My First Sewing Project: Belly Dance Costume

I recently took up belly dance as a way to get more exercise. I didn't realize that, eventually, there would be recitals. After learning about the recitals, I was informed that I would need an outfit for it. For my very first recital, I wanted to keep it simple. I ordered this two-piece outfit, except my belt was white.

Via Light In The Box

While this was a nice outfit, I realized, while at the recital, that it was a bit too plain. Everyone else had some sort of embellishments on their outfit, or fancy belts, or jewelry on. I knew that for my second recital, I'd have to take it up a notch.

Since "fancier" outfits tend to be a bit expensive, I decided to make my own. Turns out, fancier outfits are more expensive for a reason, but I still made it all myself because I already bought the pattern. I only used the pattern for the skirt. The top is just a bra with embellishments and halter straps instead of its regular straps.

The skirt used 6-7 yards of fabric. The pattern said 9 yards, but I adjusted the layout to use less.

I think I'm going to add more to the top, especially the middle. It's a bit bare. I also got the arm things from Light In The Box.

The belt is just a 2" strip of blue chiffon, blue tassels, with a stud ribbon sewn on top, and two jewelry-type chains.

Overall, I'm pretty proud of myself considering this is my first big sewing project with an actual sewing machine. Hopefully I can continue belly dancing because I love these outfits, and I really enjoyed making it, despite it taking me over a month.

Nautical Bathroom Redecorating: Sailboat Painting

I finally got around to painting the bigger canvas.

I'm pretty sure it's a 16"x20". It's not spectacular or anything. I'm really out of practice when it comes to painting. I've been focusing on my costume for my upcoming belly dance recital. I'll post that when I'm all done. ;)

Anyway, I just used a basic sailboat shape for the painting, on a blue ocean with a beautiful blue sky.

If it wasn't for the mast, the only colors I utilized were blue, red, and white. The mast added a bit of yellow to the painting, breaking up all the blue which brings your eye to the boat.

Since my other painting is all blue, as well, I think I'll add some orange to the wall so it's not so monotone. Orange matches the decor on my toilet, if you haven't seen my last post regarding my bathroom.

I'm very pleased with how the reflection in the water came out. Like I said, I'm out of practice, so I'm sticking to the basics.

Now go be inspired!

Easy Spice Jar

My husband and I love a certain pizza chain. We get a ton of their spice packets, and I'm not one to waste anything.

I kept some of the jars we get from our jellies/jams, and I kept the top of a Parmesan cheese bottle.

I don't know how many packets we had, but we had a lot. Enough to almost fill half of the jar.

Nothing too fancy or difficult. Just a simple way to utilize things that you may already have on hand. :)

Nautical Bathroom Redecorating: The Toilet

Recently, I've taken to putting those smell-good things in the bathroom because, well, it needs it. The containers aren't exactly pretty, though, so I needed a way to hide them that would still fit into the nautical theme.

Beautiful, no?

 One of my favorite craft stores still has their summer nautical decor on clearance, so I looked there for a solution. I found a neat candle holder and tea light holder, and they were both orange. (My theme has both blue and a bit of orange.) The larger candle holder was the perfect size for the scent thing, and I bought flame-less tea lights from the dollar store. Perfect for the just-in-case scenario of my toddler grabbing it. (Which she did eventually.)

Much better.

It's not the most amazing transformation, but it does make the toilet more aesthetically pleasing. It was also cost effective; regular prices of the starfish and candle holder were $16.99 each, but on clearance they came out to just under $9 for both.

I'm super excited for my bathroom to come together. I'm very slowly putting all the decor together, and crafting up the rest that would be too expensive to buy. Stay tuned for the rest of the transformation!

