Maternity Skeleton Halloween DIY shirt

I don't know how new this is, but it's new to me, and it is so totally awesome!  I love the look, especially this time around when I'm about halfway through my pregnancy and can really enjoy wearing this shirt!  With my daughter I was only about 6 weeks at Halloween, so I wasn't broadcasting it (with two miscarriages before her, I didn't want to have to tell and then un-tell again... it's pretty traumatic).  With my son I found out I was pregnant the first week of November, so totally missed Halloween.

I looked online, thinking I'd take the lazy way out and just buy one of these shirts.  Well, the one I really liked here, is $35 and it's just a t-shirt, not even an actual maternity shirt.  Other ones I didn't like the design as well, some had the baby skeleton part looking downright creepy.

So following this tutorial, I decided to make my own.

I know, I know... I really need to get on the ball with taking pictures during my making of things.  But this one was just too cute not to blog about, even if I don't have any before pictures.

I bought an actual maternity shirt from Target for $15.  I still would have liked to get it cheaper, but I didn't have time and couldn't find another plain, black, long sleeve maternity shirt for less.  I also had to buy the giant roll of freezer paper for $6, white fabric paint for $1.50, crimson fabric paint for $1.50, and 2 sponge brushes for $0.50 each.  I don't have an exacto knife, but used a regular utility knife and honestly found it easier to cut out the bigger pieces (ribs, heart, head) with regular scissors.

I simply laid out the freezer paper on the table, having already cut it to the length I needed for the shirt.  Instead of tracing a pattern, I just decided to draw it on free-hand using the original shirt I liked best:

I'll admit I got lazy and tried to do this as quick as possible.  I also omitted some ribs at the top and bottom to make it all fit because the shirt I bought was a scoop neck, so I didn't have as much space at the top.  I ironed on the freezer paper as the tutorial says, then put two coats of paint (allowing to dry between coats) and peeled the freezer paper off very carefully. All in all I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.  

I got to wear it for the first time at a local amusement park.  We took the kids for their annual Halloween festivities.  Given that both I and the kids now had skeleton shirts (theirs bought by Nana), I felt bad leaving my poor Hubby out, so I made him one too.  

I was thoroughly amazed by all the compliments I received on my shirt.  I had at least 7-8 people tell me to my face how cute it was and probably overheard another 5-6 people in passing say something like "did you see how cute her shirt was?"  It felt really good!

Football Baby Blanket

So saw something very similar to this on pinterest.  I didn't even bother following the link to the original, just went from the picture I saw and used some scrap fabric I had to create this blanket.  I'm sure I'll be making more of these in the future, it turned out super cute and the kids love it.  Not to mention it's awesome working with fleece fabric as it doesn't fray so there's no need to do a ton of extra work sewing edges under.

Vow Renewal Dress

In September, my Hubby and I renewed our vows for our 10th wedding anniversary.  Originally my plan was to take my actual wedding dress, tear it apart, and make a new, 50's style, cocktail dress out of it... with the help of my aunt who is an amazing seamstress.

I don't have a good picture of my actual wedding dress on this computer, but here are some pictures I saved as inspiration for what I wanted to create from my wedding dress...

I love the tops of these next two.  I hate my arms, so I rarely wear anything that's sleeveless or with cap sleeves.  Plus I love the lace look, especially after seeing Princess Kate's wedding dress.

So that was my plan... make my wedding dress into a new dress that was somehow similar to these inspirations above.  

And then this happened...

We found out in June that we're expecting our third child.  He/She is due in February, which would make me almost halfway through my pregnancy for our vow renewal.  Given that I was already scared of cutting my wedding dress apart to make a new dress, there was little chance of figuring out how to make it into a maternity dress.  So on to plan B....

I started shopping online, looking for a maternity dress that would be similar to what I wanted.  I found this one that was perfect...

but then saw the price tag... $300!  Um, no.  I wouldn't pay that for a dress that I would wear over and over again, let alone a maternity dress that would probably only be worn once!

So onto plan C.

I bought a maternity dress pattern online for $13.  I made a practice dress first, and boy am I glad I did.  It turned out way too big and I hated the way it was gathered the whole way around the waist, it ended up making me look enormous!  Once I altered the pattern to fit the way I wanted/needed it to, I got started with my real dress.  And I am so happy with the way it turned out.  It ended up being much more flattering on me than I thought when I first tried it on.  Plus I have to admit this was the first time I've made a dress from a pattern.  I'm amazed it turned out this well considering I have very little, really no experience making clothing from patterns.

Here's the finished product in action

Rapunzel's Hair

So I haven't had a lot of time for a good project lately.  Life's been busy.  But while Goose was in school one day and I was cleaning up toys, I remembered a pin I had on Pinterest for how to get the tangles out of your dolls hair.  I would include the actual pin link, but since the link didn't go anywhere, here's simply a screen shot of the pin itself.

Oddly enough we have the exact same Rapunzel doll and while ours' hair isn't as wild as the pin's "before" picture, it was tangled enough to drive me nuts so I decided to give it a try.  

I took out the braid in her hair and proceeded to spray it with the fabric softener/water mix.  It took some time and I still had to sit and pick at the knots... and again, ours wasn't nearly as tangled as the one in the pin photo... and it still took a while.  I even soaked her hair in the fabric softener and let it sit for 10 minutes and tried again.  This made it a little easier, but I still really had to work at it to get the tangles out.  I'm scared to try on her Belle doll.  Her hair is a really big mess.  

