The Ameri-Blanket

This past school year, Miss Carolyn started a crochet group at our college called The Hookers of Yarnia. We would sit in the basement of our dorm building every Thursday night and learn to crochet things. One of our major projects was to crochet scarves for charities, but we also just crocheted some things for fun. It was at this point that Carolyn taught me the magic of the Granny Square.

Four months later, the Ameri-blanket was born xD

It started out as just a simple granny square, no big deal. I wanted to learn the stitch. But then it kept growing. And growing. And I decided "Oh heck! Why not just turn it into a super patriotic blanket!"

It really was not all that difficult, it just took forever to complete because I have such a short attention span.... and the nearest Hobby Lobby is an hour and a half away...

But now it's complete! Ahhh, such glory; such patriotism.


[And I'm linking this to THESE great parties]

Hardware Necklace

Long time no chat, yeah?

Anyway, I wanted to share a little something that I whipped up last week. I saw a necklace kind of like this one on Pinterest [that's right, I finally caved last week and made an account haha] but for the life of me I can't find it anymore! So I had to just go with it and make my own:

Whoop whoop, almost fancy, and super easy to make! 

Want to make your own? Here is how!

Step one: Gather your materials. You will need a pair of scissors, metal washers [whatever size you fancy], and some ribbon [also whatever size and color you fancy].

Step two: Cut a length of ribbon quite a bit longer than you want your necklace to be. I used a little longer than an arm's length of ribbon [you can tell I'm really precise, right?]

Step three: Place one washer on your work surface right side up. Then bring your ribbon up through the bottom of the washer. Don't leave your washer right in the middle of the ribbon though otherwise one side of your necklace will be super long and the other will be too short. I would move the washer over to the left more...

Step four: Place another washer right side up on your work surface to the right of the last washer. This time, instead of coming up through the bottom of the washer with the ribbon, come down through the washer with it.

Step five: Feed the ribbon back through the middle of the first washer, coming down with the ribbon.

Step six: Pull the ribbon nice and taut!

Step seven: Feed the ribbon back through the second washer, coming behind the first washer and up through the little gap on the right side of the second washer.

Step eight: Place your next washer right side up and feed the ribbon down through the center. Continue this process for as long as you want your necklace to be, but leave room so you can tie the necklace back on your own neck! haha

Step nine: This was just a personal choice, but when you get to the end of your necklace, you can cut the ends at points so they look nice and clean.

And there you have it! A hardware necklace! Hopefully, my brother didn't need any of those... but he should know by now that anything he leaves unattended in the garage instantly becomes fair game heh heh.

As a little tip, I left my ribbon pretty long, so that I could either wear it long or keep it short. I'm actually pretty partial to the short look :D

[and hoorah for fresh out of the shower pictures! hahaha]

Happy Sunday!

Linking to:
Keeping it Simple
Make it Great Mondays
Also, this is my entry into the Make it Great Monday party hosted by Appliances online and their best Range Cookers!
Cure for the Common Monday

French Toasties

Mornin'
I just wanted to share that I made french toast for breakfast because breakfast is 100% relevant to my interests.

I could freaking live on breakfast. It's a borderline unhealthy obsession.

But here is the age-old recipe if you're interested:
     -2 eggs, slightly beaten
     -1 tablespoon sugar
     -1/2 teaspoon salt
     -1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
     -1/2 cup milk
     -2 tablespoons butter
     -4 to 6 slices of bread
Heat a skillet to medium heat. In a shallow bowl combine everything except for the butter and bread. Next, melt your butter in the skillet. While the butter is melting, dip the bread in the egg mixture, turning so that you coat both sides. Then throw your goopy bread in the skillet and cook each side about 4 minutes each, or until they're golden brown.

YEAAHH

Crocheted Dishcloths

So recently, I decided to whip up some crocheted dishcloths:

Ohhhh, daaaaang, you fancy, huh?
I searched the internet to find the patterns and I was AMAZED at the amount of resources out there. SO. MANY. THINGS. TO. CROCHET. I think you know what I'll be doing with the remainder of my Peaches and Cream brand yarn.

The first one is just a basic Granny Square. There are a million tutorials and patterns out there on how to make this one, but a good pattern can be found HERE.

I thought that this one was just too cute too! And the pattern can be found HERE.

This next one is probably my favorite out of the bunch. I stumbled across it on the internet machine and just KNEW that I had to try it out! You can make your own HERE

Aaaand, the last one. I kind of sort of... Lost the link to this one though xD But if I find it I will totally post it here!
If you're ever in need of dishcloths, I highly recommend crocheting your own! And I promise, its really not that hard. I just learned to crochet about a year ago and am a total novice still. And if I could make these, so can you!!


