Green Bow Pillow Project

One day while I was wasting my life on Pinterest (crack in web form), I came across an adorable pillow from Freshly Picked for $45.00 and thought, "I can make that!" I do this often, but rarely

find the time to actually follow through.

With this pillow project I was in luck. It was a slow weekend and I wanted nothing more than to just sit at home, eat ice cream all day, and craft. I discovered that I had all of the supplies I needed to complete my project, so I came up with a strategy and off I went!

The fabric I used was a thicker material, similar to canvas. It helped keep the bow in the position that I wanted and will keep the filling from clumping over time; although it was harder to sew as the entire project was hand sewn. I used a white hand-sewing thread, but if you're making it with a sewing machine, any matching thread will do, as long as the seams are backstitched.

I began by measuring out the size of pillow I wanted (keeping in mind the extra fabric for the seams).

Because the fabric is striped, it was easy to measure and cut exactly where I wanted.

For the bow, I measured the width to be even with the length of the pillow, and with the 'height' I kept both sides about 3 inches shorter than the pillow.

I cut a strip of fabric from the scraps that I had left for the bow tie. The width depends on how big you want the tie to be. I would recommend about 2 1/2"  width and about 6" in length (any longer than 6" will leave a lot of extra fabric inside of the pillow) 

I stacked all 3 pieces together to assure that the sizes were proportional. Once the sizes were right, I turned the pillow fabric inside-out and sewed the 2 sides together, leaving the bottom open for when I was ready to add the bow.

Before hemming the edges of the bow, I cut a small triangle off of each corner so that the folds would lay over each other cleanly.

Once I had hemmed both the bow and tie, I folded the center of the bow accordian style so that there was a tight center, and made sure that the bow was wrinkled in the way that I wanted before solidifying the hold.

I forced needle and thread through the fabric a few times to hold the center tight.

If you don't want to risk blistering your fingers and knocking your tooth out with pliers, I would recommend tying the center together with either strong thread or twine. The center will be covered with the tie, so appearance doesn't matter in this case. Lesson learned!

I arranged the bow directly in the center of the pillow, factoring in the 1/2 inch I would love from sewing the bottom of the pillow together. Again, the stripes made for easy measuring, and I marked with pins the spot where I wanted my bow.

I placed a piece of carboard beneath the single top layer of fabric (I'm convinced my cutting mat was stolen by gremlins). With a rotary cutter, I made a 1" incision on each of the stripes that I had pinned. The incisions should be about 1" apart.

I replaced the bow where I wanted it, and stitched a few times through the center of the bow and the pillow for an extra hold. I then pulled the each side of the tie through the incisions that I had made, covering the accordian center of the bow. I was very careful to cover the parts that I didn't want to be seen, and made sure that the tie was pulled tight enough to create the crinkle effect that I wanted in the bow.

Next, I turned the pillow inside-out and pulled the fabric around the tie towards the inside of the pillow, then sewed the tie and fabric together to close the incisions.

Before turning the pillow right-side out, I sewed half of the bottom together on one side, and about 3 inches on the other side, leaving about a 3 inch section open.  I turned the pillow inside out, being very careful not to rip and seams or tear the bow off. This is quite the task...or so it seems at 2:00am!

I stuffed the pillow with Fairfield brand Soft Touch Poly-Fil. I prefer the Soft Touch over the Polyester

Poly-Fil because, even though the fabric is thick and the pillow is decorative, I like my pillows to be soft and squishy!

Once the pillow was stuffed, I turned in the remaining 3 inches of fabric, and hand stitched it together and...

VOILA!!!

The pillow is complete.

Fun Fact: Voila is very very similar to Viola, and when you've been typing all day, it's almost impossible to notice the difference.

Craft on, little birdies

Flag Banner

This is a fairly simple, fun project that has totally added a cute, whimsical touch to my room!

It would've been a LOT easier if I had a sewing machine, but even without one, it was worth it.

