You'd think I was a Nail Technician...

I've had a problem for awhile now on WHERE TO PUT ALL MY NAIL POLISH. Seriously, it's a hard dilemma. For awhile I was using a paper bag from Bath and Body Works. There was, however, an unfortunate incident in which the bag tore down one side. :(

So with lack of anything better to use, I put it all in this.
My Batman trick or treat bucket.


It didn't work very well though...that and it would be kinda weird taking it to friend's houses when they wanted to do "spa day". I decided that this needed a crafty solution. I googled "Crafty bag ideas tutorials" and got a good tutorial for a simple bag. I looked it over and went to work making my own. No patterns for me! haha!
It is flannel plaid on the outside, lined with leftovers from a white sheet. The whole bottom half is reinforced with cardboard so that it stands up and doesn't buldge with all the heavy glass bottles of nail polish. :)
I had made some cute little felt flowers awhile back when I found a tutorial for them on the world wide web. They have been laying around my art room for a few weeks so I stuck them on. :) I quite like it.
All my nail polish dumped out on my bed...

All of my nail polish in the bag! Sadly...It's a perfect fit...which means there will be a problem if I purchase any more.


Which I probably will. >.<

Clutter Problem

Sooooo this is my "Arts and Crafts Room" also known in my house as the "Pit". There is literally so much STUFF packed into this tiny room that you have to be an acrobat just to get across it. There's actually even an exercise bike in there somewhere...

The sad part is...when the picture was taken, it's gotten a lot better. I cleaned and organized a bunch in there...and it still looks like this. Kinda discouraging. You can tell there's been several different attempts at organizing...they never work.

And then there's just random stuff that isn't even mine (such as Dad's pinball machine backglass sitting up against one wall for no aparent reason) cluttering up the place.

That's supposed to be John Travolta...but I honestly don't see it.

The walls of this room are white, boring, and drab. The carpet is brown, like dirt in my backyard. The ceiling is actually the same ceiling tiles that my HIGHSCHOOL classrooms had. All-in-all, this room stifles any creativity whatsoever.

I get so claustrophobic in this room with all the STUFF, that it's too overwhelming to try and clean by myself. I just don't know where to start. I've tried starting in one corner and working my way into the room but stuff is so strewn about that it's impossible to start in one corner.
I've tried organizing certain groups of things at a time (fabric, paper, stamps, photos...) but that also ends in disaster.


My temporary fix? Not even using the room at all (unless I need something from it, that's the only reason I will risk my life entering the abyss)....I moved my crafts across the hall to the "media room" or "the room with the giant tv and all our old couches".

Dad is not pleased.

This is before I cleaned it. It actually looks much better now. I'm not gonna turn it into a second Pitt. :P



I wish my art room looked like this:

OMG. Shoes.

Awhile ago I watched the new movie Burlesque (with Christina Aguliara and Cher) with my friend Amanda. In the movie Ali (Christina Aguliara) wears these AMAZING designer heels.

I coveted them.

They were soooo superly amazing!!! I knew I couldn't afford them, but during this glitter heel project I remembered that I had wanted these glittery lace chiffon heels from the movie. And I thought...

I could try and make some.







So I did.

Amanda and I went to Goodwill and bought cheap heels to use for glitter heels.
(She wanted glitter heels too!)

I bought these tan heels for $5

And Amanda got these cute black heels for $5

We bought five different colors of Martha Stewart's fine glitter: Onyx, Hematite, Turquoise, Silver, and Tourmaline (pink).

We then set to work covering a little section of each shoe at a time with modge podge, and then glitter. We knocked off the excess onto some scrap paper so we could put it back in the bottle for more projects.

It wasn't long before our hands and the whole room was sparkly. (Oops...sorry Dad!! He's not a fan of his carpet being glittery...)

After I made my heels silver on the back of the heel and on the bottom (like in the picture) I hot glued some white lace detail to the outside edge of each shoe and then hot glued a light pink chiffon over the top to try and achieve the same look as the fantabulous shoes.



