Maybe you’ve heard me talking about the line of skirts that I started with my friend Jocelyn or maybe you haven’t and so I’m telling you now.  I am making a new line of skirts that I am really proud of.  Super wearable and stylish.

photo by Little Paper Cities

This is the skirt you can feel hot in one night, eat and drink too much in and feel fat in the next day, but you’ll still look awesome! It’s cut to flatter, with simple, stylish designs all on the same gray, a line skirt.  We have 4 different designs right now that you can view currently on Etsy.  All skirts have machine stitching and felt detailing.

We had friends road test these skirts and give us feedback on the cut, fabric, design, construction integrity and they passed the test with flying colors!  The verdict was that these are skirts that are built to last with plenty of comfort and stylish designs that works on many different body types.

We had our first craft sale last week at the Lewis Garden Fair.  Here’s a glimpse of our booth.

If you’re interested in learning more about these skirts you can check out our Etsy stop and join our Facebook page.  You can also keep up with us and learn about our upcoming sales on Twitter.

by jen

What’s Bargain Hunting? It’s a sale that happens at the Crystal Ballroom and offers tons
of amazing discounted merchandise that is made by indie artists
or sold in a locally owned boutiques.
The next Bargain Hunting sale is happening August 28th from 12-5pm.

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If you’re interested in becoming a vendor and you’ve never done the sale before
applications are available here.
Returning vendors, your fast track applications were emailed to you over the weekend.
Questions?  Contact us.
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If you’re not already a fan of the sale then you’ll have to come to the next Bargain Hunting.
It’s the perfect shopping experience if you’re looking for fashion, jewelry, art, wares for baby, purses,
bags and more at ROCK BOTTOM PRICES!
Bargain Hunting is the mother of all clearance sales and I am proud to be
one of the three organizers of this event.  The other two ladies who run the sale with me are
Angie Heiney of Frock and Julz Nally of Handmade Julz.

In true Bargain Hunting fashion we had a cocktail at our meeting, just like at the sale.
One of the many things we love about the venue is the staff at the Crystal Ballroom always have the bar fully stocked for you linger while you shop drinking pleasure!

To receive more info about Bargain Hunting you can sign up for our mailing list,
located on our homepage.
Or you can become a fan of Bargain Hunting on Facebook and Twitter.

Many of you know I am editing video tutorials for DIY Lounge these days and  I’ve decided that editing film is like complex math.  In math, you must learn all the basic math and be pretty good at it to be able to execute complex math problems.  Video editing is the same.  I took a Final Cut class at PCM last year.  The class covered all the basics in terms of the editing software itself, but we never imported film or cataloged the videos, so as I’ve been editing videos, I keep running into the brick wall of how to capture and manage the video in the first place.  Last week I got a lesson in how to do this.  It was so obvious once I was shown, but totally impossible prior to the lesson.  Math used to have this same affect on me.

When I was younger obstacles like not understanding how to import and manage video content would have been a deal breaker.  I would have given up and thrown in the towel, but as I’ve grown older I have become aware of my own impatience with myself and the act of learning something new.  I hate to be a beginner, yet as I am growing older I see that if you are going to continue to learn you must be a novice, no matter how uncomfortable it is.

“Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.”  Chamfort

This quote is a good reminder to me that we’re all novices throughout our lives. I just recently turned 40, which I’m liking so far.  As you age you get less focused on what others think and live your life for yourself.  I was always my own person.  Meaning, I really always knew who I was on many levels.  I always wanted to be a mom, craft business person and a witch.  OK, I’m not a witch, but I do wear a lot of black with wild black hair and pale skin, which is sorta witchy.  It’s pretty awesome to be able to go after what you want and not care who is looking and judging, that is, if anyone is a all.  Confidence and self-assuredness comes with age . . . now back to video editing.

