lates 2013.

Farewell from me for 2013! I hope you all have a very happy new year! Not only am I farewelling 2013, I am also leaving the country on friday until mid February. I don't expect I will have much opportunity to upload any posts here while I am exploring Spain, but you never know. If any of you are interested to see what I get up to I will have a travel blog over here. So, until we meet again, enjoy all of the pleasant things new years bring. 

it's the best time of the year

To be honest Christmas is legitimately my favourite time of the year. For a bit of festive fun I have created some iPhone backgrounds.

          

1. Peace & Joy green - iPhone 4/4s, iPhone 5/5c/5s

2. Peace & Joy red - iPhone 4/4s, iPhone 5/5c/5s

3. Trees - iPhone 4/4s, iPhone 5/5c/5s

withdrawing from the ideas bank

As you are probably aware, I have very recently finished my degree. This has meant that over the last few months I have had all these ideas stored away because all my time and creative energy was being used up by uni. That is until now. One of the ideas I have had stored away was to turn an old pair of op shop (which is a thrift store, my American friends) high waisted jeans into a denim skirt. This had the potential to go horribly wrong, but I didn't really have much to loose. Here is a little sneak peek of how it turned out.

I'm pretty pleased with the results, but before we really delve into the finished product, here is how I got there. It all started at Salvo's with a $5 pair of jeans. The things I was looking for were not too expensive (I didn't really want to go over $5 in case I ended up just destroying them), high waisted, good quality denim and no wore out patches in at least the sections above the knee. The pair I ended up going with hadn't even been wore as they still had their original Miss Shop tag on them, however they looked a few decades old.

First up was cutting open the inner leg seam right up to the bottom of the fly. I added in a yellow dotted line in Photoshop so you can better see where I mean.

I then turned the whole thing inside out and pinned the front half of the legs together and the back half of the legs together. As you can see I made sure I pinned them in a straight line rather that following the curve of the pants because this extra fabric is to form the crotch of the pants, which are obviously not necessary for a skirt. Again the yellow line should hopefully make this clearer.

Next I just cut the pants off at the knees so it was less bulky for sewing.

Next came the sewing. I simply just followed the line of pins I had. After this came the hem. Because the denim was really thick, I decided not to double roll the hem, but if you wanted to do it all properly you could do this. I stitched around the hem twice, leaving a 5mm gap between the two lines of stitching just to make it look more professional.

And then all of a sudden I had a denim skirt! I wasn't timing how long it took but it would have been less than an hour. So there is now one less idea sitting in the ideas bank, keep on the look out for some more little projects in the near future though as I continue to work my way through all my ideas.

infinity and beyond

I have recently acquired a new skill, crochet. After a bit of mucking about practicing the basic stitches I thought I would tackle an actual project. After a quick search I found this crochet pattern for an infinity scarf which said it was good for beginners. Perfect. And as a bonus I love scarves, especially ones of the infinity variety. I just used some wool I had lying around. It was actually an 8 ply acrylic wool. It used up probably about a ball and a half in total. The pattern calls for a 6.5mm (for all you American folk US K10.5) crochet hook but the biggest I had was 5mm so I just used that.

In total it took me about 4 nights to make, but it would probably take me less if I were to do it again as my crochet skills improved as I went. Now that I can claim crochet as a skill I have, I have gone a little crazy over on Pinterest looking at different crochet patterns. 

sharing some creative juices

I have just begun selling things on Society6! This means that you now have the opportunity to purchase some artwork I have created. If you click here you can even receive free shipping until November 17, 2013 at midnight Pacific Time!

Here is a little seek peek of my first item for sale. Keep looking for more to come! 

IKEA lovin'

I apologise for my lack of posts lately, I finished my degree (Bachelor of Industrial Design) last week and things got pretty crazy there for a bit getting my major project finished. I now, however, have finished and thought that I would take myself to IKEA as a little celebration. There is nothing I love more than meandering through the display rooms soaking up all they different ways they have been decorated. This is basically me whenever I'm there minus the date (well more like being on a date with myself).