Oh, and sadly my previous hot glue gun, which I inherited from my mother who had it for who knows how long, finally was retired after about 8 years of use on top of my mom's use of it before me. Poor little thing...so worn out...

So it is now replaced with this NEW hot glue gun. So far it's served me well. :) But we'll see...it was from Walmart after all...


ANYWAYS

Here's the results!



I think they turned out pretty well for my first time making a shoe... :)
(I used THIS tutorial for making the chiffon flower.)

And here's Amanda's! (They are intense!!)

We had so much fun doing these...we decided to do some of our normal heels too! I had some black heels I've worn a LOT and they were pretty scuffed up and slightly chewed by my puppy. I had done a quick fix with some black fingernail polish to cover up the marks. Now...They are GLITTERY! :D

Amanda had some black flats that she didn't really like to wear...so we made them GLITTERY!

Well that's all for now.





We have also decided that when we die and the coroner cuts us up to see why we died, they are going to discover that our insides are lined with glitter.

Walmart Sales Racks Have Potential

I am never one to pass up a good bargain. I also live in the clearance section. A large portion of my wardrobe comes from clearance. Another portion of my clothing comes from the thrift store, but that's a topic for another post. :)

I occasionally browse Walmart's clearance racks for potential treasures when I visit WallyWorld's epic black hole of STUFF. I often find things that can be altered slightly to make them fantastic instead of "Ew, did you get that at Walmart? It fits you all wrong." which is usually what happens when one shops at Walmart for clothing.

My latest Walmart re-construction was this blouse I got off the clearance rack for five bucks.
You see how horribly unflattering it is?? Ugh, I didn't even want to post this picture up, but it was a necessary evil. I bought it because I loved the detail at the top of the shirt, so I just chopped off the bottom and made it into a shrug of sorts.
Which looks a WHOLE lot better if you ask me. :)

Magic Boxes!

There is this great site called "StumbleUpon" in which you can "Stumble" onto different sites according to the topics you like. This has become hazardous for me and my sleeping schedule lately as I now have to have a separate folder in my bookmarks for all the crafty things I want to try. My crafty friend Amanda and I were stumbling for something creative to do one night and we stumbled upon Leah Killian's Magic Boxes and knew immediately that we HAD to make some. So we gathered up all our fancy papers, the glue gun, and all Amanda's scrapbooking supplies and started working.





We made a lot of boxes.









A LOT.










This is the first one I made. Pretty plain compared to the ones on the site though.
Box number two was much more creative than box number one was. I had this black and white paper that I just HAD to use.After that the ideas just came flowing out. So I made a few more...
Amanda made some too...but since we stayed up till 4am making them, she took them home before I remembered we forgot to take pictures. :(

So Many Gloves

Upon discovery of the wonderful world of Etsy...I was browsing the many stores and crafty things when I stumbled upon the world of crocheted fingerless gloves. I loved them! I wanted some! But I couldn't afford them! I could however afford $3 yarn and a $2 crochet hook. Learning to crochet took many many youtube tutorials curtosy of the wonderful Theresa and remembering the basics of what my grandmother taught me as a little girl when she attempted to teach me how to crochet. (At that age crochet was simply too boring and time consuming when there was mud outside to play with.) Another problem was my inability to read "crochet patterns" which look something like this:
Rnd 1: 6 sc in 2nd ch from hook. Rnd 2: 2 Sc in each sc around – 12 sc. Rnd 3: [Sc in next sc, 2 sc in next sc] 6 times – 18 sc. Rnd 4: [Sc in next 2 sc, 2 sc in next sc] 6 times – 24 sc. Rnd 5: [Sc in next 3 sc, 2 sc in next sc] 6times – 30 sc. Rnds 6-12: Sc in each sc around. Rnd 13: [Dec] 15 times – 15 sc. Neck-Rnd 14: [Sc in next 3 sc, dec] 3 times – 12 sc. Rnd 15: Sc in each sc around. Stuff head. Rnd 16: [Sc in next 5 sc, inc] twice – 14 sc. Rnd 17: [Sc in next 6 sc, inc] twice – 16 sc. Rnd 18: [Sc in next 7 sc, inc] twice – 18 sc. Rnds 19 and 20: Sc in each sc around. Body-Rnd 21: [Sc in next 2 sc, inc] 6 times – 24 sc. Rnds 22-30: Sc in each sc around. Rnd 31: [Dec] 12 times – 12 sc. Rnd 32: [Dec] 6 times – 6 sc. Fasten off. Finish stuffing. Weave yarn tail through remaining 6 sc, draw up firmly to gather; fasten securely. LEG (Make 4): With A, ch 2.

