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Les Clés
I've been collecting keys for years, so I have bags full of them. I'm not sure how many exactly, but they probably total several pounds in weight. Some of them have ended up as necklaces, some have been given away as gifts, and there's one with a red ribbon tied to it that I keep with me all the time for good luck. I had some of my favourites mounted on a piece of framed matte board hanging in the living room, but I dismantled it a while ago to make room for a new painting and I have missed them ever since. 
Last week I found a vintage needlepoint kit at the thrift store, still in the original packaging. It came with a pre-stamped pattern of potted plants, enough yarn to complete the embroidery, and this small shadowbox to display the finished piece in. I wasn't all that wild about the potted plants pattern (very 70's--looked like something that would have hung on the wall in Jack Tripper's apartment! Oddly enough though, I actually started embroidering it the other night while watching tv.), but I loved the shadowbox and knew it would be perfect to house a few of my keys in.
With some orange textured cardstock, a liberal amount of E6000, and a few minutes, I had a new key display that I like even better than my old one! The key in the top left square I found somewhere a long time ago, and I think it might open an old, forgotten trunk or chest. The very large one in the upper right I purchased recently as part of a lot of keys at an antique store, and I love it to pieces--it's one of my all-time favourites, even though I bought it and didn't technically "find" it. The bottom left key is very rusty, and has a small piece of twisted wire attached to the top hole. It's embossed with the number 3, and came from a store that sells old furnishings--they always have a huge box of keys for sale and the nice man that works there lets me go through the box at my leisure and always gives me a bargain. Incidentally, 3 is one of my favourite numbers. The small key on the bottom right probably goes to a padlock. It's also rather rusty, especially on the back side. I found that one outside on the ground a long time ago. It isn't as old as some of the keys in my collection , but I really like it anyway.
Do any of you have collections? What are they, and how do you like to display them?
Labels: display, diy, keys, repurposed, shadowbox, simple, thrift
Kupo!
A few days ago I was in a thrift store and happened to catch a glimpse of this little guy as I was passing by the toy section. For half a second I thought he might be a stuffed moogle, so I had to double back to get a better look. Obviously he's not a moogle, but he is terribly cute, so I felt compelled to rescue him from a potentially dismal future of winding up at the bottom of someone's toy chest or being chewed on by a dog. I'm not sure what the story is with this character, but the tag on his bottom says his name is Mowbray, and he was made in the UK. 
I thought Mowbray possessed enough moogle-like charecteristics (light tan fur, large purple nose, cute little roly-poly body) that it would be easy to perform a little plastic surgery and make him into a moogle. So Mowbray the Moogle was born a few days later. The transformation was pretty simple. First, I picked out all of the embroidery for his eyes, mouth, and eyebrows (very tedious, that. In fact, it was the hardest part of the entire project!). Then I gave him a bath in the washing machine to get him nice and clean and loosen/remove any threads I missed. After that, I opened the seam at the back of his body and removed his old fluff. I gave him new eyes (solid black 12mm safety eyes), anchored his antenna/pompom (made from the cable of an old pair of cheap circular knitting needles & some hand-dyed vintage wool), and re-stuffed him with new fluff. 
I made his wings with felt, heavy-duty interfacing, and low-loft quilt batting with some dark purple embroidery for detail. After inserting & attaching the wings, I stitched him back up and embroidered a new mouth for him, and then he was finished! He doesn't look exactly like a moogle, but I think he's super cute & I love him. ^_^Now I just need to keep him away from my dogs, who seem to think he is something new for them to rip to shreds. :/
Labels: diy, felt, final fantasy, makeover, moogle, mowbray, plush, thrift
Ultra-easy Makeover: Cardboard Magazine Holder
Little known fact: I always have tons of papers and mail in a stack next to my computer. I'm just one of those people who can't throw anything away, but I also need to keep letters, bills, and important papers nearby so that I don't forget about them. But I despise having that messy-looking stack of papers next to my computer. It drives me nuts, and every time I see it (roughly 1281267623 times a day) I'm tempted to hide it somewhere out of sight. 
I've tried a few different solutions for organizing my papers... office-style trays, folders & binders, and most recently I had them all clamped in a giant clothespin (no, I'm not kidding). None of these worked out, though, and all of them ended up stuck somewhere else and repurposed. They were just too large, too unattractive, or too...something.
