Adventures in dyeing!

Wow, it's been a minute since I've blogged! In these last 15 months, I've had a baby and now have another on the way. I've been busy...crafting hasn't been a priority. I'm also loving this new Blogger app. So much easier than dragging my laptop around. iPad blogging is awesome. 

Anyway, I've been obsessed with baby wraps. I wore my daughter until she was 9 months old and I got pregnant with 2.0. Have you seen how much these things cost? Upwards of $1300!!!!!!! I'll be broke in a heartbeat if this gets out of control. Bring on two fantastic Facebook groups, the DIY Babywearing group and Dyed Baby Carriers. Saviors to my craftiness and my back account. 

I haven't sewn anything since I was 18, so this was a nice challenge. I used a 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby to purchase 7 yards of osnaburg fabric. According to the groups, this is the best, cheapest, strongest fabric that you can get for baby wraps. It's near the muslin, no one ever knows what it is, so you're on your own finding it. 

Here's how I did it...I guess I could have done a pictorial but I kept getting flustered and forgetting. Sigh.  

-I obsessively washed and dried my Osnaburg on HOT HOT HOT in order to shrink it. I did this more than I needed to, but I was annoyed that the lint trap kept getting full in my dryer. I kept thinking this means I must wash and dry again..and again...and again. I probably did five cycles. Obsessive obsessive...

-OMG this is the best part. I needed to trim the normally 45" fabric to 32" (leaving a 2" allowance for hemming). According to the groups, ripping is the best way, so I did it! I ripped that b&$)h right up! Worked like a charm too.

-I'm not a fan of squared edges on a baby wrap because they get bunchy, so I tapered them to look like a parallelogram. 

-Then I did a 1" hem all the way around. I used Gutermann white cotton thread. Hemming kind of stunk because I hate measuring. It's not perfect, but its fine. 

IT'S DYE TIME!!!

Before I could use my pretty colors, I had to scrunch my fabric up accordion style, then I had to soak the fabric in soda ash. I used the tulip brand because it was easily available to me.  There are directions on the box, but I feel like it was a one cup soda ash to one gallon of water ratio. I did two gallons of water and two cups of soda ash in a nice bucket...

I'd bought many many many packets of Dylon dye at Joann's and Hobby Lobby. I was going for the rainbow effect. I used three packs of each color. This was too much. Newbie mistake! Actually, I'm not a newbie...I've dyed before, just not like this. So call me a semi-newb. 

Anyway, the colors I used were

Tulip Red

Goldfish Orange

Sunflower Yellow

Tropical Green

Ocean Blue

Intense Violet

I also did a mini project with this one with pink and yellow iDye. I dyed a hobo bag that's been laying around my house annoying me with its whiteness. 

Since I decided that ice dyeing was my best bet for the rainbow, I needed a set up. I used a baby pool that was serving no purpose in my backyard other than to harbor a large colony of mosquitoes and an old rack that was taking up space in my garage. In the end I ended up using various buckets to keep the ice from disappearing, you'll glimpse that in a mere moment...

Since the wrap was pre-scrunched, I finagled it onto the rack. 

Twenty pounds of ice later and we had this bad boy melting away blissfully in the 110 degree Texas heat. 

The white you see is soda ash in the dye packets. I used three packets of each color. Two hours later the ice was completely gone (shocker) and there was all sorts of dye muck sitting on top of the wrap. Having seen this problem arise with other projects in the group, I knew to add more ice. Unfortunately for me, the only ice I was hoarding was my blessed Sonic ice used to cure the intense pica pregnancy cravings stemming from the lack of iron in my blood. Oh well, it couldn't be helped. Hubby will be making an ice trip to Sonic this evening. 

Now came the waiting game. Let that baby sit for 24 hours...

The next day I waited until nap time and went to visit my creation. My first thought? No more mosquitoes in the pool! The second thought was that the dye was really dark. I transferred the wrap and bag to the black bucket and took it to the bathroom to rinse rinse rinse rinse rinse rinse rinse rinse.  I could have done this with a hose outside but the heat index was 115 and well, I'm 6 months pregnant and don't needed to be lolly gagging about outside. Bath tub it is. 

And bath tub it was for about 2 hours. I waited until the water was 90% clear, then I took it all down to my machine and rinsed some more. I did 2 more cold rinses and then a hot one. The water was clear at this point, so I did a full wash with two extra rinses on the end of it with 2 tablespoons of blue dawn. You can also use a wash agent called synthrapol, but interestingly enough, I didn't have any laying around. Blue dawn works just as well, just use a SMALL amount. It'll mess up your washing machine and you'll have a very clean floor afterwards if you use too much. 

I dried it and then I was done! 

