Mystery machine

Another project I worked on a while back but never posted is of this little golf cart my work friends and I got to turn into a Scooby Doo Mystery Machine. The city wanted a mystery machine to drive in the holiday kick-off parade since the giant balloon they had to carry in the parade was of Scooby Doo. Jean, Glenn and I were up for the challenge. 

Done!

It was time consuming and difficult at times but I had a lot of fun. Jean and Glenn are two of my favorite local artists so I learned a thing or two from them in the process. It was the first time I ever worked on a project like this. I would definitely do something like it again if the opportunity ever arises!

Jewelry and July

After that last shirt refashion I decided it was time to do something else besides sewing for my next project. I went with beading and made this really beautiful mint, pink and green necklace. The owl pendant used to be on a ring.

I love how it turned out! I think the shape of the draping that the double strands make is so cool. It actually looks even better when you put it on.

Besides the jewelry making I've been out celebrating Fourth of July. My husband and I rode bikes and met up with my parents and friends on the other side of the Mississippi. 

We rode our bikes over the Arsenal Bridge and as we were riding across a train was crossing too. We raced the train over the river and across the bridge into Illinois. It was quite exciting...And loud. 

 Matt took this picture of me while we were out riding and I really like how it turned out. I have a tendency to be overly critical, cynical, and what have you when it comes to photos of myself so its kind of cool to see a snapshot I genuinely like.

 Plus my bike is in the photo and I adore my bike. <3 <3 

 It was dark out during our ride but we still got a few fun photos anyway.

Matt was channeling his inner Abraham Lincoln for Fourth of July spirit. My insane and awesome (insanely awesome?) sense of style is rubbing off on him....excellent. Mwah haha.

We were quite a sight to be seen out riding our bikes that evening.

We painted our bathroom yesterday and I have a couple of spray paint projects and another necklace I'm working on too. That's pretty much it though. I'll post more results when I get some of these new projects finished up! Thanks for reading :)

Leopard print, button up, collared shirt refashion

While I had some time off work I tried my hand at another freestyle sewing project. This time I refashioned an old blouse my mom gave me because it was torn at some of the seams.

The first thing I did was mend the seams and in my opinion, everything about this fabric is fabulous. It's sheer, lightweight, LEOPARD PRINT.  However when I tried the shirt on the fit was just so so. It was calling to me for a refashion.

I cut off the collar of the shirt and the strips of buttons and button holes down the front of it all in one long strip. To use in a future refashion project perhaps?

I hemmed the front of the blouse and using 3 layered fabrics from an old dress of mine I fashioned a new mandarin style collar. I lightly traced a pattern for the collar using scrap pieces of poster board and another blouse I had with a mandarin collar. I made a cuff around the sleeves which I decided to shorten as well. 

Afterall, it's finally summer. And it's lumpin' hot out. 

I know. There's a lot of leopard print going on. It's pretty tacky but I've decided that's okay! It's tacky in the most gawdy, wish I was in Vegas, watching Wayne Newton, eating buffet and gambling my savings kinda way. 

Or perhaps Queen of the trailer park- smoking a cig, a can of Busch Lite close by, my hair is large, my makeup fierce. And I'm grilling up hotdogs in the yard for the 3rd time that week...

I don't smoke cigs but I do eat A LOT of hotdogs. Especially this time of year. 

Hotdogs are awesome....

Hotdogs lumpin' rule.

 Anyway, where was I?..Oh yeah! And the witness to mine and Matt's wedding was an Elvis in a shiny gold suit jacket. Who may have been botoxed...???

No matter. 

Point is I think this shirt and I are going to get along just fine :)

Life lately...

Well, what can I say? Life has been good. I've stayed busy making stuff, for work and for home and it has been an awesome time.

I had a foxy ladies sewing meet-up at work one Tuesday night earlier this month. The foxy ladies include my co-worker, Jean, my boss, Caroline, one of the most awesome volunteers ever, Chris, and then myself. I call us the foxy ladies because our mission was to create as many belt attached fox tails as possible. Since the name of the new play town exhibit at the museum is called Fox Hollow we imagined it's citizens being comprised of foxes. This quickly evolved into woodland creatures though, including beavers, deer, wolves, raccoons and who knows what we'll come up with next. :)

I don't have a pic of the raccoon tails. My co-worker, Jean, made those later in the week and then I sewed the belts on. They're pretty darn adorable though.

Here is me having wild fun figuring out this fox tail business...

"Am I doing it right?!"

After our epic sewing meet-up Jean handmade us each one of these felt fox face pins. I repped it at the exhibit's grand opening right next to the Fox Hollow button I helped design and make.

It was a cool way to commemorate a fun night of trying something new together and being around for the completion of this museum renovation. What can I say, Jean is awesome :) I'm looking forward to finding more projects we can all team up for and work on for the museum. 

I didn't make this but I'm excited about it. My friend, Jess, and I checked out Good Karma Shirt Co. in downtown Rock Island and while I was there I bought a pair of galaxy leggings. 

I was completely fascinated by them and couldn't help but love them despite how far out they were. I'm a little far out myself you might of noticed ;)  Experimenting with fashion is something I always have fun with and galaxy leggings, my friends, definitely make for an interesting fashion experiment! I think they rock and Good Karma Shirt Co. is definitely worth checking out if you are in or near the Quad City area. 

It is a tiny store but it reminded me of shopping in Chicago because they carry some of those unique/super trendy items you can only find online or in big cities. It's so fun to be browsing along and then stumble upon those items in person though, ya know? I'm glad to see my little hometown(s) getting some Good Karma coming it's way ;D They also carry vintage pieces and I'm talking the vintage you WANT to wear. Like I said, check it out sometime. The store is sweet :)

At home I painted the word abide using some of the many pieces of cardboard I've been hoarding on my front porch.  Here it is hanging up above our living room doorway. 

Since I had all these squares of cardboard cut the same size I thought it would be neat to spell out a word using some of it. I wanted to put it in our living room and I had a few ideas for words I could spell out. Relax, calm, peace, love...chill? Ha ha. They seemed do-able but none of them felt perfect. 

I asked my husband what he thought I should spell out and it was like he knew what I should do the whole time. He was just waiting for me to ask. :) He said I should paint the word abide. If you love The Big Lebowski you should know where he is coming from. We both laughed about it, and then we were both like, "BUT SERIOUSLY". Ha. So anyway, that was that. I had fun picking a style of font to use and just rolling with it. I sketched it out free hand and then painted the letters in. 

While we discussed words I could paint Matt and I had our own little craft session. I also save corks (especially from champagne bottles) so we turned some into magnets. Collison would cut the coolest looking corks into two pieces and I would glue magnets on the back of them. Here is our first little experimental batch which by the way turned out perfect. yay! 

If you ever want to make your own magnets I recommend using E6000 glue. They sell it with all the other super glues at the craft store and just about everywhere. It is industrial strength so your magnets won't come apart. 

A couple years back Collison and I made a chess set out of champagne corks but I can't find the picture on my computer. I might have to take another pic of it so I can post it on here for you all to see. 

Well, that's about it for now. I'll keep posting my projects, experiments, art and creations as they come along. :) Thanks for reading!