I have very limited space, so I wanted something that would store the paper vertically and be very low-profile so I could slide it in between my monitor and printer. I've looked at magazine holders at different stores and always felt they were way overpriced for essentially being a glorified cardboard box. For a while I kind of forgot about the whole thing and just lived with my horrible stack of papers....until I got lucky and happened to spot a magazine box at a local thrift store. It was only 0.25$ and in brand-new condition, so of course it came home with me! As you can see, it's a bit on the plain side. Red is one of my favourite colours, but since I'll be looking at it whenever I use my computer, I decided it needed something to make it prettier. After some fiddling around, I came up with a plan: cover it with hot pink bows punched from vintage flocked florist's ribbon! Here's a picture I took right after I started:
Note the wee Chihuahua foot in the upper right hand corner. She always has to get in on whatever I'm doing and nose around. Such an attention seeker! At least she behaved herself, though...my Boston Terriers spent their time sneaking around to try to eat my punched out bows! D:
Anyway, let me get back to my overly-long explanation of this simple project! :D
Punching out the bows was fairly easy and went a bit quicker once I figured out the best way to line up the punches. The ribbon was only about 1.5" wide so I had to be creative about placement. Unfortunately, I had used up about a foot or two of ribbon before I realized I could fit more than one punch across the width. So much waste! Woe is me. :[
The entire project took quite a bit longer than I expected it to. In fact, I was kinda over it by the time I was halfway through gluing bows to one side of the box. I don't remember the exact number of bows I punched out, but it was around 200 or so. I do really like the result, so I think it was worth the time. What do you think?
If you'd like to try something
like this, here's a tutorial for making your own magazine box from instructables.com. I may give it a go myself, because I could really use a few more of these (but maybe without the 200 bow punch-outs next time!). Labels: diy, magazine box, makeover, simple, storage
Two quick make-overs...with leopard print!
Several years ago I bought these cheap snakeskin heels at a thrift store. I'd planned to somehow make them leopard print, but after removing the outer layer of snakeskin (in the photo you can see one shoe in its original condition and one with the skin removed....yuck.) I sort of stalled for a very long time. I thought about painting them leopard print since the under-fabric was a relatively smooth cream coloured cotton twill, but it all seemed so time-consuming and I just never got around to it.Well, I finally completed these shoes, and I ended up covering them with fuzzy leopard fabric instead. I used some black bias tape to trim the top edges and give them a more "finished" look. I think they came out pretty nicely after it was all said and done. What do you think? 
Next is this sweater that I purchased at a thrift store. My best friend was looking for a light weight, short-sleeved black cardigan that did not have a vee neckline. I told her I would see what I could find, because I was confident I could turn up something like that after a bit of thrifting. Yeah, but no. After hours of hunting around, the closest I could get to her request was a light pullover sweater that had short sleeves and no vee-neck. I bought it anyway, thinking I could probably make it into a cardigan.
Of course I didn't think to take a before OR an after picture because I'm an airhead, but I do have an in-progress shot. 
Basically, I just cut the sweater straight up the middle, and then trimmed the raw edges with some leopard print jersey fabric. When the photo was taken I was in the process of basting the trim on. I also added a small elastic loop and a covered button to the neck area for closure. My friend said she loved it, and she looks super cute in it, too. The whole project turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be, especially considering how frightened I was at the idea of cutting a sweater open. ^^; Labels: clothes, diy, makeover, shoes, thrift
Quilting outside the box.
It's September, and that means my mother's birthday is quickly approaching. Each year I struggle to come up with the "perfect" gift for her. Sometimes I manage to succeed, but my failures certainly outnumber my successes. This year my gift-planning process has been hampered by a severe lack of funds brought on by a number of different things which I will not go into here. :PIt's not life-threatening, it just means I have to be extra thrifty and creative when figuring out mum's gift. After a few weeks of stressing myself out and coming up with and then discarding a number of different possibilities, I finally came upon a solid idea: A quilt!
I'm not talking about one of those cute decorative quilts that some people make. I'm talking about a heavy-duty queen/king sized monster meant to be used like a comforter. Last year I made a beast of a quilt for Adam & I, and when my mother saw it she asked if I could make her one. At that point, I was totally over the whole quilt-making thing and I told her in no uncertain terms that if I ever did make her one, it wouldn't be any time soon.
Fast-forward to this July. In the process of cleaning/re-organizing my sewing area, I found that I needed to purge a lot of my stashed fabric. I didn't want to get rid of any of it so I decided I'd make us another quilt, because honestly, is there anything on earth that will use up more fabric than a large patchwork quilt? ;)
I did things a little differently than with the beast-quilt I made the year before, which helped to simplify things and allowed me to finish in record time. I didn't work on anything else during that time period and somehow managed to stay very focused as well.