which is pretty much greek to me. And I was too lazy to try and learn how to speak the language of crochet. So....I studied pictures of fingerless gloves and crocheted my little heart out and after a few failed attempts and styles I decided I didn't like...I eventually came up with this:Which I proceeded to make a in few different colors:And then while browsing my local JoAnn's...I found the most amazing yarn EVER. It's called Sensations Angel Hair Boucle Yarn and it's the softest thing my hands have ever touched. I imediately decided that I wanted gloves out of it, and since there was a sale...I bought two colors. :)
I had to alter my pattern a bit because there was less yarn in these "sceins" than the Simply Soft yarn I'd been buying at Walmart...but It worked out beautifully.
If you like what you see...you can buy these from me on Etsy.com HERE. :) Or you can simply enjoy the awesomeness of these gloves. haha!

A Lace Obsession

Once upon a time my great aunt passed away, leaving an entire basement FULL of arts and crafts. Upon going through all her stuff with fellow family members to clean out her house (everything was also up for grabs as immediate family members had removed certain keepsakes) I stumbled upon a MASSIVE HORDE OF ANTIQUE LACE....which I promptly took home among other things such as buttons, thread, fabric, and all her silk flower making paraphernalia.

This stash of lace sat in my (very much cluttered) arts and crafts room, which I inherited from my mother, for many many years. I could never decide what to do with it all, and at the time not wearing anything with lace on it (I thought it was evil and girly...I have changed my ways). Till Halloween 2009 upon which I had found this:A tiered lace gown at my local mall (not the exact dress but they sold something similar that had more of an "antiqued lace" feel). I LOVED IT. I wanted one. But...I couldn't afford the $170 price tag. Then I remembered the stash of antique lace in my basement and an obsession formed. I decided that I didn't need another prom dress (had about 7 already...I know...it's sad.) and I needed a reason to wear a dress like this. Then it dawned on me. Halloween was only a couple months away! I concluded that this style of dress could be made into a Halloween costume. I then created (after a month or so of hard labor, sore fingers, and almost going insane from the tedious work of sewing ALL that lace on...) a cute little Red Riding Hood costume!
I loved it apart from the top part...the lace poofed out and made my mid section look a lot bigger than it actually was sadly. But I finished it the night before Halloween and didn't have time to attempt to fix it. I wore it that night at a "Halloween Masquerade Ball" (that's why my face is painted with a masquerade mask) and then all that hard work hung in the back of my closet for a year!
It took me that long to have the thought "Hey, that would make an excellent skirt...". It also took me that long before I was wearing lace and girly things on a regular basis instead of a sweatshirt and jeans everyday. (forgive me fashion gods, I knew not what I did!) It took me around 8 months to actually take the costume out of my closet, downstairs, and chop it off to make it into a skirt. I was also too lazy (as the costume had a corseted bodice and no zipper) to make a correct closure....soooo I wear it to church held together by a safety pin...not that you can tell...>.>

Btw...it looks awesome with a black petticoat that I bought for this year's Halloween costume (queen of hearts). :)