Clean Up That Mess - Of a Dress!

Back in April, Karin of better than jam taught us how to screen print over a stain to bring a shirt back to life.

I am not a screen printer, but I am a spiller, and so when my favorite traveling dress developed an unsightly stain, I was eager to try a less technically savvy version of Karin's cool trick.

I have an India ink stamp pad and a collection of cool stamps that I use to personalize the reusable bags I package my jewelry in. You can find a similar one here. It's important not to use a regular run of the mill stamp pad, because the ink will not set and your clothing will be even more ruined than it already was.

Here's the offending stain pre-stamping: (It's not so visible in the picture, but believe me it was noticeable.)



Step 1: Test your stamp on a section of the fabric that is not visible when you wear the garment.

Step 2: Tape around the edges to protect the fabric you don't want to stamp. Slip a magazine inside the garment to give you a smooth stamping surface and to prevent the ink from bleeding through to the back of the fabric.



Step 3: Start stamping! I chose a stamp larger than my target stamping area because I wanted the image of the leaf to be abstract. I alternated the leaf position by rotating the stamp with each use. I tried to keep the images evenly spaced, but I just eyeballed it.



Step 4: Heat set: I blasted the stamped area with a hairdryer for a few minutes.

And that's it!








-MaryAnne LoVerme
wabisabibrooklyn.etsy.com
wabisabibrooklyn.com

Felted Memories

Every time we come home from the beach, we return with at least a handful of rocks scavenged from the sea. I recently saw some felted rocks at a museum store and decided to try this technique to decorate our rocks instead of painting them. My research led me to two blogs that discussed the manufacturing process in some detail:

Julie of Crafting A Green World explains her process, in which she felts a rock by hand. Margaret of resurrection fern had enough of handwashing and decided to use her washing machine to do the job. I tried both methods and these are my findings:

Materials

For this project you need

Rocks, mine were about 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter

Wool roving, you can find it on Etsy

Dish soap

Pantyhose, if you want to try the machine method

Take a bit of wool roving and wrap it around your rock. I didn't want to fully cover my rocks so my layer is somewhat thin.


Using the dish soap and hot water, soap up your rock. If you decide to follow Julie's hand felting method, continue to wash the rock, move it around, squeeze out a bit of soap, and continue to rub it until it is felted to your liking. If you are hand felting, squeeze out as much of the soap as you can making sure that the rock is covered with the felt and let it dry.


If you want to felt your rock in the machine, cut off a pantyhose leg, and begin to fill it with your soapy rocks tying off each rock separately so they don't felt against one another.

I live in an apartment building that just got new machines. Because I didn't want to incur my neighbors' wrath, I limited myself to two rocks, tied those into my pajama pants, and washed everything together with a heavy blanket on hot. Margaret is much more courageous. She made a string of 19-plus rocks. Whether you follow her example depends on your living situation.

So here is the outcome. This is the hand felted rock. Not as smooth and somewhat fuzzy.


These are the machine washed rocks. They are very smooth and quite perfect looking. All of them are beautiful, I think. It just depends what your personal preference is.

Just one thing, if your super gets upset when you felt your vacation souvenirs in the machine, don't refer him or her to this blog.

Thanks

Simone
groundsel.etsy.com

How-To Find Foreign Thrift Stores & Flea Markets

When I started planning my first trip to Italy this spring, the Wardrobe Refashion Challenge seemed like an excellent excuse to seek out ways to buy used and handmade garments as souvenirs. Thrift stores and flea markets are some of my favorite places to shop at home, and at first, finding these options abroad was proving challenging. I like to shop in smaller cities with an eye for bargains and an element of the hunt, but many of the shops whose information was available in English or had been blogged by foreign tourists seemed a little pricier and in major cities. Our trip was through Venice, Bologna and Ravenna. Since Venice is both expensive and very touristy, and Ravenna was only a one day stop, we decided that Bologna, a famous college city, would be the place to shop. I had trouble finding anything there to suit my taste until I discovered a few foreign language search tricks.

Here are two ways I used to find places to shop using Google Translate.