Anyway, after realizing that quilt-making did not have to be so torturous, I figured it was time to give my mum something she had actually asked me for. :)
But by that time, it was already the end of August. Mum's birthday is the 28th of September, so I knew I wouldn't have much time if I didn't want to rush. By using a plastic square template and planning a simple checkerboard patchwork pattern (every other square is from a blue flowered print, and the rest are cut from a few different, random fabrics) I saved a lot of time in the cutting squares/planning rows stage. I know that I probably do not make quilts the way that real quilters do, but I don't care. I do whatever works best for me, and the quilts that I have made in my own little way have turned out pretty well and held up to a lot of wear and tear. I can't say that I enjoy making quilts, because I typically start despising the entire concept by the time I am ready to start sewing squares into strips, but oh well. :P
I definitely reached that point with this quilt as soon as I had finished cutting, sorting, pressing, and stacking all of the squares into row piles. For some reason I felt like I had plenty of time, so I took a break before beginning the sewing process. I was only going to "break" for a day or two, but before I knew what hit me it had been at least a week. I started to panic, because I knew I had less than a month to finish everything, and I knew that it would be very time-consuming (and I am atrocious at managing my time!). So I've plotted out a schedule for myself that, if adhered to, should allow me to complete the entire project with plenty of time to spare--even if I am slower than expected or just plain undisciplined. I've got a decent start on the sewing, and just need to keep chugging along now. Hopefully I will be done well before my planned finish date. Expect pictures when everything is said and done. :)
Labels: gift, mum, quilt, sewing
Long overdue.
Oh, my.
This blog is so neglected. Someone really ought to call the Blog Welfare Agency and report me.
I am so not fond of the word "blog", and I can't believe I just typed it twice. I'm slipping! D:Anyway, I have been busy with a variety of different things (some good, some not-so-good), and they have kept me from updating here as well as my pages at other sites (facebook, twitter, myspace, etc). I have about a ton of things I need to post here, but I'm going to slowly chip away at it.
Oh boy! A post about upcoming posts that will feature content that is well past its expiration date!
No wonder no one reads this thing!Labels: excuses, neglect, thrift, update
I thought Mowbray possessed enough moogle-like charecteristics (light tan fur, large purple nose, cute little roly-poly body) that it would be easy to perform a little plastic surgery and make him into a moogle. So Mowbray the Moogle was born a few days later. The transformation was pretty simple. First, I picked out all of the embroidery for his eyes, mouth, and eyebrows (very tedious, that. In fact, it was the hardest part of the entire project!). Then I gave him a bath in the washing machine to get him nice and clean and loosen/remove any threads I missed. After that, I opened the seam at the back of his body and removed his old fluff. I gave him new eyes (solid black 12mm safety eyes), anchored his antenna/pompom (made from the cable of an old pair of cheap circular knitting needles & some hand-dyed vintage wool), and re-stuffed him with new fluff. 
I made his wings with felt, heavy-duty interfacing, and low-loft quilt batting with some dark purple embroidery for detail. After inserting & attaching the wings, I stitched him back up and embroidered a new mouth for him, and then he was finished! He doesn't look exactly like a moogle, but I think he's super cute & I love him. ^_^
Note the wee Chihuahua foot in the upper right hand corner. She always has to get in on whatever I'm doing and nose around. Such an attention seeker! At least she behaved herself, though...my Boston Terriers spent their time sneaking around to try to eat my punched out bows! D:
like this, here's a tutorial for making your own magazine box from instructables.com. I may give it a go myself, because I could really use a few more of these (but maybe without the 200 bow punch-outs next time!).
Basically, I just cut the sweater straight up the middle, and then trimmed the raw edges with some leopard print jersey fabric. When the photo was taken I was in the process of basting the trim on. I also added a small elastic loop and a covered button to the neck area for closure. My friend said she loved it, and she looks super cute in it, too. The whole project turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be, especially considering how frightened I was at the idea of cutting a sweater open. ^^;
It's September, and that means my mother's birthday is quickly approaching. Each year I struggle to come up with the "perfect" gift for her. Sometimes I manage to succeed, but my failures certainly outnumber my successes. This year my gift-planning process has been hampered by a severe lack of funds brought on by a number of different things which I will not go into here. :P
