Sharpie Plate

The baking sharpie on cheap mugs idea has been all over Pinterest, so when I needed a cheap gift for a White Elephant exchange, I decided to give it a shot.  I picked up a plain white square plate at a local Dollar Store and found a stash of colored Sharpies in my cupboard at home.  Actually, it turns out that they weren't Sharpies--they were Bic permanent markers, which I wasn't even aware existed.  I also bought a foam dinosaur hat to include with the gift, but that's not really related to this.

Everyone involved in the gift exchange is a U of M alumni (Go Blue!), so I thought that would make a perfect theme for the plate.  Especially since I can't draw or do anything remotely artistic.  I was pretty much limited to words, which was a challenge in and of itself because my handwriting is certifiably horrible.

I started by trying to freehand draw the block M logo.  It didn't work out so well.  Like I said above: I can't draw to save my life.  Instead, I traced off of my laptop screen onto a piece of paper and cut it out.  You can see my little stencil in the picture below.  I then traced it into the center of the plate in blue and squiggled it in with yellow.

Sometimes when you're writing the same thing (with two very similar parts) over and over again and are surrounded by noisy people, you get distracted and accidentally write the wrong verse.  Instead of having a panic attack, just get some rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip and it will erase like magic.  Probably.  I learned while making another project that this doesn't work quite as well with some Sharpie colors.  Moral of the story: try not to mess up.

I copied the fight song many, many times onto the plate.  As luck would have it (I promise you that it was through no planning or skill), I had exactly the right amount of room to finish a whole verse neatly at the bottom.  Yay!  It's also worth noting that the writing at the top is much thinner than the writing at the bottom because the marker I was using was brand new and its tip got gradually smashed down as I wrote.  It gives it a kind of cool effect that I rather like.

All that was left was to bake it for 30 minutes at 350.  It looked pretty good when I took it out of the oven, so hopefully the marker stays permanent.  I kind of didn't want to give it away, but I managed to part with it. PS. Our oven doesn't usually look that gross, but we had just done an auto clean cycle and hadn't bothered to clean up the ashes.  Oops.

Upcycled Cardigan

The ugly Walmart sweater that I cut up into a skirt in the previous post had a red twin.  It just so happened that I had some scraps of red satin-y fabric from another project that I recently finished, so I decided that I would turn the ugly sweater into a cute cardigan with shiny lining along the inside flaps.

I started by cutting straight down the center of the front of the sweater.  I can't promise that the cut was completely straight because I just free-handed it from the point in the v-neck, but I did the best that I could.  I figure nobody will really notice if it's a little off anyway.

Then I cut out two long, narrow pieces of the red satin-y fabric, one for each side of the center of the cardigan.  I pinned them, right sides together, to the front of the cardigan and sewed.

Then I ironed the edges down to hide the hem and sewed another seam along the inside of the satin lining.

And this was the result.  I didn't add any buttons or closures because I didn't feel like dealing with any of that.  The best part is that now that I have the method down, I have an even cooler cardigan project in the works.

Sweater Skirt Take Two

Actually, the title of this post is a lie.  I made this sweater skirt first.  I just liked the second version a whole lot better.  Plus, this one ended up a lot shorter because it came from a women's v-neck, so I can't really wear it to work.

I started out with this ugly, kind of gross sweater I bought on clearance at Walmart a few years ago.  I was getting rid of it (and its red twin that got chopped up for another project) because it's too big for me now.

I traced out the sides of the skirt and then cut them out.  Just like on the other sweater skirt.  Then I sewed everything together and made a waistband.  Simple as pie.

More plaid flannel!  Yay.  Apparently I'm going through a phase.

Last weekend, I had to help out at a Santa breakfast at the school my  mom used to teach at.  The skirt made a perfect addition to my elf costume.  I literally have no dignity in my life.

Disney Ornament Upgrade

While I was working at Disney last year, I came into possession of a cute little Minnie and Mickey ornament.  I love Christmas ornaments and I love Disney stuff, so it was pretty perfect.

The only problem was that the back of it said "2009 Passholder."  Since I clearly was not an annual passholder in 2009, it seemed kind of silly to hang it on the tree like that.  However, all was not lost, because with my trusty bottle of Mod Podge and a compass, I was able to personalize the back of the ornament in such a way that the passholder part was covered up.

Don't let that orange compass fool you.  It's actually completely horrible and borderline useless.  Still, I persevered and got it to draw a circle.  It took me a few tries to get it right because the compass kept moving, but eventually I got a usable round template for the picture.

Then I dug through my file of hundreds of pictures of my family's visit to Disney World last Christmas in search of the perfect Christmas Castle picture.  I didn't find one.  It seems that all of our Castle pictures were taken at night in poor lighting conditions.  After all these years, we really should know better than that.  Anyway, after narrowing it down to a few options, my mom and I selected this one because it seemed the most likely to fit my purposes.  Then all I had to do was figure out how to make the printer do what I wanted, which required a couple of tries.  I figured it out eventually, and used the template I'd cut out to trace a circle around the good part of the picture.

