Making Soap

It's wedding time and I am trying to save money, show people that I am thankful they came to my wedding and still stay crafty. So I came up with this. For a coffee themed wedding how about Handmade Coffee soap? This works so well for removing odors and the grounds really do smooth your skin. I had to make a pot of coffee for each batch of bars, so needless to say I got them all done really fast because you definitely do things faster and with more energy when you are all hyped up on coffee!!! Here's a quick tutorial...


Step 1: Lay out your supplies and let everyone in your house know that the kitchen island will be off limits until they are all made.
Step1A: Make a pot of coffee!
What you need:

Melt and Pour soap-(From Michael's)This is shea butter soap, and I lucked out because the brown coffee and white soap made it a really attractive light brown color. Exactly the color I like it when I make my coffee with cream and sugar!!!
Soap Mold
Scented Oil (I picked vanilla to complement the coffee)
Brewed Coffee Grounds
Glass Measuring Cup
Microwave


Step 2: Using 4oz of Melt and Pour soap (they are divided into 1oz pieces) Cut into smaller pieces so it melts evenly, and place into glass measuring cup (or anything microwavable) with scented oil. I used 6 drops per batch and it gave it a nice smell but not too overpowering.



Step 3: Go to your coffee pot and carefully open the top (so you don't get a hot steam facial) and scoop out about 1tbsp of brewed coffee grounds and place in measuring cup. The more grounds you put in the better exfoliating power, but if you put in too many they all sink to the lowest part of your mold.


Step 4: Microwave for 40 seconds. Then stir gently and pour into mold.

Step 5: Cool for 20-40 minutes, on countertop or in the refrigerator. I found no difference between either and remove from mold by just working it out slowly. If they aren't hard enough, they won't come out easily.

Step 6: Package so they look pretty. The packaging was the most expensive part for these favors $0.99 for 50 cellophane bags, $0.50 for 10 yards of ribbon and a little bit of my time (which is priceless). So the total for the whole treat including the bar of soap ($0.68)=$0.74!

Craftiness and Favors complete!!

Christmas is almost here!

I love Christmas! The presents under the tree, the smells, the cookies, the music! It is all wonderful! I am so excited about our Christmas tree and it is the funniest joke ever! Stove, thinks it is real. And I can't wait until we get back from NY to find out how he watered it!

I did so well this year too, as far as making sure everyone was accounted for with gifts and the majority of the presents are handmade. Maybe I was being cheap, but I have to say I like well made, thought out gifts the best!

Now for Pie, Dash and Dylan they all got matching hunting socks. Different sizes but the same yarn. (Yes, I just took those pictures out side and yes there is no snow!)

And because everyone got individual presents, I also made some soft blocks for Dylan. I am sooooo happy with how these turned out and true to Beauty they are made of recycled jeans. Completely machine washable and in 3 different sizes...3 inches, 4 inches and 6 inches. Super easy!! Hopefully super fun!!

But I don't want to ruin all of the presents!! There a few more handcrafted things but we'll wait until after christmas for those posts!

MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!!!!!!!!

Catch up when you Fall Back!

November 1st!?! Being from upstate NY this has to be one of the weirdest things about being a little south. We still have leaves on the trees!! (and green leaves too!) The first picture is our pink dogwood in our front yard, and this tree is beautiful all year! But it is a bit cooler today (50F) but really November 1st? It should be cold and desolate and we should be begging dad to turn the heat on!!

So it is Daylight Savings, and a bad idea for a night shifter is to work the actual night that the clocks go back, but it did give me one whole night to think about everything I should do or could be doing. My momo said you need to update your blog. So now I am super updating. I put a couple of projects that have been done for a long time on tonight and I also have a special picture for my family that I know they are waiting to see...

YEA!! I'm engaged!! Don't you just love it?! I totally forgot I could put that picture here and everyone would see it with ease!

Also, I have a whole slew of socks that I am meaning to post as well as my kitchen decorations, but it is almost dinner time here so I will promise to get more blogging done later!

