Getting ready to cut out little dresses and little dolls.
Lots of Gypsy Girls coming soon!
Inspiration
(photo from Dear Golden blog)
Looking for a lovely excuse to procrastinate?
I very willingly wasted a very enjoyable hour perusing the Dear Golden blog.
All the pretty things.
Swoon.
Cabinet Redo
This piece was handed down from a family member and I had big fabulous plans for it .... so mysterious and exciting that I didn't even know what they were yet myself. A year went by and I never did get filled in on these great plans. As the time went by the cabinet inched it's way out from the dining room to the front porch because I had given up hope that I was ever going to do anything with it. I was just going to give it away.
It being by the front door for weeks made it so that I was faced with it consistently. Right about the time I had totally let go of any attachment to it, hoping someone was going to drag it out of the house for me, inspiration struck and I stayed up late for a few days priming, painting and sanding.
It's now one of my favorite pieces of furniture in the house and I can't wait to start something else!!! No piece of furniture is safe from my paint brush now!
Happy Painting :)
Can't wait until it's springtime again!
Snowstorm time again!
Which is basically code for craft time!
I have been seeing tutorials for pillowcase dresses pop up forever and I wanted to make one for The Bug. Many pillowcases are made of fairly light weight fabric which can sometimes be a little sheer so I thought it might be nice to use two pillowcases instead. I like that it gave the dress a little more weight, which is nice because we really don't get much warm weather here.
This made the dress reversible and I was able to give the dress a border just by making one piece longer then the other. I also added the dove and rose motif to the inside of the dress to jazz things up a little. Makes for a little extra surprise inside.
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Big love,
Helen
Little Betty
Pillow cases are amazing! I love using them to make all kinds of things. If you can't tell this one had Beauty and The Beast on it. I had been wanting to make some simple rag dolls for awhile and hadn't gotten around to it. Lucky for me life has come to a stand still on more then a few occasions lately due to being snowed in a handful of times. I love snow storms more then pillow cases but not as much as power outages, which are AMAZING!!! Power outages have nothing to do with this post...
Like always I didn't follow the tutorial at all and changed the basic shape a fair bit. The original doll pattern is for a Black Apple doll which you will love. If you are even slightly romantic or inclined to daydream you will likely spend way too much time lost on her blog. I highly recommend it.
Big love,
Helen
Mermaid Conversion
I'd like to introduce you to Alice, who belongs to The Bug. I'm sure you will be hearing a lot about THE BUG as the whole universe happily revolves around her. Well it might just be our little tiny section of the universe but it's working for us so far.
We are slightly obsessed with mermaids around here so when I saw this tutorial for a doll mermaid tail I was pretty excited. Alice is a Journey Girl with a similar body to the American Girl dolls but with a slightly odd placement of rubber body and cloth so my plan for a mermaid tail turned into a dress. Due to the skirt plan getting derailed I didn't follow the tutorial at all. I just put Alice down on the fabric and went for.
Tip of the day: Follow the tutorial. It couldn't hurt.
Big love,
Helen
Upholstered Headboard
I have been on the hunt for a headboard for awhile ...I've also been broke for awhile. I found one I only sort of liked at sears but for over $500 sort of liked was not going to cut it. I knew I wasn't going to find anything I really liked in my price range (which was closer to free then the sears listed $500) so I hunted around the attic/house instead. I found a broken hollow core door in the attic, an old blanket in the closest, some picture hooks, ribbon, flat buttons and some self cover buttons. I had to buy the fabric but because I can sniff out a bargain a hundred miles away I found the exact fabric (cream coloured cotton velveteen) on the clearance wall for $3.99 a meter.
1. Drill holes in the door in the pattern you would like to place your buttons
2. Place an old blanket or quilt batting over the door and staple on to the edges
3. Lay your fabric out right side down on the floor, place your door on top of it and pull the fabric over, staple to the back. Start in the middle of each side and then go back and work all your way around
4. Cover your buttons with your fabric. Simple instructions come on the package of self cover buttons.
5. Thread a long piece of ribbon or string through your button and with a long upholstery needle run the ribbon through the fabric, batting and pre drilled holes in the door. Secure at the back by running through a flat button and tie a knot. This will keep the knot in the ribbon from pulling back through the door
6. Secure large picture hooks across the back and either hang on screws drilled into wall studs or wall anchors if there are no studs where you need to center your headboard
Covering Lamp Shades
Most of my personal belongings ( stuff that really wasn't necessary anyway) got packed away in boxes about six months ago...due to some sort of new need for minimalism, the gypsy in me not wanting to settle in or maybe it was just that I had to make room for all this baby paraphernalia. I guess I thought it would be easier to keep things clean and safe with all the little nic nacs, books and shelves gone (she had started climbing the bookcases) and for a while it seemed like a good idea. Lately I have been feeling like life has been on hold. It might seem silly to say that has anything to do with how the house looks but I do feel like having nothing around to personalize the space makes me feel like I'm not really "living" here in the grander sense if the term. So little projects have been surfacing to take whats left and make it feel more like me.
