Just Bead It! Part 2: Necklaces

Previously I virtually showcased a bunch of my shirt embellishments accomplished through Wal Mart plastic tub beads. This time the focus is on one of the obvious things that comes to mind with beading: necklaces! Although stringing a bunch of beads together sounds like a simple idea, I found that making these lovelies in some ways required much more creativity than previous shown embellishments. Many decisions come into play: how to make the most out of the limited number of beads that come in a single tub, what colors to combine, and how to balance large vs. small beads (just to name a few). Of course somebody could just string a bunch of small beads of the same color, shape and size together, but after a while that amount of repetition gets boring. You gotta mix things up! So that's what I did. I mixed things up, and in the end I was very happy with the results. :-) Ahhh...the joys of beading! 

Note: The purple and pink rose beads also came from Wal Mart but were not included in plastic value pack tubs. The purple flower beads in the third picture came from Hobby Lobby.

Just Bead It! ;-D Part I: Beaded Fashions

It's been a long time since an update I'll admit, but I say, "Once a craftista always a craftista!" In my opinion, a true craftista will always find the time to craft, and although this blog's posts have been scarce in recent times, I have been taking the time this past summer to explore a somewhat new realm of craft to me: beading. My posts from last summer showcase a lot of my fabric marker creations which included several colorful pillows that I had sewn acrylic gems onto. I view that embellishments part of that pillow making process to be sort of a foreshadowing to my current fixation on beads. 

As you browse through the pictures below, you will see lots of beaded clothes, hence the Part I Beaded Fashions title above. These projects really took off after I beaded a purple dress/top. If you would like to see a picture of which shirt I'm talking about, feel free to follow this link which will take you to my other blog about graph theory (this is an area of mathematics that I love love love <3). http://torus2torus.blogspot.com/2013/07/rocky-mountain-mathematics-consortium.html

I loved that beaded result so much that I immediately started brainstorming bead embellishments for all of my other clothes. Many times when I point out the beading on my outfits to people one of the first things they ask me is if it takes a long time. I find beading to be an extremely rewarding and relaxing activity, so that combined with the practice really makes it a much faster thing to accomplish than most would guess. This is not asked of me often, but I also like to point out where the beads are from because I think that it adds to the specialness and novelty of the creations. Almost all of the beads that I use are from Wal Mart, which to some craftistas isn't the first store that comes to mind when thinking of craft supply stores. What's even more amazing about the bead origins is that they come in very cheap value tub bins, specifically they are all packed in these five dollar bins of plastic beads; an entire pound of them! I don't believe that they get as much attention as they deserve. Lots of people pass by them thinking that they are tubs of kids' beads, but in reality if you take the time to look through and sort them out you will see that they are actually gold mines! Looking through my beaded creations pictures below I think that you will see that many pretty, unique, and sophisticated embellishments can be accomplished with them, not to mention necklaces which will be the topic of the second part to this post topic. Enjoy! :-D

P.S. And as just a little side note I thought I'd clarify for those interested that the buttons for two of the tops did not come from previously described plastic Walmart bead value pack tub. The brown buttons came form a thrift store (they were selling whole bags of them for ten cents each) and the green buttons are just from the Wal Mart buttons section. 

Gorgeous Blue Things!

A lot of the things that I have been making as of late have been blue. What you see below are a couple of the crafts that have resulted from my current blue fixation. Like other shirts shown on this blog, the one below started out plain without any embellishments. It just so happened that I had a bunch of small blue acrylic sew-on gems lying around that I never knew what to do with. One afternoon I was being lazy and put the shirt on my "work" table, and seeing the gems (scattered across my work table I might add) next to the shirt gave me the idea of pairing them together; turned out to be a good match! Although I ended up sewing on quite a few gems the project didn't take too long. I easily finished it all sometime that afternoon. What did take more time was the fancy pillow. All I literally had in the beginning was a big square of blue fabric. I was going to make another pacman handkerchief thing (featured in one of my pacman crafts posts), but this square was really big, making me think that I could do more with it. I ended up embroidering the crossing stitches all over with white thread, sewed the ribbon trimming on the top and bottom of the pillow, and then continued with the lengthy task of sewing on all of the plastic pearls that you see dotting the surface and sides. When I finally finished sealing off the stuffed pillow this evening I was soooo glad to finish it. I'm the type that really likes to finish a craft once it's started, so I just couldn't stand the sight of a half-finished pillow all studded with pearls lying around. I am quite happy with the result and now that I'm done with probably the most involved pillow I've made yet, I think that I'm going to find a nice place to display it. :-) 

