Imitation artist

Check it out:
Ann Taylor Necklace that retails for $58
My version

Worse Photo, but Better Price (around $10 in supplies with leftover material)

woot woot

-b-

Dye Jeans Dye

Remember when I won a pair of Antique Rivet jeans from DaddyLikey's giveaway!?

They arrived a couple of weeks ago, and while I was thrilled to receive them, they weren’t quite right. I loved the accents & pockets, but the coloring. OH!
I hate to say it, but the shading was no bueno. I don’t understand the whole white area in the middle of your thighs on jeans. I can’t believe that is flattering on anyone, even a tiny little tween would look not right in that coloring.

I figured they were free and mine so I get to do what I want. Time to dye! I dyed the jeans with a blue jean color. I was disappointed with the outcome though, because it produced tough-to-see results:

So I tried it again on my third day of being sick and home-ridden. This time I used a black dye.
I think this solved my problem! You can still see that the thighs are a little lighter, but it’s much better and I think wearable now.

Of course now the jeans have been washed and dried twice, so yeah, they are a little tighter. If I get out of the house this weekend, I may wear them just to stretch them back to normal.

later

-b-

Ribbon Necklace: Round Two

Another ribbon necklace:

My favorite part is the hidden clasp. I'm wearing the necklace today and with the bow tied in the back, you can't see the clasp. yea!

I LOVE it and while purchasing the supplies got to hear some awesome employee bickering at Joanne’s. It was pretty funny, I guess one employees kids were pranking the store phone every 3 minutes and the other employee was flipping out…I’m not sure how long it’d been going on, but he was getting pretty amped up about the whole thing. They were arguing at the registers and in the small store, you could hear everything. I bet those kids got in a heap of trouble that night!

-b-

ribbon + bead = new necklace!

I’m starting to really like all the different ribbon-y necklaces and bracelets that I’m seeing in stores and magazines. After going through a Harpers Bazaar at the YMCA this week, I decided to try making my own.

This is my first stab:

This black ricrac ribbon was purchased with the intent of decorating Halloween pumpkins, but never got used. I think it worked pretty well with the white plastic beads. I bought those a while ago, but couldn’t think of what to do with them without them looking cheap.

I basically sewed the beads to the ribbon and added a chain – not too hard at all! The only difficult part was sewing the bead in at a good point, if it was too tight or too loose, then the ribbon didn’t lay right across the bead and that is what I was going for with the ricrac.

I didn't follow any instructions to this, but if you're a visual person - I stumbled accross a blog with instructions - Samster Mommy. She has some instructions here for a similar necklace.

Check out this beaded necklace (also with instructions).

Now you know what to do with that ribbon! Get to it!

-b-

Weekend plans

It's beautiful in Houston right now. Which is awesome, but also means that I have to do housework this weekend. There are so many house-tasks that just plain can't be done during most times because it's too damn hot in Houston. No excuse this weekend - it's freakin' lovely.

Not sure what I'll tackle this weekend. Do you remember my window bars? I'm thinking that I'll finally strip the rusted paint and start to repaint. I bought the supplies in the spring but never did it. They are a little tacky to start with, and look much worse with rusted paint. Not sure how I can make this not mind-numbing....radio for sure.

I also have a halloween-related craft that I'd like to make this weekend, but I haven't figured out the best way to do it. The challenge: recreate Beyonce's crazy metal glove.....

source: people magazine

Source

Any ideas?


-b-

Craft time

I went on a huge crafting spree a week or so ago and never got around to posting. I made so many fun little things…with Halloween coming up, there were a lot of skulls.

These are earrings I made for each of the girls that came to my pumpkin carving night.

I have extras …want a pair? Shoot me an email at ramurray{at}hotmail.com with your address.

I made these for myself (hey I already have a pair of the skull only). I made a big circle using wire, then went back over it with a thinner wire and smaller beads. They are pretty fun earrings (clickable for closeup).
I also made these skull earrings. The skulls are carved wooden beads.


A NON-Skull item is this beautiful pearl necklace.

I loved the color of these, not too light and not too dark purple. I made this for a girlfriend that just announced her pregnancy. It’s too early to know if she’s having a girl or boy, so I thought I would give her something just for her as a mom. Moms deserve to look pretty and I thought the purple would compliment her skin.

Before my trip to Florida, I made one of these necklaces for each girl. You may recall this necklace is hanging from my dining room light!

The beads around the light were originally in 5 strands (one for each girl) when I decided that they would look good combined and hung from the light.

I came back a week later and made 5 new necklaces. I love these glass beads. They were super inexpensive from Joannes (I think $5 for a one POUND bag and then it was buy 1 get 1 or something like that). They make great necklaces b/c no two beads are the same and at least one bead in the necklace will pick up colors from your outfit. No brainer jewelry!

Remember to let me know about the skull earrings. I don't know how many pairs I had leftover or what colors, but I'll send what I have.

-b-

Pumpkin carving

I think I’ve said it before, but I’m really thankful that in the last year I’ve met an awesome bunch of girls. One example of their awesome-ness is the monthly Ladies Night In. This month was my turn to host and the theme was PUMPKIN CARVING.

I don’t know what is more fun than eating with friends, drinking wine and getting stabby with a pumpkin.

My pumpkin was a stunning white number (rare for TX, guess I didn't go local in this purchase):

*tough to see in the dark against a purple shirt, but I'm wearing my shell necklace. You can see it better if you click to enlarge*

I don't know why, but I was genuinely surprised that it was orange inside. I've never seen a white pumpkin, let alone carved one.