Linking to:
Lines Across
Keeping it Simple
Make it Great Mondays

Scrapbook Paper Envelopes

I don't know if anyone fully understands how much I love getting mail. I check my mailbox constantly and obsessively, even when I know that I'm not expecting anything. I JUST CAN'T HELP IT.
But that's also why I love sending mail, in the hopes that my lucky recipients enjoy mail as much as I do :]

So I decided to send some more letters yesterday [I acquired some new people to mail junk to, including a US Marine!] and instead of sending boring envelopes, I decided to bust out the scrapbook paper to make life a little more exciting:

I feel like if you get a letter with an exciting envelope, then the letter inside is bound to be exciting too :'D
I learned how to make envelopes ages ago, and this way is super easy! Here's how you do it:

Step one: Get your materials. Literally all you need is some glue and square paper. That's why scrapbooking paper works do well- it's already square so you don't have to cut it, and it makes the perfect size envelope.

Step two: Lay your paper pattern side down. Then proceed to fold it "hamburger style" and "hotdog style," for lack of better terms. Bringing it back elementary school style, yo. This creates a center point so it is easier to find the middle in the next step.

Step three: Fold two opposite corners in so that they join in the middle.

Step four: Fold the bottom point up, but not so high up that it touches the center point. It only has to reach about an inch below where the other two corners meet.

Step five: Fold the whole bottom portion up so that the flat part of the point you just folded in makes the top  part of the envelope. Man, I'm really bad at explaining things in writing. It's so much easier to just show people, which is why I included the pictures haha. But once you have it folded so that it actually resembles an envelope, you can glue the bottom flap so that the envelope holds together. Make sure not to glue the whole thing down though, otherwise you won't be able to put anything in it!!

 Step six: Fold the top point down, and then there you have it! Pretty, fun envelopes!

Just for funzies, I made a couple more envelopes to put inside the scrapbook paper ones. For those, all I did was cut out a square of paper from an old book and did the exact same thing :]
Have a happy Tuesday!


PS: I've never tried linking up before, but this time I linked to Lines Across. Maybe I'll try linking up with others too!

Cross Stitchery

Afternoon!
I just wanted to share that I finally learned to cross stitch! Actually, it was my friend Carolyn who gave me a little kit a few weeks ago because the picture on the box looked like Commodore Tazz [better known as Kitty], my cat. And I finally finished it!

The directions were a little vague and hard to grasp at first, but I mostly figured it out... And no one died in the process. Always a win!

Ah yes, such majesty.

The Infamous Driftwood

I have always wanted to try painting on found objects.
Artists have been doing it for  fo-eva, and the other day I thought, "Hey, Becca. Why not just go ahead and do it already?"

And then the opportunity presented itself. I had the perfect object, and this was the perfect time. I painted... the Infamous Driftwood Bark.

Now, this piece of bark and me go way back. Well, not that far back really, but it still has a bit of history haha.
But one day this spring, actually it was one of the first nice days in spring, my friend Carolyn and her fiance Caleb invited some friends and I to a park that was just outside of campus. We grilled out, partook in some shenannigous behaviour [nothing illegal! We're some of the few good college kids out there, honestly!] and sang songs accompanied by my friend Andrew and his lovely guitar skills. But anyway, while trying to find stuff for our fire, Carolyn and I came across this little beauty. It was the coolest piece of bark because it actually kind of looked like driftwood.
So I brought the thing home, despite some odd looks from strangers and security guards, and put it outside of my dorm room door. My roommate wouldn't allow it inside...
But I told Carolyn that I was going to turn it into the tackiest thing I could think of and then give it to her for her wedding [which is this Saturday!!]. And if she ever got rid of it I would cry forever.
So the wood sat outside my door. Aaaand it sat there. And I put a note on it saying "Please don't steal me! I'm destined to have wolves and peace pipes painted on me!" And, despite the fact that I left it outside my door for THREE MONTHS, no one took it! hahaha

Tellin' you. Destiny. That's why it remained here.
And now I finally painted it and made it as tacky and cliche as I could. And am giving it to Carolyn tonight.
SO EXCITE.

 Behold it's Native American-inspired  glory...

I wish I would have taken a little more time to plan this one out though, because it's clearly not the best painting heh heh. Instead of sketching or doing any sort of practice, I just started painting freehand on the wood with acrylic. Oh acrylic, how we have such a complicated past...

More Bleach Tie Dye

I really need to stop making so many shirts haha.