Here are the final projects. The wrap is not what I wanted (I didn't want any natural fabric showing through-oh well), but it was a great project. Very challenging for me. 

Braided

Ad the bag!

Ikea Hacked Antique Table

Ahhhhhh...A long overdue blog post. It feels sooooooooo good to blog again!

Keeping this part super short...not sure if I've mentioned, but I'm 35 weeks pregnant AND we just moved to the dream home a week and a half ago. Being this pregnant and moving at the same time are not really compatible, but we're making do.

Anyway, when we found our lovely new abode, I had the opportunity to have my very own breakfast nook. So exciting. I've always wanted one of these. We've had the perfect table in storage for years. It's from the early 1900's and was the husbands grandmothers. So it was a family heirloom.  The only problem with this was that it had 5 legs. It's a round table with 5 legs, which I thought was weird. The legs were so short that I couldn't even sit at the table without my legs crossed, so we never used it. It's a shame really, to store such a nice table for 10 years without using it...

I wanted a pedestal table with a white base and woodish top. It annoyed the crap out of me that I had the top, but not a base. It took some persuading, but I finally convinced the hubby to help me. So I went on Ebay, to every antique store that I could find and Craigslist and I couldn't find a pedestal that I liked. Most of them were broken, had mismatched legs or were meant for a small table.  I wanted the table to look like THIS...but didn't exactly want to spend that amount of money while still storing a similar table in my house, because really, that's just dumb and hoarderish.    

My breakfast nook table inspiration.

The super handy husband and I were popping around Ikea one day when I stumbled upon this gem. So perfect in so many ways. May I take this opportunity to introduce you kids to the fantabulous blog IKEA HACKERS? These people are amazing and really, I want to be just like them. I was so inspired to hack when I saw this table so we bought it. 

The table that inspired me to become a hacker.

I neglected to take photos of the actual hack, but there were a few things that took place beforehand...first, I had to find paint that matched the pedestal, so I took a piece of the wood from the table kit to Home Depot, they put it through their little computer thing a voila, I had paint that matched perfectly. Score!  Then the hubby put the table together. It turned out to be a good thing that we bought the entire table instead of just a pedestal. There was a pedestal mount that made it super easy to attach to the top. Once that was done, he painted the first coat on the lip of the table. Now, I know there are going to be some people who are appalled that we painted an antique table and Ikea hacked it. Get over it. It looks great and really, I wasn't ever going to use it in it's original form. At least it's out of the closet (making more room for my shoes).

Once it was put together. Ignore my mess...we're moving.

After 2 coats. It looks superb. It's not a great picture, but it's all I got. Sorry!

I think that our very first Ikea hack turned out pretty well.  The chairs are antiques (that I did NOT hack) from Seattle, they were gifted by my very own beastie Courtney.  Ignore the ugly tile, that will go away eventually, in the mean time, I'm in search of a round rug...

DIY Rubber Stamp

I can't believe that I never blogged about this...It's my moose stamp that I made myself months and months and months ago...Last Christmas (2010) I fell in love with this moose paper punch that I can no longer find on the Paper Source website. I hope they didn't discontinue my sweetie...Anyway, two examples of Moosie are down there. I made a lovely lady walking her moose and kraft gift tags for that year.

The only bummer about the moose punch was that it was so tiny...I needed a bigger one.  Paper Source at the time was holding a lovely "make your own rubber stamp" class. I think I was in the middle of IVF treatments and I needed an escape, so onto the class I went.

In order to make your own rubber stamp, this is a great kit. You can get all of the components at Michael's by themselves, but for the DIY Rubber Stamp virgins, this is great. 

Decide what you'd like to make. Remember that whatever image you use, it will be opposite once you stamp with it...so if you're using text (for example) make a mirror image of it in Word or Photoshop. The kit includes tracing paper, trace your design onto it...

Then put the tracing paper onto the rubber and rub the design onto the rubber. The lead from your pencil (oh yeah, you need to use one of those) will rub off.

Use the scrapers to cut away the negative space. There are two different sized scrapers in the kit, a smaller one for more detailed work and a bigger one that acts like a shovel for the larger spots.  

Test out the stamp to see where you need to get rid of more negative space. You can see on here that I had lots to go on this test shot. Oops!

Voila! It's a moose!!!!!

Baby stuff!

Since I'm pregnant (finally-that took awhile) I now have a slew of baby items that need to be crafted and so this is what I've been working on for the past few weeks...

These are the petal enclosures that I created for my baby shower. Yes. I made my own baby shower invitations. I've been waiting for years to get pregnant and I was so excited, I just couldn't resist. The enclosure is THIS one from Paper Source and I painted swirls on it with my kindergarten watercolor set. Oh, I chose the ducks instead of the flowers as they looked more baby-ish. THIS is the duck paper punch that I used, then I attached them with brads and used bakers twine to close them. Super easy. 

