Hand Carved Stamp Art - making an old bikini new again

Here's a little project I did to revamp an old bikini.  I am currently in love with anything chevron or tribal and handcrafted block-printed fabrics are to die for (but a tad pricey).  I am on a tight budget so no shopping for me!  I decided I would be creative today and try my hand at this block printing thing I've been seeing around the web.  Plus it will add a little something to a basic black bikini I have hanging around - and if it doesn't turn out then no biggie...

First off I raided my parents wine cork stash and picked two clean corks to carve up.

I drew a triangle and chevron pattern on each cork then took a utility knife and carved them out.  These patterns are super simple and not hard to carve at all - I find that simple looks best when making a stamp and the end result will depend on how you use the pattern in repeats or design.

I decided to forgo the chevron and stick with the triangle.  I measured where I wanted the stamps to be placed on the bikini and laid some tape down as guidelines.  I used a small paintbrush to apply paint to the stamp before printing.  Then stamp!

It looked pretty good as is, but the paint I used came out a little faint.  I don't know if it was because I was just using crafters acrylics or if it was inevitable with the black background.  So I decided to paint another layer over the stamped image.  This was easy and really made the gold stand out.

I measured and added a second layer of triangles (yet another Jinx photobomb).  I used Golden brand acrylics paint in Iridescent Gold.

It's hard to get a final result picture without blatantly showing my boobies but it is a bikini so here it is...

I am fairly happy with the results.  This is just a lay-out-in-the-sun bikini so the paint should last. The rows of triangles were less straight than I anticipated due to boobie curve (doh, should have realized this) but it looks pretty neat - and the bottoms that go with this bikini have gold hardware details at the hips so it looks like it was meant to go together.

I definitely want to make some more stamps and do up a scarf with this printing technique.  I will also research and invest in some fun fabric inks!

Nursery Final Touches

Abbey and I spent the day together painting a few canvases to put up in Desmond's nursery.  I painted a small canvas with a black silhouette of the world and the blue elephant picture here.  The elephant painting was inspired from a print we had seen at IKEA.

Abbey did a great painting of the giraffe here (love the expression!) and the hippo was done by none other than Steve!  The bright red here is used throughout the room - it was the paint they chose to use on the IKEA dresser.

Deciding on a layout.

This is where those pom poms from the shower ended up.  The red dresser looks great.

I love the striped ceiling and the bright red accents!

I recovered an old glider Steve got from a friend in cute nursery fabric and made the D pillow.

Steve put up these simple bookshelves.  The perfect way to display books and toys!

The completed photo wall.  So cute!  (we're going to put handprints and footprints on the empty canvases)

Kitty loves the new rugs!  All ready for baby...

Abigail's Baby Shower!

Ok, so here comes a long post!  I have been long anticipating the day of Abbey's baby shower.  My sister-in-law Dorothy and I were the hosts, and it really was the first party I completely put together myself (ok, Dorothy helped a lot with the cooking, set-up, and clean-up)  But the decorations, a majority of the menu, and the party planning was done exclusively by moi.  And, as you can well guess, I reveled in the opportunity to create!

My brother Tom and his wife Dorothy offered their beautiful home (even in the midst of a huge ongoing remodel - see my awesome brother's blog HERE) up for the party location.  Thank goodness for their large rooms because it was perfect.  I made a few craft paper buntings and hung them up later to be given to Abbey for nursery room decor.  I simply cut out a bunch of triangles and glued them onto a long string of twine.  I also used the twine to hang the blue tissue paper tassels onto the buffet.

Safari animals (bought at Michael's), some cute leaf ribbon, candles in mason jars, and a few treasures from the sea - all in a rustic box left over from T and D's wedding (made of "Folly-Wood" of course) - and boo-yeah you've got a centerpiece!

No party is complete without tissue paper pom poms!  I added some rain drops because it's a shower, and believe it or not it was not raining in Washington today.
I simply cut a bunch of tear drop shapes out of various blue craft papers (again a lot of left overs from wedding crafts were used - I keep too much) then I ran them through my sewing machine letting about an inch or two of thread run between each rain drop.
Super easy and the result was stunning.

More pom poms, more bunting, and the punch table is set up.

Food!  

Fruit kabobs, yogurt parfait, and onsie shaped sugar cookies (don't forget little blue hershey's "it's a boy" kisses).  Surrounded by the latest ultrasound picture and cute snap shots of the soon to be parents - aww.

Blue ducky punch and D for Desmond!

Donut holes, ham, and homemade quiches!  Yum.  This was my first attempt at making quiches from scratch - including homemade crust.  All three turned out and they were delish!

Plus my fun tissue paper tassels.  
Found an easy DIY from THE KNOTTY BRIDE on guess where?  Pinterest!

Food was eaten and enjoyed and then we moved on to presents...

Here's the diaper cake I made as an additional gift for Abbey.

