Printed Pantaloons

I've had this pair of sad white jeans for about 3 years and to date had never worn them. I tried to think of fun prints to paint on them, maybe some wood grain, maybe some lipstick marks like this smart lady Maegan, maybe a cool Aztec design? I finally decided on little triangles for several reasons, easy to cut out a template and paint, can be fun for summer and winter, and they remind me of little woodsy trees.

Pants cost me probably $5 at Savers, paint cost another $3, other goods were gathered from around my house so this was definitely a low cost craft.

 I don't think your supposed to wear white jeans after 1986.

I decided on black paint since that would be the easiest to match with other clothes. I often love to wear all my neon things at once which is not okay if you're not a tweenager, so I wanted to keep the palate as simple as possible.

Used the back of an old cereal box, played around with some different sizes of triangles until I found a nice middle ground. Marked out a grid on the back of the box with my ruler, cut out one sample triangle on a separate piece of paper and used that to systematically draw the rest on the grid.

I'm not kidding I've had these cereal box cutouts for 5+ years.

Cutting out was a pain but I realize now that it  prints much better if you cut very carefully. You'll see on a section of pants below that if you cut past the edges of the triangle the paint will seep through the cracks.

 

Google triangle print pants, it's hilarious. 

I started out taping the sides of the cutout to the pants as I was going and it was helpful. If I could do this again I probably would've painted the lower/flatter parts of the pants first then gone back with an individual stamp and done the top part. It didn't lie flat very well and some of the triangles look like blob monsters.

This image isn't super helpful, just showing the process. 

I used the already painted bits to line up the cutout on the next section, as long as you're very careful there shouldn't be any smudging. Nail polish remover and bleach don't work on fixing mistakes so you have to be scary careful.

Looks so nice and neat, not like another attempt at doing these by hand. I don't want to talk about it. 

Steadily working down one leg then the other, I waited overnight to turn them over and start on the back.

I swept my floors just for you guys! You're welcome :) 

In the end they turned out really good, despite the blobbers near the top. I got lots of compliments that night when I wore them to a concert and can't wait for the weather to cool down to break em out again!

A close up shot, see some little guys are not like the others. At the end of the day it adds to the rustic charm of them.

Dude You Can Grill That

We had an impromptu visit to Whole Foods the other day and thought about what desserts could be grilled since that was the order of the night. Plums and pineapple came to mind, and we decided to keep it small this time.

 I'd like to thank Martha Stewart for having a picture of grilled plums in her magazine that time.

Got some plums, cut em in half, pulled out the pits and sprinkled some brown sugar on them. Let them sit in the fridge while we noshed on cheese and fish. You can also use honey but several people in the apartment recommended brown sugar so why not? Life's all about putting weird stuff on other stuff, amiright?

 The grill scares me so Aaron usually does this part.

Grilled them face down for maybe 3-4 minutes, flipped em over and grilled them for another 4-5 or so until they were piping hot. Splashed some ice cream on there and topped with the remaining brown sugar/plum juice mixture.

 So peemp. Omnom.

All in all it was pretty tart and delicious, can't wait to try pineapple sometime and maybe some other crazy goodies. If you have any suggestions let me know!

Adventures in Depotting

Yiiiiiiikes it has been a long time since I made a post. I've totally been crafting I just rarely have the energy to try and take professional looking pictures while I'm about to get covered in glue. (Not like my pics ever look that great, thanks a lot reality.) But I've missed you guys and wanted to do a post before I completely forgot how to blog, finally decided to try depotting.

I personally never use eyeshadow because frankly, I just don't know how. I always end up with something that looks like a black eye; so I stick to eyeliners fat enough a 2 year old's chubby little sausage hands could draw a passable cat eye.

I do however have a treasure trove of eyeshadows thanks to the lovely ladies at Ipsy, Birchbox and the Target clearance section! I hoard them like a vain squirrel in the hopes that one day I'll find the internet tutorial idiot-proof enough to show me how to create the sphinx of the makeup world: the smoky eye.

 Really didn't think I had very much but started to get nervous once I splayed it all out...