I began with a roll of twine that I purchased at Hobby Lobby. They're fairly cheap; only around $3-$5 a roll. I measured across my wall with the twine to make sure I knew exactly how I wanted the banners to hang and where I wanted the banners to criss-cross. I cut a total of 4 pieces to stretch across my room.

I found 7 miscellaneous fabrics at different craft stores that went well together with color and design, and cut a piece of cardboard into the exact shape I wanted for a stencil. Once I had all of my triangles cut, I laid them out across the twine I had already cut, and pinned them to make sure the placement worked. One at a time, I cut off the tips of the triangles to make them easier to fold, ironed the edges over, and hemmed the sides so that they wouldn't fray. I folded the top edge over the twine where they were set, and sewed right beneath the twine so that the were tight enough to not slide up and down the banner.

Once all of the triangles were sewn onto the twine, tied a small knot into the end of the twine, and used tacks to pin them onto two of the walls of my room.

I love the finished product!

P.s. Now that I'm finished documenting most of the craft pictures that I have on my phone, from this point on I will start taking pictures of the process! YAYYY!! Hopefully I will get better at this instructing thing, but who knows. Even after I make my mistakes, sometimes I don't learn from them. That's all part of the fun. Wish me luck....again!

Craft on, little birdies

Petal Dress

This project, in particular, will be a very hard one to instruct.

So I think I will do without instructions and just explain the process.

(Please excuse the messy bed in the background. I got so wrapped up in my project that things such cleaning my room, making my bed, etc., fell to the wayside)

I started by sketching out my dream dress. Something somewhat organic and natural, but soft and girly. I found the perfect fabric at Ikea (and cheap!) that is similar to canvas/burlap material, and bought two yards. I also bought a silky fabric from JoAnn's fabrics to line the inside of the dress. I got lucky with my sizing because I have NO idea how to measure clothes, and just sketched out on the fabric what I thought would fit me.

After cutting out my pieces, I hand-hemmed the edges of each piece to create softer lines and to keep the material from fraying. I then sewed my top section to become one piece, and added a zipper to the back of the top. Next, I sewed a skirt out of the silky material and began pinning the "petals" in a fishscale pattern, covering the entire skirt. Once the petals were all sewn onto the skirt, I turned each piece inside out and pinned together the shoulder straps, skirt, and top and hand sewed the entire dress to become one piece.

The one thing I didn't like about this dress was that the canvas material is easily crinkled, so it needs to be steamed every once in a while. If I was to do it again...I would figure out how to measure clothes!!!

Pain in the rear.

The end result...and I know I've said this before, but...Voila!!!

Craft on, little birdies

Mickey Mouse for your Mouth

Mickey Mouse is so delicious. Whoulda thunk?

Supplies: 1 box Oreos, 1 container mini Oreos, 1 bag Guittard chocolate chips, 1 bag each Wilton candy melts in red and yellow

1. Prepare by clearing out a section of the freezer, large enough for a cookie sheet, and cover the bottom of a cookie sheet with wax paper. Prearrange large oreos with two mini oreos to fit on the cookie sheet.

2. Poor 1/4 bag of chocolate chips in a bowl and heat in the microwave, stirring every 15-20 seconds.

3. Once the chocolate stirs smooth, dip part of the mini Oreos into the chocolate and place onto a large Oreo on the cookie sheet to form ears. Once each Oreo has "ears", place in the freezer for 20-25 minutes or until the chocolate has frozen/the Oreos have binded.

4. With the ends of your fingers, hold inbetween the ears and at the bottom of the Oreo, and drizzle melted chocolate over the Oreo until completely covered. Place on cookie sheet.

5. Once all Oreos are covered in chocolate, replace in freezer for another 20-25 minutes.

6. Melt Wilton candy melts, following the same instructions as melting chocolate chips. When the candy melts stir smooth, dip the bottom half of the Oreos into the red melt, and use the end of a utensil to add the yellow "buttons" onto one side of the Oreo. Replace in freezer.

Once the entire Oreo has hardened, take a bite, and enjoy!!

