DIY Beaded Star Garland

One of the upsides of going back to graduate school in the fall is that I get to move out of the garbage-hole of an apartment I have been living in for the past two years.

The downside? I'm going from a three bedroom apartment that actually had too much space for me to even use... to a 289 square foot studio apartment. We do what we gotta do in the name of education/living within our means, right? Right? Shhh, let me believe that I'm not an idiot, okay.

I'm actually pretty okay with this major downsizing though because it gives me a chance to reassess my possessions and completely redecorate a small, cohesive space. Because of that, I'm currently working on creating just some small decorative pieces to take with me when I move so that my new apartment feels a little more personal. One of the things that I think is going to work well in my space is this cute little beaded star garland:

It didn't take that long to make, and I think it's going to work well in the more neutral color palette that I think that I'm going to go with.

Curious about how I made it? Here is what I did:

First, I gathered all of my materials: some string (I used hemp), small beads that the string can fit through, felt, a scrap of poster board, a pencil, sharpie/chalk for marking the felt, hot glue, and some scissors.

With the scrap of poster board, I started by creating the pattern for my star. I just free-handed my shape, but you could easily just print a star shape from Google and trace that if you want to be super accurate. I like to be wild and crazy and live life on the edge though.

Next, I folded a section of the felt over and traced out as many star shapes in a row that would fit. Leaving the pins in to help with the cutting, I cut a double thickness of the felt for each star.

I continued in this fashion until I had as many stars as I thought I would need. I ended up with three black stars and eight brown ones so that I could create an alternating pattern. That was it for the stars for now-- next, I tackled the garland part itself.

To create the garland string, I cut a really long length of string/hemp which was longer than I wanted the end product to end up. And by really long length, I mean like..... 10 feet. Homegirl ain't playin' around.

For each bead that I wanted to add, I started by tying a knot in the string.

After tying the knot, I would slide on a bead and tie another knot. Then I would move over an inch, tie another knot, slide on another bead, tie a knot, and continue on until I'd have five beads in a row (with alternating colors of course because why not).

After every five beads, I would leave a large gap for a star to go in until I had room enough for each of the stars that I had cut out. And that was it for the garland string. The only thing left to do was to go about adding the stars.

To add the stars, I would lay down a star, add a little hot glue to the center, stick the string down, and then sandwich another star on top.

I wanted to give the stars a little more polish, so I just whip stitched around all of the edges. Now that I'm typing this out it almost seems like this took a lot of work... but in reality this surprisingly didn't take very long. An afternoon's worth of work maybe?

However long it took, I'm pretty sold on this little creation. I can just imagine it hanging above the window in my future cardboard box of an apartment, which is kind of endearing.

For now though, I just have it hanging on this palette (that I made!) in my parent's house until I can take it to my new tiny-home. You know all those tiny home shows on HGTV? I've always wondered what it would be like to live in one, so I guess that's how I can think of my new studio apartment... Ayyyy, that's a cool thought.



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DIY High-Waisted Shorts

I just got back from a two week vacation overseas, and I returned home to realize that it is roughly one million degrees outside. And that's really great because I adore mega-heat and 1000% humidity (note my heavy sarcasm).

So, just like any other summer, I've taken part in my yearly ritual, which is to take some old and/or secondhand jeans and turn them into some shorts. Because ain't nobody got time for jeans in this kind of weather.

I've talked about making shorts from old jeans in the past (namely in this post, which goes into more detail about this process), and it such a simple activity that sometimes I think it hardly bears mentioning. But here I am, cause ya girl wanted to make a post on this lonely blog of hers.

The high-waisted trend has been around for a couple years now, and I've only been partaking in it for about a year and a half, but I can honestly say that I hope it sticks around. There's something about looking like a 90's soccer mom with pants up to her ribcage that I find completely endearing, and I mean that with complete honesty and affection. In the case of these shorts though, I don't think that my 90's mom self would really approve of rocking them because warning: I made mine pretty short.

I've found that the trick to making these shorts (or to even finding high waisted jeans) is to hit up your local goodwill and peruse all the sizes in the racks. I pay most attention to the size of the waistband and compare it to my own natural waist, which is different than shopping for jeans that will fit your hips, so just ignore the numbers. Mom jeans are much more forgiving in terms of sizing, I feel. Also, the easiest way to find mom jeans at a glance is to look at the zipper. Is the zipper as long as your whole hand? Then there's a good chance you'll be zipping those pants up to your eyeballs. Zipper only as long as your palm? Try again, compadre-- you're in weird mid-rise territory.

Once I found the pair pictured here, I started just like I would with any pair of pants that I would want to make into shorts. First, I tried them on and marked with a pin where I wanted my shorts to come down to. It's important to try the shorts on, rather  than just laying another pair of shorts on top of them and marking them that way, because the rise of these pants is going to affect the length of the shorts.