In the end her hair still looked kind of frizzy at the worst part and it was soaked and soft here, not even tangled still, but overall it was a big improvement.  And she smelled wonderful too.  

I don't know if this method will keep her hair from tangling again or make it easier the next time it needs to be combed out and fixed, but as of right now I'd call it about even.  It wasn't a fantastic pin and it wasn't a total fail.

I decided to put her hair back in braid, giving her the look from the end of the movie (and hopefully saving myself the aggravation of her hair being a huge mess again soon). 

And of course the entire time I was working on this, Monster-Man stood on the other side of the gate and whined at me because he wanted the doll.  So when I was done I handed her over to which he promptly got mad and threw her on the floor and cried.  *sigh*

Raggedy Ann Dress

 

Here's my first blog refashion.  I bought this skirt at Goodwill because it looked super comfortable and I loved the print.  However it was kind of faded and frumpy.  The pink from the flowers had run into the rest.  I decided to try and dye it a nice shade of purple.  I was thinking that I'd match it up with an old solid purple maternity shirt that I don't wear anymore except around the house and make it into a dress.  

I followed the directions on the Rit bottle exactly as they said, except the part where it said let it soak for 30 minutes.  I put the skirt in the washer with the dye and forgot about it... for two hours. This is what I ended up with...

 Yikes.  Too dark and looking way worse than before.

But turn it inside out and look how nice this purple is!

 I pulled it up around my boobs to see where I wanted it to fall as a dress.  When I did this I realized it was way too full and definitely needed taken in some.  

I lined it up where I wanted the front to be and sewed a seam down the back taking it in quite a bit.  Then I chopped off the excess and the waistband.

It's funny that the tee I was wearing in the before picture now actually matched the inside of the skirt perfectly so I decided to use it as the top for my new dress.  I put the shirt on and the taken in part of the skirt and marked both where they needed to meet for it to fall where I wanted it to under my bust.

 

Because the top of the skirt was now so jagged and uneven from me just chopping off the elastic waistband I decided to measure up from the top seam from the first layer.  I'm sure there's a more technical way to do it, but this was the best I could think of quickly.  I made sure several times that the shirt's right side and the skirts right side (or really the inside-out, but the solid purple part) were together when I pinned it before I sewed it.  

Then I used my machine's stretch stitch to sew it together.  And as you can see I put the pins in the wrong way.  I'm really good at doing that!

I tried it on and was glad that it met up the way I wanted, but it was still pretty loose and un-shapely.  I took the sides in a bit more to get a more fitted feel, but not too much so that it was still loose and easy to get into.

I decided to use some of the bottom of the tee to make a pocket for the bottom of the skirt.  

And here's the finished product.  It's not the most flattering thing I've ever worn, but it is probably the most comfortable.  I absolutely love it, and the pocket was the best addition.  It is nice and deep and was perfect for my day of in and out of the van with the kids.  I just dropped my phone and keys in my pocket and away we went.  

 

It's also great for lounging around the house as well. :)

Welcome!

Hi, my name is Jenn, and I'm addicted to Pintrest. 

There... I said it... a weight has been lifted. 

I have over a thousand pins.  One third of them are probably food/recipes, another third are crafts; whether it be sewing, knitting, etc., and the rest are misc.  So two thirds are things I want to re-create, what's that, close to 700 pins?  Of which I've probably actually done maybe 20.  Ha!

I'm really good at starting projects and not always so great at finishing them. 

I'd like to think that I'm a mostly type-A personality.  I like to be organized.  I hate clutter.  When it's something important, I can be very organized and well pulled together.  But most of the time it's more like I get irritated by the clutter, start throwing stuff into a bag or box to take to whatever area of the house it belongs, thinking that I'll sort through it and put the stuff away when it gets there, but more often than not the bag/box sits somewhere and I completely forget what I put in it and then am frantically searching for something and guess where it is?

I can also be very creative when I want to be.  I came across this picture on Pintrest and it suits me perfectly.

 So I've decided to start a blog to share all the projects I do.  Whether they are something original or something from Pintrest.  I'll even share the Pintrest fails, as I'm sure there will be many.

The main inspiration for this blog though is the Refashionista.  If you haven't heard of her, check out her blog.  She's an amazing young woman who takes thrifted clothing, 99% of which she pays no more than a dollar for, and she turns them into trendy, fashionable pieces. 

I wish I had the time and the energy to make this simply a re-fashioning blog, like hers, as it's my new favorite thing to do.  I had never given a thought to taking something old and refashioning it into something new.  I always pictured either buying as-is or making from scratch, which gets long and tedious and then I get sloppy and don't finish it.  But seeing as how I don't have that time, and I also have a lot of other projects I like to work on, I'm just going to make it a collection of all sorts of crafting, sewing, gardening, home-repair, etc projects. 

So stay tuned for some cool stuff coming up.  Don't worry, I've got plenty of projects half-started.  I'll even give you a sneak peak.  I assume everyone is familiar with the game "cornhole".  If you're not, check it out, it's loads of fun.  My Uncle has made home-made boards in the past and he gave us an old set he no longer wanted.  I immediately wanted to re-paint them as they had a checkered flag and NASCAR stuff all over them.  I painted them plain white and my brother-in-law, who's artistic talents are unbelievable, drew the Pittsburgh Pirate's mascot and the Pittsburgh Penguin's mascot on them for me.  I just got them painted.  They still need to be clear-coated and I need to get the bags made.  Hopefully they'll be done and in action before the 4th of July!