So in order to continue the charade that I'm a functioning and organized adult I wanted to get all my little goodies in one spot. Bought the Z Palette from Amazon, I looked around and it seemed to be the cheapest option. It comes with little magnets that stick onto your shadow pots in case they aren't magnetized already. Surprisingly enough, even though they're made of metal, most of them weren't strong enough to stay stuck to the palette.

I put down a towel (this gets messy), warmed up my straightening iron (with aluminum foil around the hot parts, trust me you want this there), put on Futurama and cracked open a Bud Light Lime-A-Rita.

 I thought you wouldn't have to warm up the glue at the bottom of the pots for very long but you definitely do. I ended up just letting them sit on the iron for a few minutes to soften them up.

I suggest starting with the eyeshadows you don't like, J.I.C.

I thought I'd be able to use a cuticle stick to pop these guys out, but I ended up using a giant safety pin because it could more easily get into the holes at the corners of the shadows.

Pop those suckers out, stick on some magnets (I cut mine with a pretty intense pair of serrated scissors because I didn't have enough) and pop em in the palette. I couldn't think of a great way to organize them so tried to group them by color.

Let me know what you think!

 

If I ever do an eye make up tutorial I'll post it here. I doubt I will because it's pretty sad when I attempt it, but I am planning a hair dye adventure soon so I'll put that up in the next few weeks! Thanks for stopping in!

Repurpose Jewelry

Beads are the only organized thing in my life, besides my pasta.

I have this lovely chunky necklace that unfortunately I never wear because I'm not much of a fashion risk-taker. One day it had mysteriously snapped it's little chain (It was assassinated at the bottom of my purse at one point), so I decided to turn it into something else.

 Was going to use this embroidery thread as well, but saving it for next week instead ;)

I've been on a bracelet kick lately so thought I would give it a go, and if it doesn't work I can always turn the bits into pendants for another necklace, earrings or maybe even a ring?

First things first, check out the necklace...

They say pictures that are off-kilter distract the viewer from their inadequacy...

This is only a small portion of it, it's one of those long necklaces and this diamond type beading repeats one other time. It's really quite pretty but I just never had an occasion to wear it.

Using my needle-nose pliers I opened the ring connecting all the beads, and just hooked them up to the next bead I wanted to connect. I ended up with a small-big-small-big pattern in the end. I saved the biggest diamond type bead for use in other projects.

Almost wish this was a candy necklace.

I took a large jump ring and clasp (they were silver unfortunately) and connected the opposite ends of the bracelet, using my pliers again.

Sorry for the claw.

In the end I got a sassy little bracelet that I've been wearing non-stop...

 It's very hard to find surfaces to photograph in my house... This is a wall.

And a necklace!

 The daylight was dying at this point, sorry for the creepy "internet-chat" setting.

And there's tons of beads left over for another project, any suggestions?

Recycle Yo Bacon Grease

I don't know if you guys know this about me, but I'm fairly obsessed with bacon. I get bacon related gifts every birthday and Christmas, I have a bacon fact-a-day calender at my desk, I even have an "I Heart Bacon" sticker on my car.
This past weekend I came into a great deal of bacon grease (Making BLTs for a party). You can't throw grease down the drain, so you're supposed to pour it in a disposable container, freeze it, and toss it when it hardens.
When I looked at the little can of grease all hardened up I realized it looked a lot like a candle. So much so that I started researching a D.I.Y. bacon candle recipe, only to find out you can pretty much jam a wick in there and call it a day. No mixing with candle wax or anything like that.
SO, I gathered supplies and picked my container:

Heated up my double boiler that is used for making regular candles, and poured a tiny bit of grease in the bottom of the container to hold the wick down.

Let it harden (It takes awhile so put it in the fridge), pour the rest of the delicious grease in there and find a way to keep the wick straight. I used chopsticks.

Let that set for awhile, and you have your very own bacon candle! Ready to light in the morning and trick everyone into thinking there's bacon on the table, BWAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA!
But seriously it smells so delicious unlit I'm almost scared to test it out...

Headboard Out of My Mind

Get excited guys, because this month I actually made a craft someone would want to replicate!
I'm somewhat of a hippie, so even though I've been living at my apartment for 3 years I still don't have a bed frame or a headboard. I've seen so many projects of people that created their own headboards and thought, "Dude, I can totally make that."

