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
Ridiculously easy side table makeover!
I finished upgrading my side table quite a while ago, but am just getting around to posting the pictures.
Unfortunately, I've been having a lot of issues related to my neck injury which has made it difficult and unpleasant for me to be at the computer for more than a few minutes, or really do much of anything to be honest. I'm supposed to be having a second operation soon, so hopefully that will fix everything that is wrong with me and I'll be back to "normal".
Anyway, without further ado, here are the pictures (you can click them to see the larger versions):
I didn't really think to take a "before" photo, but be assured that this was one sad, ugly side table. I bought it a year or two ago at a thrift shop for 2$. I needed something to store my knitting gear in, and it was cheap, structurally sound, and just the right size. When I purchased it, it was varnished an ugly brown wood-tone, had tacky faux-brass drawer pulls (the kind that scream 1976-bicentennial), and had several really old unicorn stickers plastered across the front of some of the drawers. They were so old that they had become almost transparent. There was also a large amount of yellow acrylic paint spilled inside and on the front of the small top drawers, not to mention random globs of glitter glue everywhere. Nice. :D
So I decided I'd paint it black. It looks better with our couch, for one thing, and it matches the paper I planned to cover the drawer fronts with.
Here are the drawers after I covered them with paper and painted the edges. That is just some of my obscenely large collection of knitting needles, crochet hooks, and gadgets, many of them vintage. There's really no room in the drawers for much of anything else, but I usually keep a few small skeins of yarn in there. You can see some vintage Red Heart and Rochelle brand wool in there, plus some random black yarn.
And here is the finished product! I am very pleased with the way this turned out. When I started this project, I didn't plan anything and I was kind of half-assed doing it while watching Cold Case and Law & Order on tv. The gift wrap I used on the drawers (purchased on clearance at Old Navy last year) is so pretty, it really made this makeover remarkably easy, and it didn't require much forethought or planning at all. I had all of the stuff I used for this laying around here already, except for the black drawer pulls...my husband picked those up at Menard's for me, and they turned out to be just perfect (when I sent him to the store, I asked him to get the cheapest, least ornate drawer pulls he could find, lol).
Anyway, the whole thing cost me maybe 10$ or so, including the cost of the table itself, gift wrap, black paint, foam applicators for the paint and mod podge, and the drawer pulls. There's nothing I like better than doing something myself, and doing it cheaply. :D
Ever since I finished the side table, I've been shrewdly eyeing all of my other furniture pieces, wondering what could be done to update them, lol.
Labels: decoupage, furniture, makeover, paper, pictures, revamp, table, thrift
Revamping the second-hand side table that stores all my knitting gear. I need it to look pretty now to go with our new couch! Pics soon...
Labels: furniture, makeover, thrift
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. ^_^