Baby presents!

My close friend at Hopkins is going to have a little boy!!!! Since I love her so dearly and I am sure that I will love her little one so dearly, I made her a baby present. I had the time and the total cost was $26.00. The pattern for the cardigan is from knitty.com but I changed a lot of it. Mainly the collar, but it came out really well. I already had made a sweater for my sweetie nephew 4 months ago with a snake on it (check out www.sewdivadiane.blogspot.com) which I really liked and I didn't want to get bored with this project so modifications came in to keep me interested.

Oh but the $26.00 was not on yarn or buttons, here are the cutie onesies and burp cloths I made her too!

The fabric was too cute I couldn't resist!!! I just varied the placement of the fusible web patches I made (that little one is on the bottom!) and button hole stitched around them by hand to give them a finished look. The little ducky only has a few stars that hold him on, but the fusible web is pretty strong after ironing and how long will these actually last? (one spit-up per wearing) haha

The burp cloths were done the same way with a button hole stitch along the edges of the fused panels. I also left some space at the end to fold the fabric over to leave a clean edge. They are so cute!!!!!!! (and soo easy!)

Don't you just love babies?!

Recycle this!

Something new from something old. A tutorial of what to do with all of those old jeans if you are sick of making handbags with back pockets on them. This is a different take on a braided basket but it is a little more sturdy and recycles!

Step One: Cut off the legs from a pair of dearly loved jeans making sure not to use the pockets or intricate top seams. Cut off the bottom hems, but don't worry about the thick side seams, they braid in well.

Step Two: Cut/Rip leg open so you have a flat pieces of material and cut/rip 1-2" strips. The ripping is easy to do because jeans are usually sewn on grain and the noise that it makes is fun!

Step Three: This is unnecessary if you love jean strip spaghetti, but it took 5 pairs of jeans to make this basket so I wound them into a ball. I did have about 1 leg of strips left over when I was done so I find the ball is easy to store in my yarn basket.

Step Four: Take three strips and whip stitch them together to hold and start braiding. If you find that you are braiding a little too loosely, stretch the braid and it will tighten it up. I added strips as I needed them but you could just make one super long braid and then coil your basket. I simply grabbed another strip and braided it in when I ran out, but you could whip stitch the ends together if you wanted. It held really well and it wasn't a lot of trouble not sewing each strip together.

Step Five: THE COILING. I started with a super tight coil in the bottom of the basket and then kept coiling around until my base was as big as I wanted it. At the start of the coil, I sewed through all of the layers with a strong needle, a thimble and a gripper. This was pretty grueling, but as I worked in the circle I simply went through one strip of the braid with thread and it was sturdy and much easier than actually poking through the layers.

Step Six: Building up the sides was easy! I was actually surprised how the curve happened itself with positioning and sewing as I went. Keep working up the sides until you are happy with how tall the basket is. You can very easily stop when you are done, but I put handles on mine...

Step 7: To make my handles I kept sewing the braid to the basket, but then left a gap about as big as my grip and sewed through all of the layers so that the handle would be really reinforced, Make each handle about the same size and about half way around the circle from each other. You know what I mean, don't put two handles right next to each other. (How would you carry that?) Anyways, I then took one more row around the top to make the grip of the handle a little bit wider and to just finish off the top.

Step 8: Finishing. I hated it but again I sewed through all of the layers of the braid to the last row with my thimble, gripper and strong needle, but spread out the strips of the braid so that it would be a tiny bit easier, but now my basket is all done!

I have to be completely honest when I say I wasn't planning on having a different color for the handles or top part but I love how the shades of the jeans did that! Stuff your basket and enjoy!!!

Yipee for chalk!

It's already been a month since school started, and I was longing for the nostalgia of the smell of erasers and chalk but unfortunately I don't have to go to school right now. (Isn't it funny how you spend 20 years trying to get out of school and then all you want to do is go back?)
To feed my craving for school without all of the homework, I decided that I would like a message center. An original chalkboard, not a wipe off board, or a cork board, a real live chalkboard. These are hard to find unless you are a teacher in the market and don't have an instant gratification problem like I do. It was time for me to get crafty.

