Denim Decoration

I have this one really great pair of jeans. They look AND feel good and because of this, they are my go-to pair. Unfortunately, for awhile now, they’ve had this little coffee stain. It’s tiny, really, barely noticeably, but I notice it. Of course, I always forget about it and then notice it after I’ve already put the jeans on and am out and about and not wanting to be wearing coffee-stained jeans. So, finally, finally, I remembered about the coffee stain while not actually wearing the jeans anywhere and, bonus, while having a bleach pen on hand.

I love bleach pens for stuff like this — the gel stays pretty much where you put it. and it rinses out really easily, too. I freehanded a design right over the coffee stain, then expanded it out so it would look more like a deliberate design and less like I was bleaching out a wee little stain. I’m really pleased with the result and can’t wait  to wear my “new” favorite jeans out on the town!

Found It on the Internet Friday #16

A while back, I found this business card holder on the Pinterest, and I determined to reverse engineer it and make one for me. And every once in a while, someone would repin it and I would be reminded of this determination, and then I would get distracted and/or busy (I got a lot of stuff going on, y’all) and forget about it again for awhile. So when I found myself preparing to go up to The Knit and Crochet Show, I decided it was time.

And I looked at it, and sighed, and procrastinated, and then realized that I had plenty of little scrappy swatches just hanging around on my desk that would make a perfectly lovely biz card holder if I would only sew them together. So I did that instead.

Why yes, you should totally assume that the cute graphic and font are foreshadowing an updated site design…

Freebird. Free bird. Whatever.

Amongst my shortcomings — and there are many — is this: I am truly, truly terrible at keeping in touch with people. I make friends, I enjoy spending time with them, and then I change jobs or move or change my schedule or start having panic attacks and not leaving the house or whatever and I never see them again. I’m just really bad about picking up the phone, or writing an email, or texting, or whathaveyou. But now, there’s this magical thing on the interwebbys called “Facebook”.* You may have heard of it. What Facebook has done for me is allowed me to stay in touch, sort of, with all of these people who formerly would have been swept away by the tides of my life changes. I can see what they’re up to, they can see what I’m up to, we can make the occasional pithy comments back and forth, bring funny internet memes to each other’s attention, and so on. And I can see when one of them is doing something really cool, like my friend Duane Romanell, a very talented artist who I used to work with at Tutor.com.

When he launched his photography page, I went and flipped through the albums, which pretty much just confirmed that Duane is indeed a very talented artist — they’re gorgeous. You should go look. G’head. I’ll wait. There was one photo that I kept coming back to in the “By the Sea” album: a solitary seagull in an empty sky. It was one of those photographs that just touched something inside me. So when he had a little “like me on the Facebooks and I’ll enter you into a drawing for a print” contest and then drew my name(!!!), it was a no-brainer which photo I’d choose.

So I got the print and then needed The Perfect Frame, of course. I ended up finding one at a flea market, but apparently have absolutely zero concept of size, because it was way, way too big. It was only $5, so not like it would have been a huge waste of cash, and I could’ve just framed something else in it, but then I had An Idea™. I had a bag full of seashells and chunks of driftwood, and decided to plop my lovely photo onto some mat board (not under — I learned way back in art school that I hate cutting mat board with a fiery passion and also suck pretty hard at it), slap a quote under it, and decorate around it. I absolutely love how it came out:

No, the photo doesn't really have a big flash over the bird or a giant "C" on it -- the photo is Duane's intellectual property and you should head over to his site if you want to see it. This is just a picture of what I did with it.

 

I put the new mat behind the mats that came with the frame. They were kind of gungy and scratched up, so I used the shells and driftwood to strategically cover the gunge. I just laid everything out, then hot-glued it on. I believe, incidentally, that this is my first successful hot glue project. Usually the stuff I hot glue just falls right apart, but this seems to be holding fine. The quote is this: “Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

*Yes, I’m aware that the period is supposed to go inside the quotes according to the rules of American punctuation. I think that’s a stupid rule, so I’ve decided to punctuate like a Canadian/Brit. 

Found It on the Internet Friday #12

A quickie, because it is late and I am tired (and it’s actually Saturday and I still need to take pics so it’s going to be even later on Saturday by the time this gets posted and as it turns out that was last week and I never did take the damn picture so here it finally is yeah, I typed that before I took the picture and then never did…seriously it’s been like a month now but I really did finally take the picture). A couple of weeks before Christmas, I came across this great post on Pinterest about making snowflakes (which is awfully fun anyhow) out of junk mail. I get about a bajillion catalogs every week, especially at this time of year, so I decided to use those. The kids absolutely loved it. In fact, a couple of times Becky asked if we could cut out snowflakes instead of watching TV.  (!!! Yes, yes we can.) They’re both still pretty young and not that confident in their cutting skills, but here’s what we ended up with:

There is a giant grocery bag full of these. The kids cut them faster than I could fold the pages for them. They're still asking to make snowflakes these days, too, and starting to do more recognizable shape cutouts, which is very cool to watch.

Found It on the Internet Friday #11

Look at my pretty fairy lights!

They make me so happy!

I came across this on Pinterest and decided it would be a great project to do with the kids. I was not wrong. They did all the painting, and I did the cutting and hole-poking. One tip: paint first, cut the egg cartons apart later, especially if you’re working with small children. These were super easy and now I want them all over my house.

I gave the kids free rein with the colors -- no two are alike.

 

Some of them are even sparkly!

30-Second Upcycled Vase

The other day I was at Trader Joe’s, as I am wont to be (though I did find this exhaustingly long article today that kinda creeped me out, so we’ll see), and I decided to splurge a little on a pretty little bouquet of flowers. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I didn’t have a vase that would work for these. I looked around the kitchen and considered just cutting them down and putting them in a water glass, but then I noticed an empty red sauce jar that was just about the right size and shape.

Unfortunately, although it was clean, I hadn’t had a chance to take the label off yet. What I did have was a room full of fabric and ribbon and who knows what else…I grabbed a nice length of grosgrain, wrapped it a few times over the label, tied a quick bow, and added some water and my pretty flowers. Voila!

Cute, easy, and fast.