Now I've got all (500) Days of Summer references out of the way I'll get on with sharing what treats I found along the way. First up a candlestick (the white one) I bought to keep another blue one I have company.

I can't actually remember this little guys name, and now I can't find it on the IKEA website so you'll have to take my word on this one.

Next I found this glass bottle. It is a vase but I also though it would be pretty cool to use as a glass to drink from too.

As you can see he is sitting up with the paper flowers I made in this post. His name is ENSIDIG and he only set me back $1.49! How could I say no to that!

In the back of my mind for a bit I have been thinking I would like to hang a white clock in my room, so when I saw this one I picked it up almost instantaneously. 

I love very simple clocks so this one fit the bill perfectly. As you can see I have added it to a little collection of things on my wall I put up at the beginning of the year. I just love how the colour of my walls makes white really pop. This clocks name is VATTNA and cost $14.99.

Lastly I have been wanting some friends for the succulent I potted up in this post a few months ago. On this IKEA trip I found what I was looking for. The one in the middle is the one I already had if you can't remember the post about it. 

I will begin with the pots. Their name is SOCKER and at the moment they are only $1.49 each (I think they are normally $1.99). The plants I also got from IKEA. I must have been hiding under a rock because I didn't even realise IKEA sold real plants. They are both just succulents (that is all that is specified about them) and they were both $6.99. To pot them up I followed the same process as in this post. 

Update on that post. You may remember that this first succulent started life under the bell jar this blog derives it's name from, but it turns out this didn't work for two reasons. First, the bell jar ended up being too humid for my little leafy friend who much prefers hot, dry conditions. Secondly, the bell jar sits on my desk which did not get enough sunlight for this photosynthesising little guy. This resulted in him being moved onto my windowsill which solved both these problems.

geometry and clay.

I had a bit of a crafternoon the other day with some lovely friends and one of the things we were keen to try out was making our own necklaces using polymer clay (quick apology, I only had my phone with me so sorry for the iPhone photos).

We ended up using Staedtler FIMO, which is an oven hardening modelling clay. We stood in Lincraft in front of their range of colours for quite some time trying to decide which to choose. I wanted to have a go at this with just one colour before committing to buying all the primary colours and experimenting with mixing (which does create some truly beautiful colours, I actually have to stop myself from trying to eat them). I ended up going for a colour called silver. This 56g little packet cost me $4.74.

It was a pretty warm day so once I broke off a piece to start working with it didn't take very long for it to become very soft and malleable. I began by working the piece of clay into a sphere.

I then squished the sphere down into a cube.

Next came creating those lovely asymmetrical geometric faces. This is were things got a lot trickier than I was anticipating. I used a knife to slice of faces until I got to an overall shape I was happy with. I'm not going to lie, this took quite a few attempts, lucky the very nature of clay allows you to squish everything back together and start again. The main problem was that by the time I got to slicing off the last half of the faces, my fingers would dent and deform the work I had already done, destroying those crisp edges I was attempting to achieve. This is probably due to a lack of skill on my part, and also because it was such a warm day the clay really was very soft. Anyway, after a number of attempts I reached a shape I was happy with.

Next comes poking a hole through the sides to turn this into a bead. At this stage I put the whole thing in the freezer for a few minutes to harden it up a bit so poking a hole through wouldn't end with me turning it into a squashed mess. I discovered that I should have put it in the freezer before I attempted to slice off the faces as this did a marvellous job of helping it hold its form better. Anyway, we used a crochet hook to poke the hole because that was slightly fatter than the chain we had to put through it later.

I put the hole almost in the middle, but slightly more towards the top so the bead would sit well on its chain. The chain I bought from Spotlight and only cost me $1.99 with my VIP card discount.

I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out, and am quite exited about all the possibilities of handmade necklaces! I think I will buy all the primary colours so I can start experimenting with mixing colours.