clips and Pins

I had a little extra time yesterday so after I finished packing for our trip, I decided to make clips for Andrea out of fabric scraps.

ITEM 1: Fabric roses from t-shirt scraps

ITEM 2: Red velvet clips with a gold rhinestone center. These are for Andrea.

ITEM 3: Need I say this is for Andrea? It's a hair clip/pin.

For ITEM 1, I pretty much followed the instructions from Trey and Lucy except for the dimensions and the type of material. I used scraps from t-shirts I cut up. The gray one is about 3 inches in diameter and the smaller one is around 2 inches in diameter.

ITEM 2 is very simple. I used:

• 2 3-inch strips of red velvet
• 2 rhinestones
• 2 clips
• glue gun
• needle and thread

Overlap the edges of one of the red velvet strips and sew. You should end up with a loop or velvet ribbon. Flatten, make sure the overlapped sewn edge is at the center. Gather the center and sew. Sew in the rhinestone. Attach to the clip using hot glue. Ta-dah! You're done.

ITEM 3: It's a hair clip/brooch for Andrea. This one is also very easy and perfect for dressing up hats, shirts, bags... anything you can think of that needs a blast of color.

You will need:

• Ribbon, around 8 inches
• Colorful satin flowers (I got mine from the scrap booking supplies section)
• rhinestone 
• brooch pin
• hair clip
• needle and thread
• circular piece of felt with diameter around the same size as your fabric flowers

Sew the ribbon around the edges of the felt circle. Create small folds in the ribbon as you sew to create ruffles. Layer your fabric flowers and sew. Sew the rhinestone at the center. Attach the clip and pin at the back using hot glue. And you're done!

I hope my instructions made sense. I will post pictures of Andrea wearing these soon. Happy crafting!

EDITED 1/6/2011:
I posted this at Tea Rose Home's Link Party!

Another Anthro-Inspired Necklace

It's been more than a year since I stopped making jewelry and since I started again recently, I realized how much I've missed it! So now, my jewelry-making is competing with my learning-how-to-sew for my time (which is uber limited as it is). And here is another jewelry post.

Anyway, I was attempting another Anthro-inspired necklace last week. I saw this in Anthropologie and thought to myself that I have the beads that look similar, and I've done something similar in the past so it should be easy:

Anthropologie - Connected Worlds Necklace

 Those glass beads that look like small disco balls... I have a necklace with beads that look similar:

Necklace I made 3 years ago

Then cut the wire from this necklace to get the beads and then I bought a yard of gray ribbon similar to the necklace. However, when I got home and looked at the photo of the Anthro necklace closer... the ribbon was ruffled! I didn't notice before. Given my sewing skills... ruffling that ribbon will take a while so I lost interest. I just decided to make a different necklace and this is what I came up with:

The other beads came from a layered necklace where the string of one layer snapped. I forgot to take a photo of the before. Anyway, I love how the smaller beads look like petals when clustered. I wish there was  more of them but I used all for this necklace.

3-Fold Felt Kiddie Wallet

This project came about out of need. Andrea likes playing with my purse... and my wallet. She would pull out my cards, money, photos and generally scatter the contents of my wallet around her. I got the idea to make Andrea her own wallet last night while thinking of her as I was working on another shirt project which was taking forever. I stopped working on the shirt and started making the wallet since I figured it won't take me long to finish.

3-fold kiddie wallet

Then I placed it beside her pillow before I slept so she can find it when she woke up. And found it she did!

Andi checking out the contents of her new wallet.

 It's very easy to do! Here's how...

You will need:

• Felt in different colors (for a colorful wallet, I used 3 colors for mine)
• sewing machine (or needle and thread)
• Velcro
• Buttons, ribbons, fabric flowers... anything you want to use to decorate your wallet.

Step 1: Measure the size of your paper money and credit cards to see how long and wide your wallet needs to be. See illustration below to see how I measured mine.

Length of section A is equal to the length of the paper money plus 3/4 inch allowance to the left and right. Section B is roughly 1/3 the length of section A (this requires a little Math, sorry!)

Width of both sections is equal to the length of your credit card plus 3/4 inch allowance at the top and at the bottom.

Step 2: Cut a piece of felt equal to the size of Section A + Section B. This will just be one piece of felt.

Step 3: Cut another piece of felt in another color equal to the size of Section A.