Nautical Bathroom Redecorating: Compass Rose

I'm currently in the process of redecorating my bathroom. There's nothing wrong with it, I suppose, but nothing really matched too well. I wanted a green and brown sort of color scheme, so I had put brown and green things for the bathroom on my wedding registry. My mother-in-law bought us the floor mat, shower curtain, and one set of towels, and that suited us for a long time. However, I wanted to put some actual decor in the bathroom. Maybe on the walls, on the counter, on the wall behind the toilet, anywhere to make it more "homey." Anyway, nothing I could find that was green and/or brown really tickled my fancy. I tried to paint some jars brown and green, but it only brought so much to the table.

It was time for a change.

Nautical stuff is apparently trending, and for some reason I'm really into it. Lots of stores, including my lovely craft stores, carry (carried) nautical decor, but the prices were a bit out of my budget. For the most part, I just waited until they had it on clearance. If you're lucky, the store will slowly mark everything down to the point of almost free, you just have to wait a while. The "paintings" I wanted (they weren't actual paintings, just prints on canvas) were still more than I wanted to spend, so instead I decided to paint some canvas myself since I'm not too bad in the art department.

I want two paintings for my wall: one of a compass rose, and one of the ocean, maybe with some boats. Here's the inspiration picture for the first painting:

I wasn't going to paint every part of this because there's a lot of stuff, but the most important parts, obviously.

I painted the background a light-ish blue, and then used a ruler and pencil for the compass parts. I painted it at an angle for a more abstract feel. After I got done outlining everything in pencil, I proceeded to paint. Oh, and I used a canvas size 8x10 inches.

Price of the canvas: $9 x 40% off coupon/sale = $5.40

Price of paint, blue and black (if you don't have any): $2

Total: $7.40

Compare to the original price of any 8x10 canvas print at the craft store: $19.99.

Yay savings!

Easy Busy Board

I'm sure you've seen "busy boards" all over Pinterest, especially if you like doing crafts for/with your kids. They tend to have lots of engaging things on them, especially for fine and gross motor skills.

After (probably) a whole year of thinking about it, I finally made one for my youngest. I included a few things that most busy boards don't have, such as a big plastic zipper, a set of beads on an eye hook and command hook, and a piece of PVC that leads to a jar for small balls. I made sure to sand down all the sides, and I rounded out the edges so they wouldn't get splinters. The purple paint was leftover from another project, and I'm pretty sure it's some sort of latex paint made for interiors or something. I don't know. I'm not a paint pro.

The PVC was simply glued on with some SUPER super glue. On the other side of the jar is some heavy-duty Velcro so the kids could take it off and get the balls (or whatever) back. The zipper came from the craft store, and I'm pretty sure it's the kind for sports bags. It's definitely not for clothes, I know that. It was hot glued on, but I'd suggest a staple gun instead.

Everything else was drilled onto the board using screws that were (obviously) shorter than the wood was thick. The screws that came with the hardware would've been too long.

I also wanted my girls to have some sort of art easel or chalkboard to draw on. Buying new baby gear isn't my thing since they don't use it long, but I couldn't find one that I liked.
The plywood came from the hardware store, and I technically paid for the whole big piece, so they cut it down for two equally-sized pieces. Finally, I decided to use the extra piece for a chalkboard. I sanded it, painted it, then taped off a big rectangle for the chalkboard paint. It required 4-5 coats rather than 2 because of how shiny and "slippery" the purple paint was. I bought a couple really basic hinges to attach the two boards together, lined them up, and drilled them into place.

Now my girls have something to draw on and a busy board to fiddle with. Overall I'm really happy with how it turned out, though I wish I could've grabbed a cheap doorknob or something else for the open spot, and I plan on adding a chalk holder below the chalkboard so there's not chalk all over the place.

Good luck with yours, and feel free to post any questions you may have! :)

How-To: Cookie Sandwiches

This year was the first year my daughter had to bring Valentines to school for Valentine's Day, so we wanted to go all out. (Ok, I wanted to go all out. She just wanted cookies.) Here's how we did it!