I've just been mailing them to random friends, no fore-warnings or explanations, so I hope that they aren't getting annoyed with me... Oh well!

Here are two more that I whipped up:

I tried to use a medium pink shirt, but found out that the bleach did not effect this color as much as I had hoped. So, I just laid the shirt on the ground and dripped and splattered the bleach on it. Then I let the bleach dry completely and ended up kind of really liking the result!

After I saw the result of the pink shirt, I decided to try it on purple. I tie dyed it with bleach normally, washed and dried it, then splattered bleach [just with my fingers in a rubber glove] on this one too. I'm mailing this one out today, so I hope my friend likes it!

Yerp, I think I'll lay off the shirts for a while... Happy Monday!

POP

I stepped outside this morning to the most beautiful thing:
It wasn't eight million degrees out. YAAAAAS.

In my spare time this week, I've been makin' some crafty things, writing letters, and doing a little AFF [art for fun!]
Here is the latest drawing that I've been able to finish this week:

I really wish I had a method to my drawing... or that I could do a series or have a consistent style... [or that I could take better pictures haha]
But that's not going to happen any time soon... I have too much art ADD.


But yeeaaahhh, happy Sunday :]

Tie Dying with Bleach

You can never have too much tie dye.
Or at least, that's what I keep saying to reassure myself that I don't have some sort of sick obsession or something...
But I FREAKIN LOVE to tie dye things.

Lately I haven't been using plain dye though- I've been experimenting with using bleach because you can really get some cool effects with it. I'm still working on the right way to use bleach, but this is one of the latest shirts I have made:

I started off with a dark purple shirt and then doused it in bleach. Next time, I probably would not have used as much bleach so that I could have more of the darker purple in there, but ah well :]
Now, there are a million ways to tie dye and bleach tie dye, but this is how I do it...

Step one: Gather your materials. you will need:
-A bucket that you wont mind getting bleach in.
-A big ol' bottle of bleach, of course.
-Rubber bands.
-Rubber gloves, because the bleach will take the color from your hands, trust me haha.
-Aaaaand a dark colored shirt. I have found that black, navy, and dark purple shirts work the best, but I have tried with red and dark pink. But it's always good to experiment!

Step two: This is how I did the swirl design. If you already know how to do the swirl, then you can go ahead and skip the next few steps. But to start, make a pinch where you want the center of your swirl design to be.

Step three: grabbing the area where you made your pinch, swirl your shirt flat out the ground so that the whole shirt starts to spin around this center pinch. Does that even make any sense? I'm not sure, but it should start to look like the photo above haha.

Step four: continue this swirling motion until you have the entire shirt spun up into a condensed bunch like this. It's perfectly okay if the shirt isn't a perfectly circular swirl- the sleeves are going to make the shape a little wonky anyway...

 Step five: rubber band the heck out of your shirt. I'm serious. Wrap a good amount of rubber bands around the shirt so that it holds its shape. Make sure that they are tight! Otherwise you won't get as much of the dark purple, like how I messed up. Whoops.

Step six: throw your shirt into your bucket and put on some gloves. Now, there are two ways to do the bleach. The way that I did it here is that I just poured bleach straight onto the shirt.when doing this, you don't need a whole lot. just pour some on and kind of mop up the excess that runs off so that the shirt is mostly wet. If you want less bleach, you can just pour a little in the bottom of the bucket and mop it up bit by bit with the shirt. I'm experimenting with the second way today, so I'll let you know how it turns out!

Step seven: promptly take your shirt out of the bucket of bleach and set it on some news paper or something. I made mine in my garage [where most of my craftiness happens anyway] where I already had newspaper taped to the floor. Now, only let your shirt sit with the bleach on it for about five minutes. The longer you leave the bleach on, the lighter the shirt will turn out. [and here you can see some of the other shirts I made!]

Step eight: remove the rubber bands and throw your shirt in the washer right away with some soap. This stops the bleaching process and keeps your shirt intact.
And there you have it! Tie dying with bleach! Not that difficult though, no?

Oh! And here is how the red shirt turned out! with this one I just did a fan fold, then folded it in half. 
Good luck with your own shirts! I'm off to go finish mine :]


Ps: Linked up to Here and Here :]

Hipster Buttons

Heerrrrrrro
As you can probably tell, I've recently discovered the photo editing software Pixlr.
And now my new favorite thing is to hipst the heck out of photos haha. For instance, I decided to hipst these picture of some buttons that I made recently:

Ooooooh, Ahhhhh, so hip xD
If you're interested in editing your own photos, Pixlr can be found Here


:]