Craft on, little birdies

The Colorful Owl

Purple, blue, yellow, orange. I love colors.

And owls?

I'm in love.

This owl pillow came together surprisingly easy. The shape was simple. I drew a 12" x 18" rectangle and added the triangular shaped ears before cutting out my pattern. As seen, I cut 2 plum and 2 yellow teardrop shapes for the wings, 2 plum and 2 blue circles for eyes, and the triangle shape for the nose. I used cream embroidery thread to sew the eyes and nose for the face, as well as a criss-cross patterned "eye sparkle". The most complicated part was sewing on the wings and buttons, but after that was finished, I filled it with padding and sewed it all up.

Tadaaaaa!!

Craft on, little birdies

Mustache Pillow

I. Love. Mustaches.

I love mustache everything. Mustache necklaces, mustache mugs, mustache tattoos.

Yes. I have a mustache tattoo on my finger.

I just love them.

I had to make myself a mustache pillow.

This is a hard one to do a tutorial on, but I will try to post a link to the pattern soon! 

Craft on, little birdies

Sushi Cake

I hate sushi. Yuck.

But cake that looks like sushi...I can do that.

One of my dearest friends had a birthday recently, and I knew her very favorite thing is sushi. I remembered that a couple of years ago my friend Angie created cakes shaped like sushi, and I wanted to try my own!

I went to the store and bought - white cake mix, vanilla frosting, rice krispies, green fruit roll-ups, and swedish fish. I also got a plastic sushi container and chop sticks from the sushi/deli counter.

First, I baked the white cake according to the instructions on the cake box. Once cooled, I leveled off the top of the cake to make it easier to decorate. I used the bottom of a glass as a stencil and cut around the edges to create the sushi shape (I didn't have one on hand, but a cookie cutter about 1 1/2" would work). I iced the top and sides of each cake, sliced the green fruit roll-up to match the height of the cakes, and wrapped two around each cake, using the icing as edible glue. I then covered the top of the cakes with the rice krispies, and finished with swedish fish.

The only kind of sushi I'll eat. Delish!

Craft on, little birdies

A Circus of Fingernails

Let it be known that my best friend Dave is going to be an excellent Daddy.

In two days during his trip to visit me in Salt Lake, he let me paint his fingernails AND we went and had a tea party at the always wonderful Beehive Tea Room.

A think a part of him even liked it.

During a movie night I got the urge to paint fingernails, but I had already painted my roommate's nails, and my hands are so small that you can't do much with my nails. Thank goodness for my Dave. I found a couple of different animal prints, and went to town on his fingernails.

All we needed was a solid white, solid brownish/maroonish, and black and yellow striper nailpolishes. for the giraffe print (pointer finger), I painted the solid brown color, let dry, and striped the rugged yellow outlines for the giraffe spots. The zebra was with the solid white polish, and black striped the simple zebra lines. The cheetah was a solid solid white polish, mishaped dots with the yellow striper polish, and outline the dots with the black striper polish. Finally, the cow, was simple white polish with the black polish spots using the black striper.

Dave is such a trooper. Thanks babes.

Craft on, little birdies

Birdify

Put a bird on it!

I'm telling you...that saying is addicting.

I've been wanting to make pillows for a long time. They've always seemed so easy to me, and luckily, I was right. The only problem is, I don't own a sewing machine, nor have I ever borrowed one. The good thing is that when I hand sew, I can pay that much more attention to detail. In this case, detail was important, and the thread that I used can only be used while hand sewing.

I went to my Hobby Lobby, the arts and crafts store, and bought a half a yard of this orange and cream design cloth. It's a thicker material similar to canvas so it was harder to thread through, but it will last much longer than a thin fabric. I also bought a quarter swatch of a thinner, plum fabric (I know, I know, in the picture it looks brown) and a skein of cream colored embroidery thread.