First you need:

Rolled sugar cookies

 Make sure you use ROLLED sugar cookies, with a ROLLED COOKIE recipe. If the recipe has the word "dropped" in it, or has "spoon onto a baking sheet" in the directions, then they're NOT rolled cookies. Only rolled sugar cookies will keep their shape and not spread while baking. If you're doing this around Christmas time, you can use gingerbread instead. Here's the recipe I use for sugar cookies --> Rolled Sugar Cookies

Colored nonpareils

 I suppose you could use jimmies, but I feel these stick better. I used red, white, and pink for the holiday. Add a little less than half of the container to a bowl for easy application.

Buttercream

I use 1/2 C of butter and 1/2 C of shortening creamed with a splash of vanilla, then I add 2 lbs. (more or less depending on taste/texture preference) of powdered sugar one cup at a time, and then I add approximately 2 tablespoons of cream and mixed it for another ten minutes or so. You can use any other kind of flavor you want, just cut the vanilla in half and add a different flavor to make up for the loss. You can also color the buttercream by adding gel food color. If you want chocolate buttercream, replace approximately half a cup of powdered sugar with cocoa powder. Add the buttercream to a piping bag and cut the tip off for a pretty big opening. I used a large round piping tip, but it's really not necessary.

Now just lay out some cookies by twos:

And pipe some buttercream about 1/4 of an inch thick onto half of the cookies:

Squish the bare cookies onto the buttercreamed cookies, making sure to have some buttercream protruding out so the sprinkles can stick. Now just roll the sides in the sprinkles and repeat with all of your cookies.

Now feast!

DIY Jean Skirt

I'm always looking for ways to reuse things, especially clothes. One of my daughter's pairs of jeans started falling apart at the bottom of the legs, but I didn't want to completely trash the jeans, and although I readily donate clothes all the time, I don't want to donate jeans that were falling apart. So I searched Pinterest for ideas and ran across this:

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/572168327629563198/

 I loved the look, and I figured that I could recreate this pretty easily.

I went to the fabric store and picked up a remnant that measured approximately 44 inches in length. Choose a length that is just about double the measurement of the jeans at the location of the cut, plus a few inches. The height didn't matter much since I could hem it up as much as I wanted.

So obviously you need a pair of jeans (Goodwill is always a good place to get some without sacrificing your own jeans), the fabric (I chose one that wouldn't fray much), thread, a strong needle, fabric scissors, and some fray stop if you have fabric that will fray.

First cut the jeans right above the legs straight across. You can use the fray stop on the bottom if they come apart easily, or hem them.

Next, take your fabric and hem it up as much as you need it. I put it up to my daughter and marked it where it touched the floor, which was about four inches from the bottom.

Now you will need to measure around the bottom of the cut jeans to figure out how much to bunch the fabric. This measurement will differ from the hip measurement. For example, my daughters hips measure at 21", and the bottom of the jeans measure at 24".

Next, do a straight stitch across the top of the fabric approximately 3/4" down from the top. Be sure to fasten the end tightly, or else it will come apart while bunching. After stitching, bunch the fabric as much as it takes to get the desired length.

 Secure the other end so the bunching will stay. Make sure you bunch the fabric evenly. You could even do this in sections for more even bunching, but I don't have that kind of patience.

 Next, pin the fabric to the jeans. I placed the stitching approximately 1/2" up on the jeans. Back-stitch all the way around the skirt, with relatively tight stitching.

I then did a very tight straight stitch down the seam because I did not have enough seam allowance to sew the two wrong sides together. Do whatever stitch is best for your fabric.

Fray stop any edges that would fray, let it dry, then gently wash it. That's it! Thanks to the jeans already being done, the rest of the skirt is pretty easy. If you have a sewing machine, I'm sure it'd be a lot quicker, and the actual stitching would be sturdier. I hand-sew for now, since my machine is back in Illinois and I'm currently in Arizona. Anyway, I hope this was helpful, and feel free to ask any questions in the comments. I'm sure I was pretty vague in my tutorial. :)