This cake was made for my husband and me for our 40th Birthdays by our friend Jocelyn of Bakery Bar.

by: jen

I decided to send my husband an e-card for valentine’s day and started looking at all the different  free online cards available.  There were so many and so many great ones that I thought I should make a post about my finds to spread the love and share them with others.  I have loosely categorized the cards as well.  All of the cards I’m listing are free and quick ways to tell someone you love them or maybe maybe just make someone laugh.

Here are some cool pulp fiction cards.

If you like something a little more sweet and vintage, here are  Victorian valentines.

I liked these hipster cards mostly because they have some gay valentines and I haven’t seen these very often, but they have plenty of other types of cards too.

If you’re more into humor here’s a site with great, funny e-cards, someecards.  Some really walk the line and could land you in the dog house if you’re not careful.

Let’s say you are the romantic type.  Here are the perfect snarky e-cards for you from Blunt Cards. PS. These cards are better for those of you who aren’t in a relationship and want to send something funny to a friend.  If you do send these to your partner, your partner better have a pretty good sense of humor.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all!

Sure, I could have done something easy for my last project, but I wanted to go out with bang.  I have to admit that an unfinished project really bugs me.  I usually either finish a project or hide it from my view where I can forget about it.

I started working on this chair over the summer and then I got busy with other things and never finished it.  As you can see it was pretty bad.  Someone had reupholstered it at some point but they didn’t really know what they were doing.  I decided this chair deserved to be beautified.

This project was so cool that I knew I didn’t want to abandon it, which is why it has been sitting around taunting me with it’s unfinished-ness for months.

One of things that makes this chair really cool is that the design is loosely based on a photographer Damon Winter’s work. A friend gave me a card last year with this design.  The minute I saw it I knew I was going to do my own interpretation of the piece and put my own spin on it.

Here is the chair partly completed.  I added some additional batting to the seat and back of the chair to make it more cushiony.

For the original photo the photographer captured light beams in a window display, but mine was done with ribbon.  I changed the silhouette somewhat by making the image feminine rather than a masculine one.  I also left out the woman in the foreground as I felt I wanted a simpler design. I also changed the color scheme.  In the picture below you can see the detailing that I did to the silhouette.  I created lines with my stitches that both reinforce the image and also add another decorative element.

Day 31: Finishing a Damon Winter Inspired Chair:

Wow, it’s day 31!  I made it . . . in many sense of the word!  I am so thrilled to finally be done, but I also feel like I have a renewed sense of my skills as a maker, artist and designer.   This project was the longest project of all the projects I’ve completed.  In all I think this project has taken me 6 hours to finish, but it looks great and I am very happy with it.  Every once in awhile it’s good to flex your crafty muscles and this one was a fun, rewarding challenge, for sure.

Thank you everyone for reading and sharing this process with me.  I am curious to know what project people would most like to know how to do themselves?  Please let me know which if any, of these projects would you most like to see turned into a tutorial.

In case you didn’t read my first blog post about this project . . . this post is part of a 31 day challenge I am doing to bring more creativity, stories and solutions to my life.  I have been using my creativity almost exclusively for work in the recent past and for the month of January I will creating things for my personal life, talking about them and taking pictures.I would love input from readers as to which project you enjoy the most and if I get enough comments on one particular project I’ll turn it into a tutorial after the 31 day challenge of crafting, stories and solutions is over.  So please let me know what you like!

by:jen

Recently I was going through my closet and found that I owned something like 10 pairs of yoga pants.  Many of them were ill-fitting in one way or another.  I decided I wanted to trick out a pair of my yoga pants and turn them into bloomers.

The first thing I did was to cut off the pants just below the knee.

Then I made 2 very long strips out of the cut off portion of the pants (lower portion of the pants).  I sort of estimated how long I wanted the strips to be.