After cutting out two 14" x 14" squares (after a few pillows, I realized it's easier to cut out a single 14" x 28" swatch, fold in the middle and sew the edges...I know...duh) I sketched a silhouette of a bird with chalk onto the plum fabric and cut it out with fabric scissors. I then pinned the bird to the corner on one of the orange and cream swatches, and sewed near the edges with the embroidery thread. At first, I was afraid that the edges of the bird would fray, but after burning my fingers multiple times trying to iron the edges over, I realized that is was not worth it. Time has now proven that fraying of the bird is minimal, and almost adds character.

The tree, leaf, and striped pillows were done with the same process. Such an easy way to spice up a throw pillow!    

Craft on, little birdies

Put a Pin in it

I'm sure you haven't caught on yet but...I like birds.

Please - if you haven't seen it yet - look up Portlandia, Put a Bird on It on YouTube. Every time I see bird art now, I can't help but belly laugh! You will see.

This was long before I had seen that glorious clip, but I probably still would've made this either way. I work in a hotel and my front desk desperately needed a cork board to post notes, phone numbers, etc. I was assigned to the task, and of course did not refuse. I get to paint and get paid for it?? Okay!!

Most major office stores have cork boards. These particular ones were sold in a set of 4 at Office Max. A couple of the designs I found on Google, and a couple were just simple bird images. I used the same black acrylic paint that I mentioned in the faux wall decal posts, and after I sketched the images onto the boards, I used the backside of the paint brush to line the outside edges of the sketches. These required a thicker layer of paint as cork boards are porous. I used scrapbook pearls to create the white beads in the flowers, as well as black beads for the eyes of the birds. Finally, I cut two of the cork boards into fours, and hung them in the back wall of the front desk office. Hopefully they don't hire anyone who has a fear of birds.

Craft on, little birdies

Straightly Striped Walls

This, my dears, is a pathetic tutorial but a tutorial nonetheless, of something that I wished I would have known a long time ago. When I was in my late teens, I was sick of the white bedroom walls at my parents house and was ready to fingerpaint them just to give them some color. One day, I got the bright idea to paint one wall with stripes, and the other three with bright green! Baaaad idea. The bright green came out to be neon, blinding, highlighter green, and the stripes...well...they were more lines squiggly lines from carpet to ceiling. At the time, I was fairly impressed with my skills, but now that I know better, I wish I could have a re-do.

My problem was that I painted the lines directly on my Scotch paint tape. I attempted making 1 1/2" stripes, with 1" bright green and the 1/2" turquoise blue (don't judge me, I was a teenager). When I painted the stripes directly, the paint seeped underneath the tape, creating the squiggly lines and therefore destroying my vision of a clean, straight stripe.

At 21, I wisened up and when I moved into my Salt Lake City apartment, I knew just what I wanted to do.

Stripes.

That I did. But this time, it was a little different. Using the same Scotch painting tape I had used in the past, I measured my stripes and taped off what I needed. My stripes were around 19" to fit evenly across the wall. To assure that the lines were as straight as possible, I first painted each gray stripe with a thin border of white, so that it would fill in the cracks and spaces left in the bubble of the tape. Therefore, when I removed the tape after filling in each gray stripe, there was not a line out of place! Ahhh...the joys of doing it right the second time. 

Craft on, little birdies

Paris Sil-Who-What??

Wall Decal!!! Ok...falsie wall decal. But it looks like one, eh, eh? This is just the same concept as the birdcage falsie decals, but obviously a different design.

As I did with the bird cages, I googled a silhouette of Paris image that I was keen to (as well as the friend whose room I painted), sketched it out on the wall with a pencil, and used a general acrylic paint (Delta, Color Splash, etc.) to line the sketch the I had drawn. I lined the outside edges with the rounded edge of the paint brush, as to keep the lines as straight as possible, and used the brush end to fill in the middle. This took a total of around 2 1/2 hours. Salt Lake City silhouette anyone??

...Anyone?