Then I cut it out and glued it to the center of the ornament with Mod Podge.  I set a thermos lid on it and stacked a travel mug on top in order to make it as flat as possible and left it to dry for a couple of hours.  When it had completely dried, I painted the back of the ornament with another coat of Mod Podge to seal the picture in.  I did one more coat and decided that it was secure enough to go on the tree.  This is what the back looks like now.  It's currently our only ornament because we put the lights on the tree and decided to wait for Jeff to come home from MSU before finishing decorating.  So now we have a mostly naked Christmas tree sitting in the family room.  At least it has this one ornament.

Sweater Skirt DIY

Recently, I've become quite the sweater aficionado.  I spend a lot of time convinced that I'm never going to be warm again, and it hasn't even really gotten cold yet.  This doesn't bode well for the rest of winter.  I've also come to realize why animals spend the fall months packing on as much body fat as possible: it's fantastic portable insulation.  Anyway, now that I've shed 40 pounds of it, I've taken to wearing sweaters to keep warm.  I'm kind of in love with sweater dresses, and I've been wanting to refashion a giant Salvo find into one, but I haven't found one that I like yet.  Instead, I settled for this adorable brown argyle one and turned it into a sweater skirt.

This is what the sweater looked like originally.  It was a men's XL that I got for $1.  I love 5 for $5s at Salvo.  They're pretty much my favorite.

I used another skirt that fit me tightly as a template for cutting out the front and back.  Centering it was easy because I lined up its back seam with the middle row of argyle and just trimmed along the edges.  I would recommend taking even more out of it because the first time I wore it, it fit fine in the morning, but by the end of the day, the fabric had stretched out and I had to keep pulling it up.  I fixed it by taking the side seams in again, but I don't have any pictures of that.

Then I put the two pieces of fabric right sides together and sewed side seams.  I started at the bottom and worked toward the top so that the sweater's original hems lined up.  I folded the top parts over and sewed them into a waistband.  That was it.  These modeling pictures seem to indicate that I wear an excessive amount of plaid flannel.  I can't help it; I'm cold all the time!

I liked it so much that I wore it to work the next day with some fleece-lined tights and another sweater.  This is me pushing Penny away so that the picture wouldn't feature her trying to sniff my crotch.

This is what it actually looked like.  I kind of love it.

Stretchy Paneled Skirt Refashion

I've gotten into a bit of a crafting mood lately, largely thanks to Pinterest, and one of my first projects was to turn a large, ugly red garment into a cute, fitted skirt with black side panels.  I don't really know what the proper description of the original piece of clothing would be.  It sort of looks like a skirt and jacket pair, but they were connected into a sort of dress by a satin lining.  I picked it up at a Salvo thinking that we might be able to use it for a costume for a picture, but it didn't end up working out.  Instead of just throwing it away or re-donating it and wasting the money I had spent, I decided to refashion it into something wearable.

This was the original garment.  Actually, I had already cut the skirt off when this picture was taken, but I arranged it back inside so that I could have a "before" picture of how ugly it really was.

Then I had to slave away with my seam ripper to remove the lining that had attached the skirt to the top portion of the red thingy.  I hate using the seam ripper more than anything.  It's incredibly tedious and usually means that you screwed something up.  Then I took the side seams off of the skirt so that I had two rectangular pieces of fabric.

I was getting rid of this stretchy tank top because it's too big (!) for me now and also I never really liked the way it looked with anything I paired it with.  As you can see, I also forgot to take a "before" shot of this one, but this is what the front originally looked like.  I cut the back of the tank top off using the ribbing as a guide to make it as straight as possible.  Then I folded it in half hot dog style and cut it down the center so that I had two panels.

I free-handed all of the cuts and measurements, so I'm sure a lot of the seams are crooked.  I measured my waist to see how large I should make the skirt and then subtracted an inch since I didn't want to mess with buttons, zippers, or a drawstring.  The natural stretch of the black fabric is enough to hold the skirt up.  Then I trimmed the red cloth using the same fold-it-in-half-and-hope-for-the-best method that I used on the tank top.  If you look closely at the little diagram I made on the sheet of paper, you will see why I shouldn't attempt to do math in the middle of the night.  I had to take in the side seams after I put the skirt together because it was way too big.  It caused the side panels to be slightly narrower than I had originally intended, but everything worked out in the end.

Once everything was cut, I started sewing.  I pinned one side panel to the front section of the skirt and made a straight seam.  I kept the original hems on both garments so that I didn't have to deal with hemming it myself, so I started at the bottom and stitched toward the top of the skirt so that any unevenness caused by the stretchy fabric could be trimmed and hidden by the waistband.  Then I pieced the next panel in, and finally added the back of the skirt.

Because I used straight cuts, when I tried it on, I found that the back of it had an awkward gap that didn't fit me well.  I decided to add a pair of darts onto the front to eat up some of the loose fabric.  I decided where I wanted to place the first one and then used the fold-it-in-half method with the aid of a tape measure to make the lines for the darts symmetrical.

You can sort of see the darts that I traced out in this picture.  I don't own any actual fabric chalk, so I used this awesome purple marker that I love.  I wouldn't recommend doing this.  Then I sewed the darts and finished the skirt by folding down the top and sewing a waistband.

Ta da!  Now I just need somewhere to wear it.  I had been hoping that it could be a work skirt, but it turned out a bit too short for that.