Step 4. Cut smaller pieces of felt to be used as inside pockets. You decide how many pockets you want and what kind of pockets they have to be. I decided to put in 2 pockets for cards on mine, and a pocket to display photos.

Step 5. Sew the pockets on to piece of felt you cut from Step 3. Note that this piece will soon be folded in half so make sure you leave room at the center for the fold. Here's a simple diagram of how mine looks like with the pockets:

 

Step 6. Next, sew the piece you cut from Step 1 to the piece with the pockets. Sew on 3 sides only, see diagram below. Sew along the dotted lines. Leave the top open. This will be opening for the bills.

Step 7: Decorate! I was too tired last night because it was late so I only sewed in a button at the flap. I'll make a more fabulous one next time

Step 8. Attach the Velcro.

And you are done! Then I cut a picture of her to put on the photo pocket. And cut out little cards and "play money" (colorful pieces of paper from a toy catalog we got at the mall).

here it is again

Wallet, inside

Look, she has a 'Boots' credit card!

I linked up here:

Bead Jewelry Post

I'm going to post all the jewelry I've been working on in one post so they don't pile up in my drafts folder.

WARNING: This post will be picture heavy and long. Read only if you're into jewelry :)

Ok, so most of these are still part of my DIY gifts... and some are for me.

A bag charm

Heart drop earrings. The heart is made of real jade.

 

 

Agate teardrop earrings. Both beads are made of real agate and I embellished the drop bead with silver filigree.

A closer look at the filigree.

Red drop earrings I made for me.

Necklace with filigree-and-ceramic bead pendant.

Here's a closer look at the pendant.

Classic Victorian cameo necklace.

I really loved how this turned out so here's a closer look. I gave this away as a gift but I think I want one for me :)

Necklace with pearl beads, ceramic bunch of flowers and pink ribbon.

 

Pearls and chains necklace I made for me.

I had fun making these. I also had fun editing the photos. It reminded me of my previous business's heyday. I hope everyone's having as much fun with their Christmas preparations!

Felt flower obsession - Part 2

I've been meaning to post this last week but Christmas time has always been busy and stressful for me and since I'm getting ready to take a 10-day vacation, I needed to finish a pile of things at work before I leave (this is me being a responsible employee ;)

Anyway, I decided to DIY some of my gifts this year. I can't DIY all... I love shopping :D I already mentioned in a previous post that I am loving felt flowers right now. I've been meaning to make some for Andrea but my to-do pile (i.e. old clothes I want to re-fashion) is getting higher and there are gifts to DIY. Maybe next year. For now, these are for her cousins:

I added a matching felt pin/clip to the shorts and top we got for one of my nieces.

Our gift for our other niece, a felt flower pin/clip and an owl brooch.

You can make your hair clips into brooches at the same time by attaching both a pin and a clip at the back (trick I learned from the ones they sell at the store).


The templates are from:

• Whimsical Flower template (the pink one) from 3 Four and Under
• Peony flower template (the yellow one) from yoonie-at-home
• Owl template from HoneyBear Lane

Extending the life of a Onesie

Andrea is almost 14 months old this month and she stopped wearing onesies at 6 months, I think. However, we still have a couple of big onesies that still fit her, though I have noticed that she is not too comfortable in them. So I decided to cut off the pants part and turn them into t-shirts.

I worked on one last night and put it on Andrea when she woke up this morning.

 Oh  is that mommy's company's logo??? Yes it is!

See I started with a red onesie I got for my niece as souvenir from Monterey Bay 2 years ago.

Errr... at the time, I didn't know she was going to be a niece. My sister was so convinced she was having a little boy so... Anyway, my niece outgrew this and gave it to Andrea. The pirate print in front is already faded so I was planning to do a reverse applique.

First things first though... I had to cut off the pants. I didn't want to hem (plain lazy, no other reason), but after I finished, I think it won't survive one cycle in the wash so I might work on it again tonight to hem the bottom. After cutting of the bottom... I started searching through my stash of old shirts and other fabric to find something I might  use as applique. We don't have a lot of red anything in the house so I ended up cutting the company logo from an old company shirt that doesn't fit me anymore. At least the company logo is red and will match the shirt.

