Answers

Hey guys,

My exams are finally over and now I get a short break before starting my next (and hopefully last) semester. Yey! 

There were a couple of questions from the last two posts. Max asked which fabric paints I used to paint Jon's undies. I used these Jones Tones Glossy tube paints, they were the only fabric paints I could find at the store lol.  

They worked really well tho. I squeezed a bit out onto some cardboard and used a paintbrush to stencil them on. Cause it was dark fabric it had to have a few coats (with just a little drying time in between cause I'm impatient). This stuff is kinda stretchy when it dries so it's good for doing on knit/jersey and it seems to hold up to washing so yeah. 

Sam asked where I got the black shatter OPI nail enamel and how much it is usually. I bought it from www.savedirect.co.nz and it's usually NZ$24 but I got it when they had a half price sale so it was only $12. You can buy OPI enamels from pharmacies too and I think they're about the same price.

Looking forward to Star Wars month in August over at Max's blog!

San xx

Black Shatter

Hey guys,

 I just got some of the OPI black shatter nail polish (it was half price, yey!) and I gave it a go over top of this green enamel I already had.

 
I'm normally pretty lazy with nail polish, I never do anything elaborate cause I either smudge it in the first five minutes or it chips off the day after I do it and it looks all scraggly and yuck for months (like I said, I'm lazy. Even too lazy to remove it heh.). Anyway, this was the result (after a couple days wear too!).

Maybe I was just lucky this time with the not-chipping-off-straight-away thing (either that or the green polish is amazingly good.. this was the first time I used it so maybe it is?). I did my nails with the green enamel and and left them overnight cause it says on the black shatter instructions to apply it to completely dry nail polish, maybe overnight is excessive but I was just being safe lol.

The black shatter goes on looking just like a plain black enamel but it cracks pretty quick, maybe 30secs to a minute. It was reasonably dry after a minute or two aswell. I put a top coat over a couple of the nails then got distracted and didn't finish the rest but it didn't seem to make a difference looks-wise or lasting-wise.

I like that this makes your nails look like you spend hours doing intricate little liney things on them, but really it only takes a couple minutes.

Overall, I like this polish. I would recommend it. It's pretty dang cool. =]

San xx

Birthday undies

Hey guys,

It's been over a month since the BF's birthday so it's probly about time I showed you guys the undies I made awesome for him.

I got a 5 pack of undies and freezer paper stenciled some things onto them in fabric paint that matched the waistband colour.

Silhouette of Bender from Futurama

=D

This one's a quote from Venture Bros. about french toast lol

The Monarch symbol (also from Venture Bros.)

Another Venture Bros. one (one of the characters has an obsession with Batman)

This was the first time I'd done freezer paper stenciling and I think it worked out pretty well. I figured doing it on undies was a safe option cause if it didn't turn out well, they'd be hidden from view when he wears them, heh. It was super easy tho and they turned out awesomely and the main thing is, he liked them. =]

That's all from me today.

San xx

Guest blog

Wooo! I guest blogged over at Max California's yesterday! (I'm a bit behind, haha). Go check it out. =]

Yay!

San xx

I'm back!

Hey guys,

It's been a hectic couple of weeks and I've been lacking the motivation to post anything but here's an update.

About 3 weeks ago I flew down to Wellington for a few days for Homegrown, the NZ music festival. This was the third year we've gone down and I had a really good time but it was pretty exhausting (considering I was expected to organise all the flights and accommodation haha)! I got back on the Monday night, had a few days at uni then had to go on a 3 day field trip for the entomology course I'm doing so that swallowed the next weekend. Unfortunately the day we left was my birthday so I didn't get to spend it with my family or Jon, instead I spent it about an hour south at a council reserve with really patchy cell phone reception and 45 people I didn't really know! But I'm not complaining, it ended up being really fun and I learnt heaps and made a couple of friends so it was a good experience. 

Last Friday Jon threw me a surprise party at his place to make up for me being away on my birthday. It was awesome, everyone leaped out from behind the trees with streamers as I drove down the driveway (he lured me there under the premise of "having a couple beers and watching Venture Bros."). I wasn't expecting him to do that for me so it was a really nice surprise. I'm super lucky, heh. x) Thanks babe! <3

I don't have photos yet but I'll post a few when I get a hold of them.