1. Translated Search - Easier for people who don't like language puzzles. Very simple and straightforward, but I found that the end results were a little less good. Just use the search terms you might normally use (e.g. flea market Bologna) to search the web, but choosing the English -> Italian options. Keep in mind that you might need to try several variations of word combos, since what is a "recycle shop" in one language might be a "thrift store," "ops shop" or "used clothing market" in another.



La Piazzola
This open air market was found using the first method. Every Friday and Saturday there is a huge market that has sections devoted to both new and used items. There were housewares as well as clothing and accessories, but one big surprise was the number of counter-culture type booths.

I purchased a fabulous handmade vintage dress with sailboats for only 10 Euros. My partner who is not doing WR Challenge got a new Italian belt and underwear.



2. Hybrid Search - In this method I translated many different phrases for what I was looking for into Italian, and put them into a regular Google Search.



By scanning the search results in Italian for repeated phrases, I picked out new search terms that were more natural in Italian such as "usato e vintage," "negozio dell'usato," & "mercantino dell'usato." I looked at the translated versions of these sites to see what I had found. Repeat the process until you find the best search terms. While doing this, keep in mind that if the search page prompts, "Did you mean...?" and gives an alternate phrase, the answer is probably yes.

Mercatopoli
Since this one was part of a chain, it seemed like a jackpot choice. There were 4 just in Bologna, and if we ever went to Italy again they seem to be everywhere. The selection was like a lower end thrift shop in the U.S., but I did see some amazing things such as the handmade vintage dress that I purchased for 6 Euros.


Cose d'Altre Case
Our biggest haul was from here! They had a great selection of very nice housewares, clothing, jewelry, books, etc. They also had framed and unframed prints that would make excellent souvenirs. We picked up a hand-blown carafe, an enamelware pot, a men's shirt and a women's shirt for just 20 Euros.

We had a great time shopping in Italy, and will probably continue our thrift store adventures on future trips. So if you have any suggestions for the best search terms in other foreign locations, please add them to the comments!

~Kari
http://ikyoto.etsy.com

Postcards From The Road

Are you on vacation? Is it time for you to remind your hardworking friends at home that you are thinking of them? Can't find a postcard that truly describes the beauty of the place you're visiting? Just make your own.

All you need are scissors, some sort of card stock (a cereal box will do) and whatever art supplies you can hunt down at your vacation abode. I tend to travel with a backpack full to entertain the kids in the traveling party, but I'm sure you can come up with a creative piece even if you just have a ball point pen.

Crayon and a Paper Bag


Look at the interesting paper you get when you purchase something from the local merchants. Hmm, cut it into a skyline and glue it onto a crayon sunset.

Leaf Prints

Okay, so you may not travel with water colors, but just in case you do, turn a special leaf you found on a leisurely walk into a leaf print. Apply paint to the ribbed side of the leaf and use a bottle (sunscreen in this case) as a rolling pin to print a design.

Drawing

Our trip was dominated by the purchase of these hamster erasers. Here is a marker portrait.

Ransom Note


Kidnappers must have a lot of time on their hands because it took longer than I thought (30 minutes) to cut out these letters from travel brochures we picked up.

The standard postcard size is 3.4" to 4.25" high and 5" to 6" long. Don't have a ruler to measure your card? Use a promotional card from a coffee shop as a template.

Happy Travels

Simone
groundsel.etsy.com

Summertime Crafting

So it's officially summertime in New York City. I love the beach, don't you? Sure I don't live near the beautiful blue water beaches of Puerto Rico or the white sandy beaches of the Bahamas, but I love the ocean nevertheless. The ocean is so restoring and inspiring to me. I remember as a kid I used to love going to the Jersey shore and just staring at the ocean waves. I still do that to this day. And then of course you can walk along the boardwalk and have a beer while the little one devours ice cream cone after ice cream cone.
I've been inspired to do so many crafty things lately! I was at my mother in law's house and saw these cute earrings someone made for her out of sea shells. So that got me thinking about all the fun things you can do with shells.
When you're at the beach it's a good idea to walk along the shore line and just collect little sea shells, rocks and bits of sand glass. It's fun and you can ask your little ones to help!
The first idea I had involved making some sand glass pendants. It's so easy!