Since I had to sew the logo behind the front of the shirt to do a reverse applique, I had to make sure the position was precise (i.e. right side up... exactly on the part of the print I wanted to remove...). It took a while but I wasn't confident enough to start sewing so I just decided to sew it over the print I wanted to cover. Harder still!!! I had a difficult time sewing curves to form the circle and the result is a really uneven circle... good thing I used black thread, it won't be so obvious :)

Here's another look at my finished shirt (not too close!! so you won't have to see how uneven my sewing was):

Bottom of the shirt not hemmed see? But I will work on that tonight. By the way, the final design of the shirt does not comply with our company's branding guidelines (you know, how the logo should appear if background color is such and such, etc). Anyway, Andrea will only be using this with her pajamas anyway so no one else except me, my husband and our nanny will be seeing much of this shirt.

Anthro-Inspired Necklace: Winter Sparks

I've been reading a lot about Anthropologie-inspired items from several blogs the past 2 weeks. That got me curious about what Anthropologie is (no Anthropologie stores in my part of the world and I just realized how sad that is) so I browsed around their website. They do have a lot of nice stuff! I looked at a few necklaces for ideas and here's what I came up with last night:

My version of the necklace, 12/06/2010

This Winter Sparks necklace from Anthropologie was my inspiration:

Anthropologie: Winter Sparks $48

I couldn't copy the design exactly, I didn't have the exact materials on hand last night. So I only copied the basic elements combination of brass, clear crystal and pearls. Here's what I had on hand:

From left to right: Brass-toned ring I got for P42 (less than $1) at Quiapo (price tag is still attached, see?), pearl necklace with brass pendant I made last year, brass rose pendant I got in NY 2 years ago which broke but I couldn't throw it away because I think it's so pretty!

This necklace took me around 15 minutes to make and the hardest part was prying the brass flower from the ring. Note to self, next time, just look for brooches or pendants. I must admit, I totally forgot about the clear Swarovski crystals on both sides of the brass flowers while I was making mine. Anyhow, I like how it turned out. Here's a closer look:

I wore it with a black tunic top to work today.

And no, my hair is not messy... it looks that way all the time because it's wavy and I gave up trying to keep it neat. I have a couple more inspired designs I want to work on. Hopefully, I can finish them and post everything before I have to leave for vacation for Christmas.

This project is linked up to the following link parties:

CraftOManiac Monday at CraftOManiac | Lovely Crafty Weekend at Lovely Crafty Home | Strut Your Stuff at Saturday Mornings  | Making Monday Marvelous at C.R.A.F.T  | Just Something I Whipped Up at The Girl Creative  | Made by You Mondays at Skip to my Lou  | Market Yourself Monday at Sumo's Sweet Stuff | Craftastic Monday at Sew Can Do | Take a Look Tuesday at Sugar Bee Craft Edition | Handmade Tuesdays at Ladybug Blessings | Get Your Craft On at Today's Creative Blog | Show Me What Ya Got at Not JUST a Housewife | Show & Tell at Blue Cricket Design  | We Did It! Wednesday at Sew Much Ado  | Wednesday Link Party at Tea Rose Home | Strut Your Stuff Thursday at Somewhat Simple  | Keep it Simple Sunday at The Tattered Tag | Sunday Scoop at I ♥ Naptime   | Free for All at Young and Crafty | Think Pink Sundays at Flamingo Toes | Sew Crafty Saturday at Wildflowers and Whimsy | Made with Love Monday at Sew Chatty |

For Him Boxer Shorts

Isn't this a great photo?

You might be wondering what's so great about it. Well for one... I MADE IT!! My first time to make a pair of shorts. I basically followed the steps in this tutorial from MADE except for sewing on the elastic part. According to Dana... it's supposed to be easy to make. But given my skill level... it took me a while to make this. Quite a while.With the seam ripper seeing a lot of use.

You know what's even more amazing about this project? The elastic! I was able to put in the elastic! I didn't follow the tutorial when I was putting on the elastic. I didn't just want to insert the elastic... because I was using a wide elastic and wide elastic tend to bunch and fold inside. I wanted to sew it in, like the one on the boxer shorts I was copying. And after breaking off  one needle, and almost breaking my sewing machine because of all the pulling, I did it! Sewing elastics have always been my weakest spot when it comes to sewing. Since the early 90's... I have tried, tried and TRIED so hard... and failed every time I had a sewing project at school that requires me to sew an elastic. My mom always had to come to my rescue for this part.

This is actually for my husband. He might feel a little left out since I've been working on stuff for me and Andrea for a while and none for him. Now, I'm thinking of making matching pajama shorts for Andrea and me.