Funny Looking Pacman Ghost

I started this guy sometime ago and finished him up today. If you're not familiar with the pacman game characters this is supposed to be Inky, the blue ghost that chases pacman around in the game. Or at least I'll say that I tried to make it look like Inky. A little rough around the edges (because of the material I was using I had to sew around twice to make sure that it wouldn't fringe or open up, spilling out poor Inky's brains = cotton filling) and misshapen, but I think that that makes it cuter in a way. I don't know if I have a preference for any one of the ghosts in the game, though I've found myself making crafts with the blue and pink ghosts a lot. Considering that I guess that if I was to categorize myself into any pacman ghost fan club I would probably consider myself an Inky and Pinky member. Which ghost is your favorite? (the blue ghost is Inky, pink one Pinky, orange one Clyde, and I can't believe I don't remember the name of the last one but it's red!). 

Some Home Decor For the Craftista Part 2

Ever run out of placemats? Don't know what to do? Make your own! Well....okay it'd probably just be a lot faster to go buy some,  but hey, the results can be cute and I always love to make my own things so that I get exactly what I want. Like the placemat with the sun plate center! The blue, orange and red make me think of the summer, and the glass I drew with my fabric markers so that I would have a spot of lemonade to cool down with! ;D The vibrantly colored green thing below the napkin features a lamp shade that I colored to go with the pretty green glass lamp (found at a thrift store). The shade was originally white with no embellishments. First thing I did was sew the pom pom trim around the rim. Some time later I thought of coloring the lamp shade as well. Giving into my craftista urges I eventually took out my trusty old fabric markers and filled in the shade with the alternating green zig zag pattern.Nice... :-) Even if you choose not to color in your lampshade you can still use something like the pom pom trim to hang ornaments and things on. Down the road I would like to make a multi-tiered lamp shade Christmas tree to hang all of my ornaments on. One last note I thought I would make about the lamp project is the shiny green thing underneath (closeup picture shown at very bottom). All that really is is a green felt circle I picked up at Wal Mart onto which I glued a bunch of emerald acrylic stones. I think it looks fancy. Just like The Emerald City of Oz! :-D 

Golden Purse and Napkin!

An odd title for a post yes, but that happens to be what I have to show for the time being: a golden purse and a napkin! And in no way related to each other! So shiny stuff first. The purse started out like a lot of other things on this blog, without embellishments. I found it at a thrift store and started sewing shinies onto it a couple of days ago. I had originally planned on using the purse's material for other crafting purposes, but since it wouldn't give me a whole lot of material I decided against it. Good choice huh? :-) And as for the napkin, I made it just like the ones featured on a previous post. I had a small bit of the fabric seen here, just enough to make one of 'em napkin dainties. I wasn't thrilled with pairing yellow or white ric rac trim to it like the other napkins though, and ended going a bit brighter and more colorful around the perimeter. Me likey! :-D 

Bling It On!

When it comes to craft, clothes or life in general, I have two sayings that I like to live by: You can't have enough green (my absolute favorite color) and you can't have enough bling. Shiny things really do have a way of complementing a craft, top, or just about anything that you have lying around. With that said, I thought that I would show some stuff that I have created and/or blinged out. If you've seen the previous posts featuring my dolls and the flower girls on this blog, then you'll recognize the faces on the colorful bag with the four girl faces. When I made that bag I was trying to emulate those Andy Warhol prints that feature portraits of celebrities in wild neon color combinations. My colors are a bit muted compared to those but no less fun, especially with the eye-catching gems on the girls' hair. The blue and greenish bag wasn't inspired by anything in particular. The day that I made that bag I had the colors green and blue swirling through my head and just had to get that out of my system. Looking at it now it kind of reminds me of those carp streamers that the Japanese put up to decorate poles on Children's Day(and previously on Boy's Day). The shapes sort of resemble the fish scales. As for the pink and red concoction that you see below, that started out as a plain magenta bag that I found at a thrift store some time ago. A pretty bag yes, but plain in the sense that it had no gems in sight. I thought that it would look a lot richer and more eye-catching with some (in this case turned into a lot) red gems sewn and glued on, and my instincts were right. Don't you just love the shiny? ;D The final picture that you see is of the purple top. That started out "plain" just like the pink bag and ended up having a bunch of acrylic flower gems sewn onto the collar. After seeing all of these examples, what do you guys prefer? Bling or no bling? :-) 