After trying them on and marking the length, I took them off, added an additional 1.5 inches of length so that I could cuff them, and chopped off one leg. I also cut them at a slight angle, just for funsies.

Next, I folded the shorts over and chopped the second leg off in the same fashion. I told you, this is a super easy project.

The last thing I did was to just cuff the shorts up, tack down cuffs with a few whip stitches, and call it a day. Simple, quick, and mildly tackily cute.

I actually have another pair of shorts that I still need to do this to, so I should probably get on that soon.... Guess that's my cue to go be productive!



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Sketchbook Update: Drawings on Wood

Actually, this is less of a "sketchbook update" and more of a "hey look at some of the art that has been consuming my life for the better part of the last year."

I know I've always had spotty attendance on this here blog, but I'm never really all that idle when it comes to creating things. And though I haven't been posting tons of refashions lately (though to be fair, I do have a few sewing related things to share once I photograph them) I have been busting my buns when it comes to my art related stuff.

As I may have shared (who knows-- I don't always divulge a lot of personal stuff on here for reasons), I received my Bachelor's Degree in Art Education back in 2014. Since then, I have been teaching high school art, but I've decided to take a new path and leave my teaching position and go back to graduate school to pursue my Master's. So the past year has been a pretty crazy time-- creating a whole new portfolio, exhibiting my artwork in across state lines, applying and subsequently being rejected by different schools; ya know, all sorts of fun stuff.

But I can happily say that I've been accepted into an amazing MFA program and will be going back to school (and teaching for the university!) this fall. What's the point of this whole story? It's just my roundabout way of explaining why I'm showing you a bunch of weird drawings on wood. So without further ado, here's just a handful of some of the things that I've been creating:

I've basically been drawing a lot of things about birds. Because let's be real-- birds are so amazing and important and wow.

I've also been working hard on trying to develop my own techniques, which have been this whole colored pencil/graphite on wood deal.

These certainly aren't all the arts that I have been working on, but I felt like sharing a few things to show that I'm not dead. Soooooo... yeh. I'll just leave these drawings here.

Now, I need to get off my lazy butt and photograph all the other crafty things that I've been working on.


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Black and White Striped Dress Refashion

I feel a little weird about posting a refashion like this considering it's still quite clearly winter outside, BUT, in my defense it has been an unseasonably warm winter by me.

... as in it's been in the high 20's, low 30's, which is like crazy warm for here. Shhh, just let me justify posting about crop tops in January.

But quite some time ago, like an embarrassingly long time ago, I was visiting Carolyn when her neighbor was getting rid of some old clothes and ended up gifting me this dress:

Now, you may be thinking-- Becca. That is a perfectly fine dress. Why would you mess with that?
While yes I agree it's a fine dress, it's just a little too short for my liking. As in, if I were to bend over, I might get charged with public indecency. And while I like to live life on the edge, I'm not that edgy so... yeah.

So, I finally turned it into not one, but two new things. Look at me go.

Here is what I did to turn this dress from too short to... some things that were still pretty short. (also, please excuse the amount of cat hair in these photos. I am a terrible disaster of a person.)

The first part of this refashion was really simple. All I did was lay my dress flat and chop off the bottom hunk in order to start turning this into a simple top.

Although this is a knit fabric and therefore doesn't fray, I still folded the hem up once and ran a zig-zag stitch all the way around it just to give it a bit more polish.

And just like that, this piece went from a too-short dress to a more acceptable length top. I didn't want to waste the extra fabric so I decided to take this refashion a step further (to be fair though, I never throw away any of my fabric scraps for environmental and crafty reasons that I can talk about at a later date maybe).

For part two, I started by taking the extra piece of fabric and cutting it in in half.

I then took those two pieces and pinned and sewed (again, zig-zag stitch) them together so that my top would have more length to it.

After measuring this piece against my body, I decided that it was just a bit too long, so I took off some of the length and hemmed my bottom edge the same way I did for my first top.

With right sides together, I folded the top in half, pinned the raw edges, and sewed the back of the top closed.

I then took the piece of fabric that I trimmed off earlier and chopped that piece in half again.

And then I folded each piece in half, pinned the edges, and sewed down the long edge. After sewing them down, I turned each piece right-side out in order to make my straps.

Finally, I sewed my straps on in the locations that seemed best and adjusted the length of the straps so that they were not too long or too short. I also did a tiny little pinch and gather at the front of the top but I forgot to photograph that part, so my bad.

But now I have a fun little crop top that is totally winter appropriate. I'm pretty jazzed about the way that the back looks at least. I could lie and say that I planned it that way, but we all know that I do not have that much sewing foresight. Ayyy, happy accidents.

For now I'll be stashing this away with the rest of my tanks, but hopefully I can get good use out of both of these new tops come summer time!