San xx

Christchurch Earthquake

My love goes out to everyone involved.
Stay strong and be safe.

San xx

Bikini

Hey guys,

I made myself a bikini top using this tutorial found at ThreadBanger.
I only made the top because I was using a small t-shirt and didn't have enough matching fabric. This is the t-shirt I used (excuse the triangle cut out of it already, I forgot to take a photo before I started cutting!):

It was a bit longer than the pic shows. Anyway, the design's like metallic rainbow shimmery stuff. Here's the finished product!

The lighting in the photos is terrible! I only just realised how bad it actually is, lol. So I liked the tutorial, it was pretty easy. I did have a couple things to note tho:

• the measurements they give for the triangles seems pretty big but when you take into account all the allowances and such, the triangles turn out pretty small (I'm really small busted and they only just fit me).

• the triangles could do with a bit of shaping. Like curving on the outer sides. When I tried the top on the outsides kinda stuck out a bit in the direction of my arm pits. Hard to describe but if you make one you might get what I'm trying to say heh. 

I also spruced up an old white bikini I had that was a bit too boring. I added some purple mesh with holographic dots just onto the triangles. I hand stitched them on so there wouldn't be any stitching showing on the front:

I only did the top because I wear shorts when I swim anyway so I figured there wasn't much point doing the bottoms just yet. I might upgrade them some time in the future tho.

So that's all I've done recently. I'm half way through making a bubble skirt so will post pics when I eventually finish that. Today I have my last exam for summer school and then I'm off to the boyfriend's bach tonight for a few days of relaxing!

Thanks for reading!
San xx

Phone pouch tut

Hey guys,

So I was looking at my phone today and I noticed it's got some really tiny chips in the plastic right at the top. Needless to say I was not impressed.

I had a silicone cover for it but it was really big and bulky and it made it almost impossible to get my phone in or out of my pocket. And because iPhones are the most popular smartphone in NZ, there are pretty much no accessories for my poor little HTC (they sell the phones here but no cool stuff for them.. why Vodafone, why?). So anyway, my phone's looking a bit sad and it needed some cheering up so I made it a purrdy little phone snuggler! Better late than never I spose, hehe. I did a tut for it (you could adjust the measurements to fit any kind of device tho), enjoy!

 
 What you will need:
piece of fabric for lining (for width/length see Step1)
piece of fabric for outside of pouch
piece of padding
12cm piece of ribbon
1 x button
a needle and thread








Step 1: Measure your phone.

The width of my phone (including the sides) was 8cm and I added 2cm allowances so my final width was 10cm. The length of my phone was 14cm. I doubled that (28cm) and added 4cm (because you want the pouch to fold over and slightly overlap) to get a final length of 32cm (this includes seam allowances).

Step 2: Cut out your fabric. My pieces were 10 x 32cm. I cut one piece of lining, one piece for the outside of the pouch and one piece of padding.

Step 3 (optional): Because I only had 2cm wide ribbon, I folded it in half and sewed up close to the edge to give me a thinner piece of ribbon.

Step 4: Bring the two ends of your ribbon together to make a little loop.

Step 5: Match up your padding piece and your lining fabric wrong sides together. Sandwich your ribbon loop in between the lining fabric and the outer fabric with the loop inside and the fabric pieces right sides together. Pin in place.

Step 6: Sew all around your sandwich, about 1cm from the edge.

 Make sure you leave a gap at the end opposite to the ribbon so you can turn it inside out later. Clip your corners to prevent bulk when you turn inside out (not shown in this photo, sorry).

Step 7: Turn your sandwich inside out and iron flat.

Step 8: Fold the open edges in and iron.

Step 9: Sew folded edge closed.

Step 10: Attach a button. I forgot to do this when I made my pouch, instead I had to fiddle around and try to stitch the button on after I'd completed the pouch. It's much easier to do it now tho! Put your phone or device on your rectangle and fold the bottom up so it's just below the top of your phone (with the top of the phone peeping out). Fold down the top of the pouch (the end with the ribbon) and decide where to put your button. Mark the spot with some chalk. Unfold everything, remove your phone and stitch on the button.

 
Step 11: Fold up the edge you sewed closed in step 9, about 1/3rd the way up itself, and pin. Sew up both sides, very close to the edge. Don't forget to backstitch to secure your stitching.