Pearl Bow Pin

Last Friday, I went "window-shopping" with a friend after we had lunch at the mall (I say "window-shopping" because I ended up buying a few things... which I really think are necessary by the way!). I saw this pearl-encrusted bow pin (sorry, wasn't able to take a photo) which I found really pretty but didn't want to buy it at that price because I felt I can make one myself. So I ended up buying pair of earrings from that store instead, and started planning the bow pin in my head.

It was a long weekend for us last weekend, no work yesterday (Monday) so I was able to finish it. Ta-dah!!

Pretty! It's about 3.5 inches wide. The original I saw at the store used pink ribbon at the center of the bow but no matter how many times I tried when I was making mine, I couldn't get it to look right so I decided to use an oval-shaped pearl bead instead.  Total time for me to make this was around 2 hours, spread across 3 days (that's how little free time I have... *sniff*).

Here's a simple how to:

You will need:

• Small pearl beads (I used what I had on hand... I have a lot of pearl beads left over from when I had my bead jewelry business a few years ago)
• Felt (use a color to match the color of the pearl beads you are using)
• Needle and thread (color to match the color of the felt you are using).
• 1 oval shaped bead (same color as your small pearl beads or a coordinating color).
• Brooch pin.
• A template for the bow, see below for the template I used.

STEP 1: Draw the shape of the bow you want your pin to look like. I free-handed mine, but I did a rough rendering and you can just download my template below.

To download the template, click on the image to enlarge. Copy and paste to a Word file. Resize to the size you want your pin to be, and then print.

Bow Template

STEP 2: Cut your drawing/printout and use as pattern to cut the felt. You will need 2 pieces of Part A and 1 piece of Part B.

STEP 3: Sew the small pearl beads into a piece of Part A. I started from center, then moving to the edges of one side of the bow. The illustration below shows how I filled out one side of the bow.

As you get to the center, make sure the beads look evenly spaced and there is no big empty spot. Repeat for the other side of the bow.

STEP 4: Sew the center bead or whatever you plan to use for the center of the ribbon.

STEP 5: Sew beads on to Part B.Sew below the dotted line (see illustration below).

STEP 6: Use glue to attach the part ABOVE the dotted line of Part B to the back of Part A.

STEP 7: Glue the 2nd piece of Part A to the back of the combined pieces of Parts A and B.

STEP 8: Glue the pin to the back. Cut a small piece of felt and glue it across the pin to secure it.

And you're done!

Mine ended up a little heavy... I don't know why. Maybe because it's a little big and the pearl beads I used are bigger than the ones I saw on the pin at the store. After I was done, I started thinking what to do with it. See, I'm not really the pin/brooch-wearing type. I initially wanted it for Andrea... but it's so pretty I want to use it!

(EDITED 12/1/2010)
Here's me wearing it to dress up my plain black shirt:

I think I can also use it on a purse, we'll see. If you decide to make one, I hope you can share it with me. Have fun with your pearl bow pin!

(Edited again! 12/2/2010)
and again and again :)

I joined the following link parties:

Tea Rose Home --> my first link party ever! :) | Get Your Brag On at Gluesticks | CraftOManiac  | Lovely Crafty Home | Along for the Ride | The Girl Creative | Not JUST a Housewife | Blue Cricket Design | Somewhat Simple | C.R.A.F.T. | Flamingo Toes |

100 Books

I saw this going around on Facebook. Not really sure where this came from but I found it interesting. So here's how I rate :)

-o-

Have you read more than six of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only six of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Copy this into your Notes (told you got this in Facebook). Bold those books you've read in their entirety and italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (just the first book!)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (watched the movie version...does that count?)
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
24. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
25. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
26. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
27. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 
28. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
29. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
30. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
31. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (I read the complete set when I was 12.)
32. Emma - Jane Austen
33. Persuasion - Jane Austen
34. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis (why is this separate from #31?)
35. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
36. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
37. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
38. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
39. Animal Farm - George Orwell 
40. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
41. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
42. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
43. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
44. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 
45. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 
46. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
47. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
48. Atonement - Ian McEwan
49. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
50. Dune - Frank Herbert 
51. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
52. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
53. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. Fear of Flying - Erica Jong
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (watched the movie version)
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker 
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Inferno - Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker (watched the movie version)
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White 
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

-o-

That's 20 out of 100 for me! Not bad... made me miss reading. I used to read a lot. Come to think of it, I used to do a lot of stuff. Used to. Oh well :)