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DIY Collar Clips

Long time no chat, eh? It's only been roughly.... 6000 years I believe.

Despite popular opinion, I have been doing things though! I've been tied up in a lot of different creative projects (but mostly just a lot of personal projects) over the last few months, so I have not had time to post anything. Excuses, excuses, I know. But hey! I do have some things at least that I plan on sharing before I disappear into another inevitable hiatus.

One of those things are these collar clips I made:

Lately I've been really loving buttoning my blouses all the way to the top. I don't know why, but it just feels more fun to have that top-button swag going on. And because of that, I felt the urge to try out the whole  collar clip idea (is that even what they're called?).

The first place I saw them in action was with Clara in the episode "The Caretaker" of season 8 of Doctor Who, and while I still want to replicate hers, I think these will suffice for now.

Source: x

Can I just state the homegirl's fashion sense is so good? She's probably one of my favorite companions in terms of fashion sense... There are some other companions who should not have been allowed to dress themselves though (coughcoughrose).

But I digress. Here is how I made mine; they were crazy easy to do for myself:

I started with materials that I already happened to have on hand: E6000 glue, pliers, and some old jewelery. The clip part of the collar clips were made with two pairs of clip-on earrings that different people had given me in the past. The faux diamond ones were my grandmas that she gave me and I was thrilled that I could finally find a use for them (I can't wear clip-on earrings due to the fact that I have too many ear piercings that I'm too lazy to take out.) The chains were just broken bracelets that I have been accumulating because I am a hoarder I knew that I could find a use for them.

The first thing I did was use the pliers to remove the clasps from the bracelets and trim the chains to the lengths I wanted.

Then, using the E6000, I glued the chains to the backs of the earrings, making sure that the chains didn't sit wonky.

After that, all I had to do was let them dry, making sure that the chains didn't slip out of place as they were drying.

And that was it. It was really that simple (though I realize now that I didn't focus these pictures very well. Shame on you, Becca).

But hey, I still think they look pretty jazzy. Now, to figure out how to make some moon clips...



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Everyday Cosplay: Mark of Gandalf Vest

I have fully accepted that one of my ideal fashion aesthetics is the idea of "casual nerd."
Like the kind of thing that you can wear out in public and people who aren't in your fandom just think "Huh, that's interesting." Nothing suspicious about it. But little do they know: BAM. You're a raging nerd baby.

That is me. This is my life now.
Which brings me to one of my latest creations:

I will be the first one to admit that I have an unhealthy obsession with Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit. So much so that it's taking over my fashion choices. But let's be real here-- who wouldn't want to wear the Mark of Gandalf on your back? You never know-- it might score you a troupe of dwarfs that will take you on an adventure. And I'm all about that adventure life, yo.

This was actually really quick and simple to make since I already had the vest which mostly fit, so I didn't have to do any alterations to it. But here is what I did do:

Similar to the LOTR Biker Jacket, I started out by flipping the vest over and traced out the back panel onto a piece of newspaper. Please take note of that creepy face in the upper right corner because it haunted me for this entire project.

I then cut my pattern piece and measured it against the back. I made sure that my pattern piece was slightly larger than the seamed-out panel on the back though because it's a lot easier sewing if you're not having so hand sew through multiple layers of denim.

On a separate piece of paper, I traced out my Mark, making sure that it would fit nicely onto my other pattern piece. I decided to go with the mark that Gandalf puts on Bilbo's door in the first Hobbit film, akin to the general rune for "G" that he uses in other parts of the films. Though to be fair, I have recently learned that the mark that he used in the movie was more of a Peter Jackson invention, rather than a strictly canonical mark, but that really doesn't really bother me much. If' you're interested in what I'm referring to, check out this informative thread.

Anyway, I digress.

Once I was sure that my pattern pieces were just how I wanted them, I pinned them down, traced them onto felt and cut them out.

After cutting them out and putting them on top of the vest though, I thought that it looked a little plain, so I decided to make an adjustment.

(shout out to my foot in this photo)

I took the Mark, pinned it to some red felt, and cut around it, making about a half inch border all the way around.

And then I had to take a quick interlude because someone was hogging all of the fabric. Wow. Jerk.

I liked this look way better so I pinned the grey to the red, sewed that down, and then pinned the red to the black before sewing that down too. I just did a whip stitch all the way around because I like how that looks. I don't have a better reason.

Lastly, I took the whole thing and sewed it down to the vest using the same stitching as before.

Bonus: Look at this picture of Kitty going into warp speed.

And kachow.
More nerd. More Hobbit. With a slightly punk-rock, I'ma-beat-yo-ass-if-you-talk-trash-about-my-wizard kind of vibe. (You can talk trash about Thorin though. Hit me up if you ever want to have a debate about Thorin with me.)


So what do you think? Anyone else out there who would be willing to join Gandalf's gang? Because I'm ready to go.

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