Craft on, little birdies

Bird is the Word

I have always loved seeing funky wall decals in homes. They can turn a boring wall into something a little bit more interesting...but only if you do it right. Not having my own home is difficult for me because home decor is what I LOVE, and most places restrict you from doing something as small as hanging a picture. Luckily, my first apartment in Salt Lake allowed us to paint the walls, as long as we painted it white before we moved out. And paint we did.

I never quite understood whether wall decals were permanent or if they could be removed easily (and when I say "didn't understand", I mean never did any sort of research, whatsoever). I didn't really care to find out --- I was pretty set on just painting the wall myself. I didn't want to have to go through the process of searching for the perfect decal or waiting for something to ship to me. Basically, it comes down to the fact that I'm EXTREMELY impatient.

I used the never failing searche engine, google, to find the perfect, most simplistic bird cages. I bought a small tube of acrylic paint at Michaels Arts and Crafts - if I remember right it was Delta Ceramcoat or something similar. Next, I sketched out a larger version of the birdcages with a pencil directly on the wall. With the rounded end of the paintbrush, I dipped it in my black acrylic paint and began tracing my sketching on the wall, trying to keep the lines as straight as possible. With a steady hand, this is one of the easiest things to paint; just one line after another. The birds were simple as well, using the tip of the paintbrush to create the smoothest line possible, and using the brush end to fill in the middle. After an hour or two of drying, it was finished!

The only problem with this particular wall paint was that from a distance, it looked like there were real birds hanging in our little doorway. No more bird cages for me! Maybe...

Craft on, little birdies

Pumpkin Carving

Traditional pumpkin carving includes cutting a hole out of the top, carving out the insides, dotting lines to create a design, and finally carving a face/bat/haunted house all the way through the thick layer of pumpkin. I found this particular way of pumpin carving to much more fun! Not necessarily easier, but different than the typical holiday tradition.

With this pumpkin, unfortunately, I didn't think about it before and made this project much more complicated by carving out the insides before making the outer design. Carving out the center is not necessary because no candle is needed, unless you carve into the skin thin enough to be transparent for candle light.

I went to my local craft store, Michaels Arts and Crafts, and bought a ceramic carving kit priced around $10.00. I then went out walking through a park near my apartment, searching for some funky shaped leaves. I sketched the leaf shape on with a mechanical pencil (I found the mechanical pencils easiest to carve through the skin). You can also use a scrapbook dot to hold the leaf to the pumpkin to trace the edges. Once finished, I took the sharpest etching tool to cut around the edges of my sketches as well as cut off some of the chunks of pumpkin on the inside edge - this made it easier to carve out the center of the leaf with my widing carving tools. I used mostly the square edged tool to shave the inside of the design. Last, I used the round-shaped carving tool to shave the swirls, and VOILA!

This coming fall I will try some new pumpkin designs, and if you're like me and would rather see pictures than read written instructions, those will be included for Fall 2011. Promise!

Craft on, little birdies

The Beginning

The other day, I was going through all of my 1,000+ pictures on my phone and realized that I have a ridiculous amount of project pictures stored. Here's the thing...I LOVE crafting and I rarely find the time to stop everything else in my life and work on a project, but when I do, it's the most fulfilling feeling! I absolutely love finishing something and being able to stand back and admire what I created (and it doesn't feel too bad when other people admire what you made as well). I decided that I need to document my crafts so that whenever I'm feeling like poo and life isn't working out for me, I can look at my blog and remember how good it felt to do what I love, and hopefully I'll be inspired again. I am not technical in the slightest bit about ANYthing, but I will try to instruct as well as possible, in case you would like craft yourself and don't know where to start. Also, I have no sewing machine --- all of my sewing crafts are hand sewn. For a crafter, I'm slacking in the equipment department. Also, the only camera I have is on my phone, so the quality of photos will be lacking, to say the least. So BEAR WITH ME!! It's gonna be a rocky road at first, but I'm excited to document! If you have any questions, email me! I'm pretty nice, if I say so myself. I'll answer you as soon as I remember I have an email to check. Wish me luck!!