Diva

She found her happy place.

Here Comes J Riding Her Pony

 And this is how she does it.

P.S. That rocking horse was a $1 at a garage sale :)

Purses

J is all girl. She adores all shoes, jackets, mini things, and all things sparkly. Most of all though, she likes purses. She walks around with her arm in the air so they will stay on. I decided to introduce her to my purse collection and transformed her into the old lady from Labyrinth.

Happy Valentine's Day

Photography technique from here.

How to reline a suitcase

I wanted to give my sister in law some sort of case to hold all those special things from her bridal shower. (blatantly stole the idea from Big Sis). So I went out with the hope of finding one on my garage sale adventure. Any experienced thrifter will tell you that rarely do you find what you are looking for when you go with a goal. You never find what you are searching for, but 20 things you didn't know you wanted. Well as luck would have it,  I found exactly what I had in mind. FOR ONE DOLLAR! Total score. P.S. the rather unique trailers on the county island by my house are my favorite places for garage sales because they know their junk is worth more sold than the rich people who think they should get $5 for a vase they don't want anymore.

This one was especially cheap because of the yucky inside. So I ripped it out. literally, a good pull was all it took to get the staples and trim off.

Glued some batting in with spray adhesive, trimming the extra on the edges

Next I cut out some new fabric I had laying around, using the old stuff as a rough guide.

Using hot glue, I made a line of glue along one bottom edge and pushed down the fabric. I glued down one side at a time, stretching the fabric just enough so it would lay smooth.

Then I folded the fabric over and glued it along the top edge, one side at a time, ignoring the corners.

I did the corners last and just bunched the fabric together and folded it over. I added lots of hot glue.





I chose to glue some trim along the edge. If you use an organza ribbon like I did, you have to be careful to keep your glue lines neat or they show through. I did the top edge of all the ribbon first, then the bottom after.

Next I made the panel that covers the hinges. Presumably, this prevents your clothes from getting pinched when you close the case. The original had some sort of flexible cardboard. Interfacing would have been ideal, but that stuff is pricey and I wanted fast and cheap so I used felt. I cut it long enough to stretch across all the back hinges.



Then I covered one side of it in fabric.

Then I glued the edges to the case.

I made of bow of ribbon and it was ready to go!

 

The whole project took about an hour from start to finish. I know because I started in an hour before I was supposed to leave for the bridal shower :) Sometimes it is faster just to go for it then to research a how to online.

It was also perfect filled up with all the wedding flowers. Since the handle is on top, the pretty paper boxes remained uncrushed.

I fell so in love with how this one turned out I didn't want to give it away. I'll have to look for another. Or in keeping with garage sale karma, try not to look for another one :)

Wedding Flowers

So my sister in law is getting hitched and I'm helping out with the wedding. I was a wedding coordinator back in the day and love the stuff. She doesn't want any real flowers and so I volunteered to make them. By the sheer quantity, you can see why I didn't blog this week :) (This doesn't even feature the amazing bouquets either, but those are a different post)



She wanted each of the sisters and sisters in law on both sides to wear matching hair flowers so I made a bunch of these in blue and white.

 My friend Emily showed us how to make them at a Mutual activity once. She sells them in her super cute shop if you'd like to buy one. I burned (ha!)  my way through a season of White Collar cutting and singeing all the satin. I'm still mastering the art of the hot glue gun and the price for mastery seems to be my fingerprints. But since I used around 30 feet of hot glue gun sticks between all the flowers and the bouquets, I think I ended up rather in tact.

Here are some of the fabric corsages and boutonnieres.

These little guys are a simpler version for the nephews

Yes, the custom labels are a little ridiculous, but I love any chance to use my silhouette and it really took all of 20 minutes for those. Labeling them is a must because I've helped at more then one wedding where "Who doesn't have their boutonniere?!" is shouted over and over. Now the boxes took significantly longer, but they are just so pretty with the hair flowers inside I couldn't resist.

For part of her bridal shower gift I made these mini flowers out of the scraps and I think they just might be my favorite :)

A labor of love, but I'm really happy with how they turned out. 

Snitch

Even with all the running going on these past few weeks, I couldn't neglect my crochet! I made this golden snitch for my HP fanatic friend's bday. I used this pattern, but made some different wings. If I had cats, I would attach this to a string and a pole and try and teach them quidditch. But then again, if I had cats I would be sneexing so bad I couldn't watch them play anyways.

Happy Groundhog's Day

Maybe I'll actually get some winter in the next 6 weeks.

Broccoli

Embarrassing to admit, but I had no idea what a broccoli plant looked like until I grew one. Those little green things we crunch are actually pods that will turn into yellow flowers if left to their own devices. And they grow in the center of the plant surrounded by leaves. I feel like I should have learned this at some point.

All the same, I'm still excited when food from my garden looks like food from the grocery store.