This is a group shot from the night. I was impressed with the variety and knife wielding skills.

What will your pumpkin look like?

Are you a tracer or do you freehand? I have a tough time carving designs that I think up, so I usually stick to a modified tracing.

-b-

Non-nautical shells

After reading a post by Punkystyle, I was inspired to make my own Alex & Chloe style necklace.

Here is mine from afar:
And Close up

I love it. It looks a little dark, but still comes across as an organic piece of jewelry. While in St. Pete, I picked up a lot of little shells and will probably make a couple more necklaces. Or maybe earrings?


I think I will try other colors with the next ones. Right now I’m thinking of hot pink and gray with glitter!

-b-

stud muffin

I whipped out my gemagic last night and made a boring little black purse pretty rad:

The photographs STINK, but you should be able to tell that it's a combination of silver and gold studs. It came out pretty cute, I'm going to use it this weekend when I go out with girlfriends.

Total cost

Purse: $1.99 at goodwill

Gemagic set: $2.00 (although, this price is a little incorrect b/c I didn't use up the set - i can use it a million more times!)

Studs: $1.00 (came from a set of 200 bedazzler studs that were $5.99, but I obviously didn't use the entire package)

TOTAL = Less than 5 bucks!

Crafty at home

Today I'm going to do this a little differently and forgo the left/right alignment on photos and just center them...this is Lola's idea and I *think* I understand why the L/R was messing me up.

This weekend was chock full of un-fun home ownership stuff. Despite living in Houston, we don't have central A/C, we have window units. Its an old house and wasn't updated when we bought it .. no problem though, the window units actually work really well.

It however was a problem when the unit in our bedroom started going last week. Not cool, man. Friday and Saturday equaled 10 trips to hardware/appliance stores. BOR-ING. I have a deep hate for spending time in Lowes & Home Depot.

But here's the new unit...yippee

We had another hot house problem to correct on Sunday - the front windows. We used to have a gloriously HUGE oak tree in our front yard.

Exhibit A

Then Hurricane Ike hit and down came the tree.

Exhibit B (this is still F'ed up for me to look at)

Without the oak tree shade, it's hotter than heck in our house by the front windows. We found tinting and now it looks like we've got some sweet mirrored windows.

Exhibit C

I hope it helps!

*Yes, that's me chilling in a housedress of sorts and yes, those are bars on our windows. It used to be a great neighborhood, then was a rough one, and is now back to great. We just haven't got around to removing these things.*

This post lacks anything crafty, beauty, or fashion related. hmm..do home repairs count as crafts? It was DIY

-b-

Magazine inspiration: Shells!

I was flipping through a recent Instyle magazine and these caught my eye.

They are made & sold through the Melissa Joy Manning webpage - though I can't find them there at all. Maybe they were special order made? No clue.

ME upon seeing earring: "adorable, I can make that. Easy, peasy"

sure....

I tried and below is the pair I made. It was actually a lot more difficult than it seemed. This is one of those projects that is super easy and quick for those that already know how to do it, but figuring it out on my own took a while (well over an hour of arguing with shells). The tough part was getting three shells to line up properly. It's a good thing that I didn't want the earrings to be larger because that work would've tested my patience!

This is my strand of shells before de-construction.

(that photo turned out horrible here, but I swear it looked okay when I viewed it)

After a lot of time, some colorful language, and changing materials (wire to embroidery string) - the earrings were complete

I now have a fun pair of summer earrings. It's a shame that it's August and summer will be ending, but I'm in Houston (hot until November) and I have a feeling that they will reappear next summer too!

PS: I've never heard of Melissa Joy Manning until that article and I have to admit that they have interesting stuff on their site. It's not cheap, but it's definitely interesting.

-b-

Tie-Dye

I've been digging on the Tie-Dye trend BIG TIME this summer. It's fun to make and seriously fun to wear. I was happy in the winter when I saw magazines proclaiming a come back, although I think I would've worn it anyways.

I recently had girlfriends over for a super fun ultra girly "Tie-Dye and Twilight" night. We tie-dyed and as our stuff was chilling in dye baths, we watched Twilight. This was pretty much like a sleepover (girl talk, food, crafts, boys, icecream, giggling) - without the sleepover part.

Here is what we did:

Got everything wet with the hose

We rubber-banded in all sorts of different designs and plunked it into a color.

Then rinsed, rinsed, rinsed everything.

Here are some of the results:

My new favorite Tshirt! It's already heavy into my weekly rotation.

I found nice plain cotton bags at Walmart a couple weeks ago for $3 and dyed them all sorts of colors. I think I have at least 6 or 7 of them. Unfortunatly, I only photographed the blue one. go figure. Again, these are in heavy rotation for trips to the pool, library, and think I'll try grocery next week.

A little tough to tell, but that is a pink shirt that I dyed. I wore it to work and tempered it down with a rather boring cardigan. But, it's proof that tie-dye and work can go together.

I used Dylon brand dye that I bought at Walmart, but I've also seen in at Joannes. Not too expensive, I think both stores were selling it for 2-3 dollars. So far, none of my stuff has faded or got onto other clothing in the wash.

I didn't photograph it, but I also overdyed a denim skirt the pink color. It came out really well, it started as a dark denim, so now it has a tint/sheen of pink.

This has proved to be a super fun way to enliven clothing I already have but am bored of. Try it out and have fun.

-b-