So for the past few weeks I've been gathering supplies such as discounted particle board and 2x4's from Home Depot, batting and green high-density foam from Joann Fabric's (My alma mater), and pretty buttons and fabric from my family.

The measurements for all these materials are as follows:
1 piece particle board, 2' x 4' (Discounted because the edges were a bit squiffy)
2  boards about 1/2" thick and 4' long (Also discounted because they were a teeny bit warped)
1 inch thick high density foam, 2' x 4'
2 pieces of high loft batting, 54" x 36"
Giant piece of fabric (You'll want at least 5-6 inches on every side of the piece your making for stapling purposes)
Staple gun and 3/8" staples (In retrospect I would've gotten at least 1/2" staples, it was hard to get all that fabric underneath them)
Upholstery needle, upholstery thread, buttons, skewers (To anchor the thread on the back of the headboard), drill and drill bits (Thanks to Aaron Corp.)...

I prepped the headboard by measuring and drilling where I wanted my tufts to go. I decided to go small and only have 6. If you don't have a drill you can use a pegboard for the base, but they only come in 1/4" thickness and it makes it a bit wobbly. Drill the hole as small as you can, because when you start pulling and anchoring things through them it just makes the whole situation stronger.

Aaron Corp. has a whole mess of mystery items in the basement including a popcorn maker, crockpot and entire drill set! Who knew?

 This is called measuring... You do it twice...

Zombie sneakers.

 Baby Bell, inspecting the materials. Clearly they did not pass code.

 I ironed my fabric and laid it out on the biggest work surface I have, my living room floor.

 

Don't worry, I swept.

Then the batting and the foam:

 Predators was playing in the background for this whole project.

I folded the edges of the batting underneath to give the edges of the headboard a little more cushion.

I laid the board on top of the whole shabang and started folding the fabric in to be stapled to the back.

 Just like making a sandwich.

Please ignore my ashen claws.

 This was the fun part, I've always wanted to ignore the safety warnings on a staple gun!

From there a neat little tuck and fold to create the corners. I ended up having so much batting that the corners puffed out a little bit more than I wanted, so you just have to experiment with it to get it the way you like. If the batting is giving you too much trouble feel free to cut out a square right a the corner to lessen the bulk.
I didn't fold the corner all the way in like wrapping a present because that made the corner waaaay too bulky, so instead I went with this semi fold.

 This was more like making a gift than a sandwich.

I try to include my hands in posts as little as possible, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

 Staple, staple, staple allll over that beast. No such thing as too many staples. Try to staple farther away from the edges so that if you need to tighten the edges up in any sections, you can pull the fabric taut and just staple a little closer to the edge to even the whole thing out.

Whose couch is that? Jeez some people are just peegs...

 I then screwed my small boards to the back to prop up the headboard. I did some rough measurements, but in all honesty I haven't gotten my bedframe yet so I'll have to change the height eventually. You can always unscrew them and try again.

 This is going to be my picket sign. I'm not sure what I'm protesting yet.

 Recognize that gorgeous creature in the background?

 Now for the sewing portion of our day. I almost stopped right here because I thought this looked nice, but Aaron Corp. encouraged me to keep going because it would look nicer. And if a guy tells you something will look nicer, I think it's generally a good idea to keep going.

These are the hors d'oeuvres at the Hearst mansion.

 Broke up some skewers and found some pretty buttons. Using my upholstery needle and thread, I sewed each button to the front of the headboard through the holes I had made earlier.

 

Bing.

 

Bang.

 

Boom.

I used the skewers to tie the knot around to keep the buttons really sunk in on the front of the headboard. Some people use staples to anchor the thread, doing a lot of criss-crossing on the back to get them really tight. But I was so tired of using that gun at this point I just did this instead. It's easier if you tape the skewers to the board while you're tying the knot. It'll be easy to redo if the buttons ever fall out as well.

 When my laziness rears her head I get real creative.

I just noticed this looks like a belly button.

Four bellybuttons!

I had toyed with the idea of making the fabric brown so this would look like a chocolate bar :)