Yay, presents!  This was a co-ed baby shower and it was fun to see Steve there along with the other guys that had the guts to attend (I thought it made the whole party so much more fun!)

The adorable couple.

After stuffing ourselves with food it was only natural to head outside and enjoy the rare May sunshine here in Washington and play a few rounds of bocce ball.

What a fun day.  Here I am with Abbey enjoying blue punch in a mason jar wearing my fabulous "shower" dress...  Cheers!

Decorating a Nursery while waiting on Baby McCabe!

So my brother and his girlfriend moved up to Tacoma, Washington from Mesa, Arizona in January this year.  Moving to Washington in January is gutsy!  My brother's girlfriend is expecting their first child - the first baby of the McCabe clan.  So, of course, I spent way too many hours on Pinterest looking for inspiration to help them decorate a little nursery in their rental home.  Suffice to say, I absolutely loved this project.  We decided to focus on a very muted pallet for the wall colors (we will need to pain them white when they move out) and jazz it up with punchy accent colors on the wall hanging and accessories!

Oh which colors to choose!  I love me some paint samples!  We decided on the two middle colors.

Striped ceiling awesomeness!  My brother and I made lines with a chalk line tool and then put up painters tape.

Painting a ceiling kinda sucks.  Bad posture Laura!  Owwie my back...
Got some grey wall paint going on as well.  It's hard to tell here but the ceiling stripes are a very pale blue.

Looking pretty good - still need to edge everything out.

Starting to look sharp!  The ceiling looked awesome when the tape was removed.  This took three days to complete including the day or so it took to decide on colors.

A 30th Birthday

For my younger brother Tom's 30th Birthday party I wanted to do something unique and fun.  He had been dreading turning 30 and didn't want us to celebrate at all, but no one listened...  What better idea I thought than making a big 3-0 that he could beat the crap out of.  So, my first Pinterest experiment commenced - Pinata DIY!

Taken from the blog Oh Happy Day, I decided to give this pinata tutorial a go.  This is a great tutorial and I pretty much followed it word for word, but here is my process...

Supplies:

Cardboard

X-Acto Knife or scissors

Tape

Tissue Paper

Elmer's Glue

Old paint brush

Candy and goodies for filling

As I still work for Starbucks, acquiring a large amount of cardboard was no big deal.   

(ps, Veranda Blend is ick)

I decided on a size and started cutting and bending the cardboard.

Here I've finished the 3.

This really was quite easy - I had the 3 and 0 done in an hour.

I didn't get any photos of the "fringe" process but I just used a bunch of left over tissue paper I had laying around - more colors would have been pretty too.

First, I layered a bunch of tissue paper onto the cardboard and adhered it with watered down elmer's glue.  I made the tissue paper a couple of layers thick to make sure the final pinata would be fairly sturdy.

I then cut strips and "fringed" the edges.  I attached the fringe strips with the same watered down elmer's glue concoction and an old paint brush.  The tissue paper made a bit of a mess as you can see on the floor.

I bought a Costco amount of candy for inside the pinata (it being September Costco was, of course, already selling Halloween candy)  It's hard to see in the pictures but I cut about a 3 inch flap in the top of each number to allow me to add candy!

The final result was really cute.  We hung it from a tree in Tom's front yard and it stood up to some good whacking.  It was definitely a fun thing to do for a party! 

Final Touches

 I decided to add a little fabric to the deep V neck making it a little more "movement" friendly (pinned in this picture), as this dress is for a wedding, and, yes, I will be dancing...

The hemline was giving me a headache trying to make it look the way I wanted so I did a little research on how to make a "flounced hem" and decided ultimately that this added much needed length without compromising the lines and silhouette of the dress - I think it actually added character and style!

(back view) 

I'm so pleased with my zipper!!!  $30 zipper foot was worth every penny!

 Posing here with my nude heels on.

 Different lighting (playing with my crappy camera) helps to show the folds and bodice details.

I'm not quite finished with the peacock feather detail, but it's going to look amazing...

Hand Beaded Details

Beaded dress strap

 This is not a very good picture, but I added bead clusters to the nude strap of my bridesmaid dress. 

 close up

 The dress is hemmed and almost finished

 I think I want to do something about the way it kicks out slightly on the left with all the gathers...

But I don't really know how to fix this besides holding it like in the picture above.

Beaded peacock feather detail 

 First I drew out a pattern and stitched it to the netting I'm using as a backing.

 Then I  added iron on interfacing to the "eye" of the peacock feather where most of the beading will be for a little support.

So far this is what I've got.  It is much more sparkly in person.  I may do just the center of the feather on the netting and interfacing and then attach it to the dress and add the feather "whisps" straight onto the dress fabric.

This is all new to me and it's hard to find beading tutorials online for adding beaded details to a dress, so I'm kinda making it up as I go along...