New Posts Coming Soon!

Sorry for the lack of posts the past few days. I have some really cool pictures to show soon, so if you like what you've seen on the blog so far stay tuned! For the time being just look at the doggie and smile. His name is Argos (a.k.a. my furry little brother/son) and he is such a sweetie pie. I think that he was smiling at me like this while I was taking pictures for this blog. ;D Maybe he liked the stuff I made too :-). 

Pretty Little Napkins :-)

It was some time ago while browsing on the internet that I came across pictures of handmade crafts like these: small cloth napkins with trim. It might have been a Martha Stewart idea... Anywho it seemed a cute and simple decorative item to have, so I too joined the make-your-own napkin dainties bandwagon and these are the results. It was a lot of fun mixing and matching ric rac trims with fabrics that I had; very relaxing sewing on the trim as well I might add. Very nice things to make if you're planning on having guests over, say for a brunch or tea.Well...maybe not that fancy! :-D 

Lily Pads Mat

This was pretty much a half-finished not sure what to do with it project last night. What I started with was the lily pad infested square without the green border and with no gem in sight. I had originally planned on it being a pillow some time ago, but rediscovering it a few days ago, I wasn't really seeing how such a pillow would fit in with the rest of the rest of the stuff I've been making. I decided that I would just decorate it and see where it would go from there, adding the green scalloped border and sewing sparkly gems all over. Then came the idea. I would use it to display some of my frog figurines! I happen to be a collector of many things: pacman collectibles, rings, unicorns, green stuff, vintage avon bottles, and frogs. I figured that positioning my little green frogs on the marker drawn lily pads would end up being a great displaying idea. After adding a layer of fabric to the bottom side as a base I was done. :-) I am really happy with how the project came out. I especially like how the gems give it a glass mosaic-like look. Cute that each of the frogs has its own lily pad huh? ;D Ribbit! 

 

The Pretty Puff

This furry thing I put together this morning. I spotted these fuzzy pink earmuffs in a thrift store at the beginning of the week and immediately thought that I could take off the fuzzies and create a little vanity item: a powder puff! All I did was take off the fuzzy stuff from the earmuffs and sew them together with a little stuffing in between so that it would appear even puffier than it already is. I also sewed a bit of ribbon and plastic pearl trim on top to give it that last finishing touch. I thought it'd be cute and funny to make my own pretend ad to go with the item, so you may now refer to it as The Pretty Puff! If I had more earmuffs then I would try to make them in different colors. A simple enough craft that shows you a way that you can reuse items that you come across: either lying about in your house or if you chance upon one in a thrift store!:-)

Soothing Colors

This drawing I created several years ago. It was originally an experiment with water colors that turned into a watercolor painting onto which I added some extra touches with oil crayon pastels. (That's actually what I end up doing with a lot of my paintings; paint with watercolors or acrylics and draw over with crayons or pastels.) The picture is supposed to be of a fence with sunflowers during the evening time when the sun is setting and casting a beautiful reddish pinkish glow in the sky. I find the colors to be very soothing so it's a nice relaxing thing to look at from time to time. :-) 