So I am recalling the hours of craft tv and I think "wait, don't they have chalkboards in a can?" Yes! Now I don't know if it is ok for me to plug this product in here but it's exactly what I used. Rust-O-Leum green chalkboard spray.








Now prepare your area and yourself... No really prepare yourself to turn completely green. There is a reason that the can says to use outdoors in a well ventilated area and not in your one bedroom apartment ON YOUR WALL! We thought the paper would be enough....
NOPE it was everywhere, well the powder was... but here are the work in progress pictures. One more thing, don't start this at 9pm. The clean up will keep you up and delirious until 3am but the fun never stops.

1. Tape and paper the surface you want to be your chalkboard. In fact, tape and paper your entire living space. (Can you tell this made a mess in my apartment?)

2. Spray the surface, clean your whole house, allow to dry for 24 hours and then look at your nice new chalboard. That isn't even the funnest part!

3. The surface has to be roughed up. But with the only thing that it should be roughed up with, CHALK!!!!

4. Then you get to clean it off and make out your message center. Mine is in the form of days of the week. But you could really do it for the whole month or just make it way fun and draw whatever you want on it.

On tuesday, I have to work on my helmet hair. Either you get it or you don't. I totally enjoyed this project despite all of the mess and I would definitely do it again. I would also recommend it to anyone who needs a chalkboard or just would like a fun way to decorate every day!

Something new from something old!

So it's been a LONG time since I wrote anything and today I woke up feeling crafty. I have been thinking of my friend who is becoming "moderately rocking" with T-shirts. It's hard for an old dog to learn new tricks but with each tee he puts on he gets a little cooler. I am a big fan of tees and jeans but it was time that I learned some new tricks myself.

Enter the T-SHIRT CONVERSION!!

This is my favorite Led Zeppelin.

It's soft and perfectly worn in all of the perfect spots (Yes those are pit stains), but it is a boy's tee and so the sleeves are long and the neck is too tight. So I got a bullet and some whiskey, bit my lip and....

I cut into it!!!! First to go were the sleeves, I lined up the shirt, pressed it and cut straight up from the side "seam" press. Then I measured 1.5inches from the top logo and cut across. The 1.5 wasn't arbitrary, 1/4inch for the first roll of the seam casing and then 1 inch for the actual casing.

NO TURNING BACK NOW!

Now the way this tee was designed, the logo was higher than the armpits so those have to be sewed up so that you don't have huge vents while you wear it as a cool new tube top. This could have potentially looked bad, but it ends up making these decorative darts (totally by luck)

Now for the casing I mentioned earlier. I turned over 1/4 inch and then 1 inch and top stitched the casing. This only took a long time because I pinned and pressed and sewed slowly. I am an instant gratitude kind of person, but I really wanted this to come out well.

Casing done, now for the elastic. I had some non-roll 1/4 inch hanging around so I fed it through the casing sewed it together and sewed the hole closed. Be careful not to let the elastic twist, that would make you crazy. How long do you make the elastic? Duh, put it around your chest about where you want the top of your new crazy tube to fall. that's how much. if your tee fits you fine without the elastic then great, but for me with boobies, I had to make it a little gathered.

I then noticed I had way more gathers than I thought I would have so I positioned them in the back and smoothed out the front. I didn't want it to look like a pregnancy tube top. I straightened the front and sewed through the casing at the sides so I would still have a little pull in the front, but I could throw it into the washer and not have to restraighten the whole thing. So here is my new Zeppelin tube top. I am way psyched!

Not too bad. And can I mention how smart I was to take this picture myself in the mirror? I was pretty impressed. I'm gong to wear it to a good show we are going to go to in Washington D.C at DC9. One am radio. It's only gonna cost $8! Can you believe that! So cheap for such a good band? So convert your own favorite tee and go see a show yourself. More to come!