At Home with the Artist: DIY Tulle Circle Skirt

Hey all, last project of the summer! With only a couple of days left, I'm cutting it close, but I'm glad I made this one and I'm excited to wear it. I might even wear it to school, we'll see :)
In order to create this delightful tulle circle skirt, I followed the tutorial of one of my favorite blogs, A Beautiful Mess. The directions were easy to follow. I would give a couple of warnings. ABM makes it sound super easy, and it is but here are some things to watch out for:

1. Tulle is hard to keep lined up and work with, pay attention!

2. When you're sewing the layers to the elastic, ABM says to be careful to get them all at once or you'll have to redo it. When they say careful, they mean it! Make sure you get them all! I would suggest using lots of pins and keeping them there while you sew if you can.

3. Google how to hem a circle skirt correctly so you don't have a lot of pucker when you hem the lining.

4. Make sure you have an awesome pair of scissors and you cut carefully since the layers of tulle won't be hemmed, you want to make sure you don't have a raggedy edge.

Okay, I think that's all the advice I can give. Check out the process and finished piece below!

All my supplies ready to go!

Leftover wrapping paper makes perfect pattern paper!

Pinning the slippery lining to hem!

Got all 'dem layers pinned!

So pretty!

I love how full it is!

Here's the finished project on me! Too bad you can't see my adorable heals. My husband did his best at picture-taking.

What's Going on in the Classroom: DIY Hall Passes

So it's not quite the end of summer yet, one week left! However, I think (and I don't want to jinx myself here, but I think...) I'm all ready for heading back. Got a lot of curriculum work done this summer, especially in reference to Photo 1 and I'm ready to get back into the classroom and make sure supplies and decor are ready to go.

Speaking of decor, one of the things that was on my to do list this summer was to create some cool and more durable hall passes. In the past, my hall passes were just laminated pieces of paper featuring an image of the TARDIS, because yes I'm that teacher.

Let me just say, that those hall passes did not last long and I made several new ones throughout the course of the year. So to remedy that, I did some googling and I found a couple of ideas that I really liked and combined into  DIY hall passes that should (fingers crossed) last me this year and beyond. First I found the idea of using paint stirring sticks on this blog. Now this lady uses them for marking where library books go, but I thought, what a great idea for art room hall passes!

But I wanted a little more than that, so I kept looking and found this adorable set up on this Etsy Shop.

Now being as I teach high school, I didn't think I needed all the different types of passes, but I really did like the idea of hanging them up etc. So here's how I went combining these two ideas and making one of my own. 

1. I gathered up all the supplies I would need. Paint colors of choice (I ended up using purple and gold), paint brushes, masking tape, piece of medium thickness wood (found at Hobby Lobby), some paint sticks picked up for free at Lowe's and gold hooks also gotten at Lowe's. I also used Mod Podge and a black paint marker, not pictured here.

2. I knew I wanted to do stripes on the paint sticks that would become the hall passes so I used masking tape to make even stripes.

3. I painted the exposed stripes purple. Let them dry over night so I didn't remove any paint when I pulled off the tape and then painted the other areas gold.

4. Next to do the plaque that would hold the paint stick passes. I used some tape again to make an even border and painted the middle part using purple. Then I found some cool fonts on Google to use for the lettering. I liked this one because it reminded me of Harry Potter. I sketched out the letters LIGHTLY with a pencil and then painted over the pencil with gold paint and a veeeerrrry tiny brush.

5. Now in our schools hall passes have to have the room number and building on it. So I used a black paint marker and white paint to outline the words on the paint sticks. 

 6. Look at all those finished beauties! After that I drilled some holes to put ribbon in to hang the sticks and also the plaque and starter holes for the golden hooks. I also wanted to make sure that the paint didn't chip. Kids are super hard on the hall passes for some reason. So I gave them a couple of coats of Mod Podge for good measure.

And tada! Finished product! I'm super happy with the way it looks and how I was able to combine the ideas I found online to create something unique for our room, and I hope also durable! Here's to a new school year! 7 days and counting!

At Home with the Artist: DIY Basket and Rug with T-Shirts!

I've been wanting a rug for our bedroom for awhile, but rugs are so expensive! So when I found that my husband had several boxes of old t shirts stashed at my in-laws and they were trying to get rid of them, I of course took them right away!

The first tutorials I followed to make a rug with t shirts can be found here and here. In the tutorial, they want on and on about keeping everything lose so that it won't become a basket instead of a rug. Man is it true! Good luck! Mine went a little bit like this:

I got about this far before I had to admit that I was making a basket instead of a rug. I sewed and picked out the stitches three times and I still had a basket at the end of that last attempt. So I went with it, finished it up and now have a cute basket for things under my easel.

But I still wanted to make that rug! So I followed a different tutorial found on one of my favorite blogs, A Beautiful Mess. This project only involved weaving and no braiding or sewing. Instead of using sheeting like they suggest, I used t-shirt material since I still had so much of it. 

Marked off the board as suggest.

Strung large pieces of cut up t-shirts onto my 'loom'.

Began weaving with another t-shirt string.

 Almost done weaving the whole rug!

Tying off the ends.

Look at the finished rug at the end of our bed! Some day I would like to make a larger one for the office, but I think with the multiple tries for the first one and then this one, I'm all rugged out for awhile!

A Peak Inside my Portfolio: DIY Felted Cardigan

Even though summer is hard because we're all going on vacations and such, I still get together with my art teaching pals and do some crafting and chatting and really just enjoy each others company. Like I said, it's been awhile since we've gotten together. You can see our last art-making session was during Easter time when we did Ukrainian Eggs, check it out HERE!

This time we all did our own project, just working on whatever we had going at the moment and chatting. Here's a picture of all our finished (well mine isn't quite yet) projects at the end of the day. Love those girls!

So a little bit more about my project. I have been wanting for awhile to do some needle felting on clothing. If you're not sure what needle felting is, you must check it out! It's so much fun and it's a really easy and cool way to personalize your clothing. I decided to add a design to a thrifted black cardigan that I have. Here's how I went about doing that:

1. I used chalk to sketch out the pattern that I wanted to create on my cardigan. Chalk is great because it rubs right off with a damp cloth, making it easy to edit your design as you go.

2. Then I had to decide what colors I wanted to use. I decided to go with some bright, almost primary colors that had a bit of a Aztec feel to them. After deciding on the colors, it's easy to felt them into the existing clothing. Using a felting needle I repeatedly poked the wool fibers into the design where I wanted them.

3. Continue doing this until the areas are all filled up. Be sure to have a foam pad behind your work and don't stab your fingers!

4. After I had the first side of the cardigan finished, I simply used chalk to recreated the design on the other side. I eye-balled it, but I suppose you could bust out the measuring tape and make it exactly correct. I know that's what my engineer husband would do!

5. Fill in the second side the exact same way you did the first one!

6. After the design is all done, get out your iron. Set it to the wool setting. Spritz your felted area with a bit of water and gently iron over it to set your wool felting. Voila! You're done!