scissors
spray glue (left over from another project)
iron on interfacing tape and or clear drying glue (again left overs)
old lamp shade (I recovered two old lamp shades that had cracks and bends in them)
fabric (I used an old pillow case)
ribbon (bias tape would have been better but I didn't have the right colour)
clothes pins
Step one: Find old lamp shade! I got lucky with these white, flat shades. If you have one with pleated fabric on it you will have to take that off first and the plastic base will need to be in half decent shape. Bends and dents in the plastic are fine not big cracks are not.
Step two: You can make a pattern if you want by laying the lampshade on a big piece of newspaper and tracing along the edge as you roll the shade along the paper. If your shade is really big or you are worried about making a mistake with your fabric then this is a good idea. My shades were small and I used an old pillow case ( one to cover both shades) so I just laid the shade on the pillow case and roughly cut off the excess fabric.
Step three: Spray your shades with glue. Spray glue dries fast so you need to have your fabric laid out ahead of time and only spray one shade at a time. Go easy on the spray glue, it won't seem like a lot but if there is any excess it will come through the fabric and ruin light colours and shiny fabric.
Step four: Have your fabric laid out flat and put your lamp shade on top of the fabric. Roll the shade pulling the fabric tight and pushing out any air bubble or wrinkles. When you get all the fabric on fold over the end to get a clean edge and tac with some glue. Put a clothes pin or small clamp on the bottom and top edge. Leave the shades to dry.
Step five: If you have any excess fabric coming over the edge of the shade trim it off. Bias tape works best for covering the edges and makes a more professional finished looking shade but ribbon will work as well just make sure you can't see any of the glue and be patient while folding over the edges because there will be folds and wrinkles in the ribbon. I ironed on some double sided fusible webbing tape to one edge of the ribbon and then ironed it on which made things a lot faster and cleaner but you can use glue here no problem. When you have the ribbon fused or glued on to the outside of the lamp you can then fold over the excess gluing it to the inside of the shade to get that finished edge. Use lots of clothes pins here and leave them on until the glue dries. I would recommend doing the bottom edge first and letting it dry before you go back and finish the top. Trying to do both at once just leaves things in a big mess.
Step six: Take all your pins off and touch any thing up with glue if there are any little pieces lifting away from the shade. Now it's time to but this on our lamp and bask in the glory of your handiness.
This is also a good way to make a bunch of old mismatched lamps make sense in a room. You can do all the different shades the same or in coordinating fabrics. This project works really great if you are using wallpaper ends as well. The paper is also a little easier to work with then fabric.
I had all this stuff just laying around the house so the big bonus of this project for me was that it was free!
Today is my birthday...
Well it's been about a year and half since I posted here and just as I start to wonder where the time went my 18 month old daughter runs buy leaving a wake of delightful destruction behind her. There have been many odd little projects, lots of thrifting and of course Lydia herself and all the things she has taught me would have been worth sharing with you. Despite all that, this has been the hardest couple of years of my life this last year being the worst. I have had many things to post about but somewhere in the struggle I seem to have lost my voice. I would say that months before I stopped posting here I had begun to struggle with what to share, how to speak to you and even more so how to segregate all the different pieces of my life, my feelings about my work, starting a new family, my changing business and how to be personal and professional at the same time became such a struggle that I had nothing left to say....at least not that I felt comfortable sharing.
My birthday to me has always been like New Years in the sense that this is the time that I look back at the year, this is the time for making resolutions and plans, this is the time to look forward. This time last year I wasn't feeling strong enough to do much looking ahead, I was in survival mode so no grand plans were devised. I just put my head down and planned to survive. Don't get me wrong it has been an honor and a joy to be a mother to a little girl that I will say with all my motherly bias is the worlds most perfect, smartest, funniest, most talented child in all the world. Her laugh alone could I'm sure save whole war torn countries. But...I'm still a woman, a partner, a friend, an artist and a handful of other things that have begun to seem so very far away.
I have spent this last year and a half devoted to the health and happiness of Miss Lydia Katie and despite the lack of sleep, social interaction and hygiene it was worth it! In saying that, it has become pretty obvious lately that to continue to serve my daughter I will need to begin to live again in some sort of reasonable manner. I have not yet completely laid out what might be considered a reasonable plan of action but the idea of applying some mascara and wearing something other than track pants has crossed my mind.
So if all goes well you will see me again soon! Maybe even in real life!! I can't imagine!!! But first I need to rewrite what may as well be a completely defunct blog bio (thats going to take some time), change a diaper and if I'm really lucky Ill get to have a shower. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
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