You're done! Insert your phone and admire your cute new phone snuggler!

 

Hope you like it!
San xx
 

My first tut!

Hey all,

I went away for 5 days over New Years and I took these shorts that I got for like 15 bucks  the day before I went away. I didn't even try them on, I just assumed they'd be fine and took them with me. This is what they look like:

When I put them on they fit me but they were shaped a little funny and so go all wedgey-ish when I walk. Which is not cool. Not cool at all. Normally when that happens with clothes I put them in a drawer and forget about them but I really need to stop doing that (I have more clothes than my drawers can fit!). Luckily, all hope was not lost for these shorts and I decided to turn them into a pretty little skirt. It was actually really easy! And I did a tut for it. Here goes!

Step 1 (optional): Take a pair of shorts (I chose some slightly stretchy denim ones) and get your cat to coat the shorts in an annoying layer of black hair.

Step 2: Unstitch the front seam to just below the zip flap and the back seam up to the bottom of the pockets.

You should end up with something like this on the back (didn't get a pic of the front, sorry!):

Step 3: Fold and pin the front so that it lays flat and the centre seam is straight. This can be a bit fiddly because of the shape the fabric was cut in, but you will eventually get it looking straight.

At this point the front and back of the skirt won't match up at the bottom, don't worry about this, we'll be evening the edges up later. =]

Step 4: Fold and pin the back pieces together, following the curve of the piece round a bit.

  Step 5: Sew close to the edge of where you've pinned. Then sew a second line next to the first to reinforce and to make it match all the other stitching on your shorts.

The pic makes this look really wonky but I promise it's not that bad. =]

 Step 6: Turn your skirt inside out and trim the excess fabric from the front and back with some pinking shears.

Step 7: Even up the bottom of your skirt. I put the skirt on and decided where I wanted it to sit then took it off and sorta just eyeballed it. Because the shorts were fairly short to begin with, I didn't really want to take off length, just straighten up the bottom edge. No pic of this, sorry.


Step 8: At this point you can fold under and hem the bottom edge of your skirt, or you can have it frayed like I did (I didn't really have enough length to hem it, lol). If you want to hem it, turn your skirt inside out, fold up the bottom edge, pin and sew. If you want to fray it, sew all the way around your skirt twice, about 1cm from the bottom edge to create a barrier for the frayed edge. Then use your unpicker to drag the horizontal fibres out of the bottom edge. My ironing board cover is the same colour as the skirt, heh.

Step 9: Make it look prettier. I ironed heatbond stuff to some of the scraps leftover from the leopard print apron and cut out a big heart for the pocket and a tiny heart for the front of the skirt. 

 Step 10: Position the hearts (or whatever else you wanna put on your skirt) and iron on. I then sewed around the little heart with a tight zigzag stitch. 

I didn't machine stitch the big heart because I placed it onto the back pocket and it would have stitched my pocket closed so instead I just hand sewed around the edge with some black embroidery floss. Hopefully when I wash the skirt the edges of the heart will fray a little.

Front

Back

And that's it! A cute mini from some bad wedgey shorts. I hope the instructions aren't too confusingly done or anything. I do tend to ramble on and on.

Take care!
San xx

Aprons

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I'm doing a summer semester at uni and working a couple days a week so I have neglected the posting quite a bit. Anyway, onto the pictures!

For Christmas I made a couple of aprons (one for an aunty, one for Jon (the boyfriend)'s mum). I didn't use any specific pattern, just sorta made it up as I went along (I did a mock up in some scrap fabric before making them just to make sure they wouldn't turn out as massive fails). This green one was for my aunty, I'll let the pics do the talking.

 

This was my first time doing button holes but my machine pretty much does everything for you so after a couple of practices I got the hang of it. This leopard print one was for Jon's mum:

I made a little tag for them, since they were gifts.

I also made a couple of those pin cushion organiser things for family but I forgot to get pictures before I gave them away.. oops! But I did get a picture of this little Christmas present ornament I made. It's hanging from the bow so it looks a bit lopsided.

I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Christmas/New Year break! My heart goes out to everyone affected by the Queensland floods, I hope that everything can return to some semblance of normalcy for you all soon. <3


Take care.
San xx