Using my sewing machine I sewed a long (3.5) straight stitch with my sewing machine all the way on one end of the strips.  On the other side I serged all the way along the strip.  The reason for the straight stitch is so that it doesn’t stretch as I work with it.  The other end that was serged I wanted to stretch slightly to create a subtle ruffle effect.  Then I evenly spaced the strips and stitched them down to the bottom of the pants in a spiral fashion wrapping around the leg.

Day 30: Yoga Pants to Bloomers

Here are the finished bloomers, which I can wear by themselves or under skirts.  What do you think?  I like ‘em.

In case you didn’t read my first blog post about this project . . . this post is part of a 31 day challenge I am doing to bring more creativity, stories and solutions to my life.  I have been using my creativity almost exclusively for work in the recent past and for the month of January I will creating things for my personal life, talking about them and taking pictures.I would love input from readers as to which project you enjoy the most and if I get enough comments on one particular project I’ll turn it into a tutorial after the 31 day challenge of crafting, stories and solutions is over.  So please let me know what you like!

by:jen

Did you know that Sangria is one of the most delicious, affordable and simple drink options you can provide at a party?  It’s true and in this post I am going to cost it out and give you the raddest recipe ever.  It’s a hybrid of a couple of recipes and it’s pretty boozy too!

Here’s the shopping list (prices may vary where you are):

• Box wine – buy the Corbet Canyon Merlot because you can get it for $10.99 and it 4 bottles of wine.
• Brandy – smaller bottle $11.99 (you’ll use half to bottle so $5.99)
• Ginger Ale – 2 liter $1.19
• Orange juice concentrate – $1.67
• Lemonade concentrate – $1.67
• 2 oranges $1.73
• 2 Limes $1.18
• 2 Apples $1.75
• 2 Lemons $1.45

Grand total: $29.62

Day 29: Sangria for 20-ish people for $20-ish

Sangria Recipe:

Directions -

Start this recipe the day before your party.  I like to use a large pot for mixing the batch of sangria in.  Mix together the brandy, lemon juice, lemonade concentrate, orange juice concentrate, red wine. Float slices of lemon, orange and lime, and maraschino cherries in the mixture. Refrigerate overnight for best flavor.  Add ginger ale just before serving.  Then add water to taste.  The reason for the water is that this drink will be pretty thick if you don’t add water.  It’s a great way to make the drink to your liking.  If you like your drinks strong add a cup or two of water.  If you like it a little weaker or you have a larger group to imbibe you can add numerous cups of water.

Makes: 48 1/2 cup servings (everyone can have 2 drinks this way)

Costed out: $.62 per 1/2 cup serving.  If you add more water this recipe can be as low as $.50 per 1/2 cup serving.

In case you didn’t read my first blog post about this project . . . this post is part of a 31 day challenge I am doing to bring more creativity, stories and solutions to my life.  I have been using my creativity almost exclusively for work in the recent past and for the month of January I will creating things for my personal life, talking about them and taking pictures.I would love input from readers as to which project you enjoy the most and if I get enough comments on one particular project I’ll turn it into a tutorial after the 31 day challenge of crafting, stories and solutions is over.  So please let me know what you like!

by:jen

I have a friend named Jocelyn.  She owns a bakery called Bakery Bar.  She spends a lot of her time decorating cakes.  Jocelyn told me she wanted some pillows for her couch in her home.  I told her that we could make them together.  She basically did one of her cake designs, but in a pillow format instead.  She cut out the felt details and drew the design.  I was the sewer in this project because I am a more experienced sewer than she is.

I used batting to create the inner pillow.  One thick piece intended to be used for floor pillows and some thinner long pieces that one might use for a quilt or blanket, but for this project I used them to wrap the pillow.

I cut up the large piece of batting to the dimensions I needed.  Then I cut out some pieces of knit material to create an inner pillow for the slip cover.

It was fun to work on a new project with new designs that I didn’t even have to think about coming up with.

Day 28: Felt Pillows With Flair

Here is the completed pillow.  I hope Jocelyn likes it!