My thank you for buying me baby things cards. I made these using my super fabulous Epic Letterpress.  I'm all into blind embossing right now, so that's what I did. So fun.

Envelopes for the cards. I lined them with discontinued baby feet paper from PS. The envelopes themselves are vellum and they're pink (super fitting since i'm having a GIRL) and I love that they're see through. They look very chic. 

There are a few other things that I need to get done. We're hopefully moving soon, so the craft room is packed into boxes that are currently split between the 1st and 3rd floors of my house. If we don't move, the craft room will be Baby D's room...so either way, craftiness is being repositioned in my house. Or another house. Rambling...

Given my new love of Pinterest and my hearts board, I might start making hearts again. Who knows. It might be fun. It was supposed to be a 365 hearts project, but those 365 don't have to be consecutive days do they? Methinks NOT! TTFN!

My Very Studly Jacket

I haven't blogged in what seems like 10 years.  What can I say? I've been super busy...

So I've been seeing studded "things" everywhere these days.  I kind of felt the 80's were coming back again and was initially disgusted. Hello!  Hair bands and leathery grunge are not cute...but when I saw Kim K. (don't get me started on her...she's just a fashion example) sporting the very cool Burberry Studded Trench coat, I was sold.  There was NO WAY I was spending 5k on a coat that I'll wear like 3 times...my husband would kill me and he'd divorce me faster than Kim ditched Kris...So I decided to make my own...Not the Kim version, the black leather goth/emo version...

I ordered the studs from STUDS N SPIKES, they are very cool.  I should have ordered the cat claw kind, but I forgot. Boo on that.  The jacket is from FOREVER 21 and it was like $32.  I see there is a cheaper one on there now that will work just as well.

I actually have a ton of studs left, but don't know where to put them.  I might use them on the sleeves (I got bored tonight and finished after the shoulders were done) or I'll save them for some future event...

I also have a pair of knock off D&G shoes to make soon, but I didn't want to break out the E6000 glue in an enclosed area tonight and it's too dark to work outside. BOO to daylight savings time!  Maybe tomorrow!

They're Not Just Clothespins...

I have an obsession with these little clothespin things ever since we made them in a Paper Source Workshop a few weeks ago.  In the class, we used regular 12 x 12 cardstock and double sided tape or the Baby Xyron.  For my own purposes at home, I used very fun label paper that I found at Michael's. 

I use them for lots of things. They're super fun.

DIY Anthropologie Knock Off Stone Jewelry

I have a secret place to buy fabulous jewelry cheap cheap cheap in Houston (don't ask me where it is, I'm stingy and it's my secret and I won't give it up or else y'all will start going there, they'll raise their prices and my secret happy place will be gone).  I went there a few weeks ago after taking a walk through Anthropologie...I love Anthro. I really do, but their prices are outrageous.  Especially for accessories that cost pennies to make. So I hit up the happy place...

I got lots of stuff that day...lots of wrap bracelets (LOTS of these. I love them and wear them everywhere since they don't dangle and I can craft while wearing them) and this very very very adorable pig ring. I love my pig.

The Pig and I At A Bat Mitzvah...

I was really on the hunt for a stone pendant necklace. Remember when you were a kid and you went to the museums on school field trips and they had those huge rocks for sale? Well, now apparently it's cool for you to wear them as necklaces and rings...I'd found THIS, THIS, THIS and most especially THIS one in my travels and I wanted one. Or three...

That last one is so cool that it deserves its own pic...

Anyway, so I found this one necklace that had several different stones on it. While I kind of liked it how it was, it was too big. It's 110 degrees here in Houston, TX, there is no way I'm wearing something that involved around my neck in the summer...

As it started. They even included a free pair of earrings that I have yet to re-create...

The happy accessory place had a clearance section (I almost fell over) and I bought a bunch of ugly necklaces for under $1 each just for the cords...Then I took out my handy needle nosed-pliers (my dad would be so proud that I know the proper name for my non-powered tool. Hi Dad!) and snip snip snipped them away from the regular necklace, then I put them on the free cords and was almost done...

Here they are being almost done...

I got super excited when I saw the embellished stone at Anthro, so I used some cool stones that I got from the asylum, an earring that has seen better days and the very smelly but useful E6000 glue to create this gem.

I also really liked the black stone on the original necklace too much to make it a necklace, so I made it a ring using the leftover rings from THIS blog project. 

Like my rock?

All of this from one necklace that cost me about $15. Maybe $20.