Pacman Crafts Part 2

I promised a part 2 of pacman awesomeness and here it be! The first picture is of a yellow handkerchief that I styled to be all ms. pacman-like. After sewing the ribbon trimming around the perimeter I got to a bit of embroidery, stitching the outlines of the character shapes and then tracing over them a bit with fabric marker. I filled the ghosts, ms. pacman bow and lips, and white orbs with marker. The next picture is of an apron that I made with a blue ghost (Inky) theme. I plan on making a whole series of these aprons, one for each ghost featuring different fruits or veggies in the background. The canvas apron I started out with was pure white so I had to color the whole thing over with marker twice to give it a finished look. I also added a blue ribbon trim around the edges to make it more dainty (can see it more clearly in the close-up), and the pearls at the top are there to add a little fashion jewelry statement. No reason why you can't cook with your favorite string of pearls attached! The last of the three crafts will most likely serve as a wall hanging. It was the simplest of the three things I made, mainly involved putting together various things that I had lying around in my craft supplies stash. I got the idea to make my own ms. pacman after spotting a felt circle at Wal Mart. The most labor intensive part was cutting out the wedge out of the right half to give her her characteristic open mouth. After that it was just a matter of gluing things into place (eyelashes and bow). The lips get their bright cherry redness from a tube of fabric paint. 

I have another pacman craft that I am currently working on but it's in its rough-looking incomplete stage so I'm not showing it just yet. So if you liked parts 1 and 2 then you can also look forward to there being a part 3 in the future! Maybe by then I will have another ghost themed apron to show as well. :-)

Commander Keen Bags

These guys are not as recognizable as pacman but they're super cute and the Commander Keen games behind them are lots of fun. They're not really arcade games, more of a run, jump and shoot at monsters kinda deal. All of the games feature a little boy named Billy Blaze, a super genius who travels to distant planets on his handmade rocket ship made out of bean cans and various scrap parts. The creatures that you see on the totes below are from the very first game in the series, Marooned on Mars. The aliens in that game include the green ones with one or two eyes that you see below, along with wolf man type creatures, venus flytrap things that can eat your character, a robot butler, and another robot thing that shoots at you. The back of the one eyed alien bag features some of the items that you can collect in the game to earn extra points. The pinkish thing on the top right is that venus flytrap thing I was talking about. These bags were a lot of fun to make though a bit time consuming. The time consuming part was tracing out the blocky aliens onto the totes. To do that I printed out enlarged pictures of the aliens, laid them against the totes, and traced out all of the lines with a pencil. I didn't cut out a stencil or anything like that, so to make these images I had to literally push hard on the paper with a pen and pencil and hope that most of the lines would show after I removed the paper. Parts did and parts didn't, so I'd say that about 65% was visible to me and the rest I had to draw by hand referring to the pictures. The results were definitely worth the effort though and these bags really are the kinds of unique accessories that get comments. For any craft to be successful I think that the key is to just try and make something that you really like. For me its all things colorful, cute and filled with patterns!

P.S. The blue thing that you see attached to the first bag was not handmade by me. It's just a blue star crayon key chain that I found and added to accessorize. :-) 

Pacman Crafts Part 1

This is going to part numero uno of the pacman (or maybe more accurate to say ms. pacman) crafts created by moi that will be featured on this blog. Among some of the things that I like to collect are pacman collectibles (whenever possible). I add the whenever possible bit because unless you're a regular internet shopper or have a good vintage goods store nearby, pacman items can be really hard to come by. Hard to find or not though I appreciate all things pacman related and naturally want to create my own waka waka items. The Ms. Pacman t shirt that you see below is actually the first thing I ever made with fabric markers. After making that I was addicted and started brainstorming other pacman crafts. The second t shirt that I thought of making ended up being the cute little "I'm Shy" one. Nobody ever approached me with comments about it but several people looked at it with an amused smile when I wore it out this one time..... And the last two things I've made that I will show for the time being are the framed pink lovelies. The frames were actually originally mirrors that had a white painted wooden border. I painted the wood pink to be more colorful and glued my own handmade pictures of Pinky (the pink ghost)and ms. pacman. For some final touches I painted the rim around the pictures red and added a bit of glitter here and there for cosmetic touching up. And there you have it! Fun right?! :-D I have several more pacman crafts on the go so if you are like me and appreciate the cute colorful characters of vintage arcade games then stay tuned for a part 2! 

P.S. I forgot to say add one last little note. If you're confused by the writing on the ms. pacman shirt at all it's because it's written in Japanese katakana (it's the alphabet Japanese people use for writing our foreign words and names). It basically reads the same though so what you see there is the katakana version of ms. pacman. ;D