These pendants are simply made with some beading wire that's wrapped around it and a loop is made for the chain. Cute, right? And super simple!

A good thing to invest in is a jewelry making drill. Fiskars makes a good one, as pictured below.

This drill is cool because you can use it to drill a hole into the sand glass if you want to. You can decoupage an image onto the glass and then drill a hole for a chain or even make earrings out of it.

Then there are the endless possibilities you will have with sea shells. OMG, seriously. You could probably write a book on all the things that are possible to make with sea shells.

My favorite thing to create is this beautiful wreath! How beautiful.
All you have to do is get yourself a foam wreath and come armed with a glue gun and lots of glue sticks. Then you can simply glue them onto your foam wreath, making sure that everything is covered in shells. Be sure to arrange them in a pretty manner of course, and you can overlap them too.
Awesome!

The Craftaholic
Sweet Buddha Designs

How To Make a File for Your Record Collection

If you are anything like me, you have quite a few record albums sitting on your shelf. While I really love the way some of my favorite songs sound when they are played on my ancient record player, I don't really love the way they look cluttering up my shelves. I spent some time searching the internet for a great storage solution but nothing really suited my style, so I decided to create my own. Please feel free to click on the photos for a larger view.

Materials Needed

• 14" x 14" x 4" cardboard box

• x-acto knife with space blade

• Pencil

• Ruler

• Packing Tape

• Double sided tape or spray mount

• Decorative paper or fabric

Step #1. You can certainly make one of these files, from a flat piece of cardboard, but I decided to repurpose a 14" x 14" x 4" box because the folds are already done for you. Lay the box down; it should naturally fold like the diagram in step 1. We begin by cutting off the top and bottom panel on the left side (only cut the first layer of panels...it helps if you slide a cutting mat inside the box to prevent accidentally cutting the other side of the box.) Flip the collapsed box over and repeat. Your box should now look like the photo in step 1.

Step #2 Now cut off one of the skinny strips as shown by the red dotted lines in Step 2. You can then set that piece aside for recycling. Your box should now lie flat like the photo in step 2.

Step #3 Because the box we are using (14") is a little too big to fit vinyl records in snugly, we are going to trim down our structure. Measure 1.5" from the back top, and from the front Top. Make sure to mark this with your pencil before cutting. (Remember: measure twice, cut once)

Step #4 The shape of your flat structure hasn't changed much from step 2, but that is about to change. Measure 4" from the outside edges on the back panel as shown in step 4 and mark that with a pencil line. Also measure 5" from the bottom of the back panel (the bottom is where it attaches to the rest of the structure and mark that with a pencil line as well). We are then going to cut along the lines, stopping when we meet an intersecting line. The shape we are creating is reminiscent of a football goal post by removing the waste piece we just cut out as shown in Step 4.

Step #5 In order to make our file look similar to the ever-popular magazine files we need to create a diagonal cut for the sides of our record file. As shown in step 5, we are going to measure 3" from the back top and mark that with a pencil on both "prongs" of our football goal post shape. Then with your ruler and your pencil draw a straight diagonal line from the corner point, shown in diagram 4 to the outside point of your previously penciled line. At this point you may want to refold your structure into its box form to make sure it fits together, you can also then continue the diagonal pencil line onto the front top panel it matches up with. Then you can cut along the diagonal pencil lines, remove the waste and continue on to step 6.

Step #6 Your structure should now look like the flat structure in Step 6. At this point we fold together the box at its natural folds and begin to tape up the structure. You want to make sure you tape both the inside and outside edges with your packaging tape for a nice sturdy hold. Now you have your finished structure, and the finishing is all up to you! I used my finished piece as a template to cut panels of decorative paper to cover the sides of my record file. I fastened the paper with some double stick tape, but a spray adhesive would also work as well.

I can't wait to see how you decorate your new vinyl record organizer. Be sure to upload your finished projects to flickr and tag it with newnew_recordholder. 

~jen pepper

http://www.peppersproutdesigns.com