In case you didn’t read my first blog post about this project . . . this post is part of a 31 day challenge I am doing to bring more creativity, stories and solutions to my life.  I have been using my creativity almost exclusively for work in the recent past and for the month of January I will creating things for my personal life, talking about them and taking pictures.I would love input from readers as to which project you enjoy the most and if I get enough comments on one particular project I’ll turn it into a tutorial after the 31 day challenge of crafting, stories and solutions is over.  So please let me know what you like!

by:jen

I made a meatloaf yesterday and realized that I didn’t enough ketchup to top the meatloaf with.  I thought, “maybe I could make my own?”   I remembered that the last time I was at the Victory Bar I had ordered hush puppies that came with homemade ketchup and it was amazing.

I haven’t made ketchup before so I started searching for recipes.  I found this one from Epicurious. I didn’t have any cans of whole tomatoes so I substituted 2 smaller cans of tomato sauce.  I finished it and added it to my meatloaf.  It was unbelievably good.  Next time I think I’ll add a little less brown sugar.  I put the extra ketchup in a canning jar, so we can use it in the future.   Now I want to try my hand at making hush puppies too, maybe this weekend.  Here’s a recipe for hush puppies that sounds great.

Day 27: DIY Ketchup

Can be chilled for up to 3 weeks.

In case you didn’t read my first blog post about this project . . . this post is part of a 31 day challenge I am doing to bring more creativity, stories and solutions to my life.  I have been using my creativity almost exclusively for work in the recent past and for the month of January I will creating things for my personal life, talking about them and taking pictures.I would love input from readers as to which project you enjoy the most and if I get enough comments on one particular project I’ll turn it into a tutorial after the 31 day challenge of crafting, stories and solutions is over.  So please let me know what you like!

by:jen

I have this shirt that is waaaay too short. It’s one of those shirts that every time I wash it it’s a smidge shorter than the time before.  I decided I was going to redo this article of clothing for functional reasons, but also in the process add some detailing to make it custom and unique.

I used a bathing suit pull-over thingy.  What do you even call those things?  Bathing suit cover-ups?  I almost never wear bathing suits and when I do I cover up with my clothes so this cool green thing is getting no use in my life.  Perfect for a redo.

I decided that I going to use the top part of the cover-up at the bottom of my shirt.  To tie the piece together I decided I was going to make an octopus embellishment.  I cut out the octopus out of paper.  Then I laid it down on the shirt and tried it on to be sure that the octopus was placed above my breast and not on my breast. 

Next I cut out the octopus and pinned it onto the shirt.  Notice that I didn’t iron this shirt or the embellishment.  I also didn’t back the embellishment with a stabilizer either.  I wanted to keep this really simple.  If you aren’t much of a sewer a stabilizer is a good idea, but I like to challenge myself and do things in new ways when I can.

I sewed the octopus onto the shirt using a straight stitch of 3.5.  When I was done stitching I trimmed away the excess material.  After I was done sewing the octopus.  I pinned and then sewed the top of the cover-up (the smocking portion) to the bottom of the shirt.  I could have made this into a mini dress if I had wanted to by leaving the bottom portion (the skirt part) of the cover-up, but I wanted a shirt so I cut that part off and used it for the embellishment.

Day 26: Short Shirt?  No Problem.

Here is the completed shirt.  I took two items that I wasn’t wearing and created one super wearable piece that I LOVE.  I hope this inspires you to create something new in your wardrobe from something or somethings that weren’t working for you in your life.

In case you didn’t read my first blog post about this project . . . this post is part of a 31 day challenge I am doing to bring more creativity, stories and solutions to my life.  I have been using my creativity almost exclusively for work in the recent past and for the month of January I will creating things for my personal life, talking about them and taking pictures.I would love input from readers as to which project you enjoy the most and if I get enough comments on one particular project I’ll turn it into a tutorial after the 31 day challenge of crafting, stories and solutions is over.  So please let me know what you like!

by:jen