chimesblog

Once again I’m attending the fabulous charity prom put on by Sigler Companies in Ames.  This year’s theme is Night of the Living Prom.  So, you can go as a zombie or as whatever you want. So really, the only difference from last year is the zombie part. Last year’s theme was Revenge of the Prom.

Anyway, Mark is going with me and I kind of fed his ideas for what he was going to wear and let them snowball into something really cool.  So originally he was wanting to wear an old-school tuxedo t-shirt with weight-lifting gloves and a jacket, but I suggested we go to the Atomic Garage in Valley Junction to see if they had any cool vintage attire.  There, we found an epic PBR t-shirt, which is perfect because him and all my guy friends are notorious for drinking PBR since it’s the cheapest pitcher you can get. But it was too small. I bought it anyway assuming I could craft it into something.

Today I tried on my black dress that I’d bought last year that has never quite fit (it tapers to the top — which makes no sense, but whatever).  I decided that it was too cute with the electric blue and black lace tights I had on and that I HAD to make it work.  Coincidentally, at the same time I tried the dress on, I got a text from Mark saying that he was going to tuck his jeans into his boots, old-school punk style.

*idea!*

So we’re going punk.

I’m going to add a hook and eye closure where the zipper stops zipping on the dress, and add loops so I can lace the rest of it up like a corset so it will fit.  There’s only about 6 inches where it won’t zip, but I figured it’d be an easy fix and I won’t have to take the zipper out to do it, so if by some miracle of God or if I lose some ribs then MAYBE it will fit someday and I can un-frankenstein it up.

The PBR shirt is getting cut up and patched onto a charcoal grey t-shirt along with some electric blue accent fabric.  Also — safety pins.  He’s wearing the gloves and jacket along with the tucked in jeans. It’s going to be awesome.

I already made the corsage and boutonniere for the event, including some awesome houndstooth fabric, sequins and of course, safety pins, with a little bit of electric blue ribbon. AWESOME.  I hope it’s not too girly for him to wear.

I haven’t made many ceramic pieces lately, but I had this gorgeous pitcher lying around (courtesy of @shanereiser) for the past 3 months and I’ve been meaning to do SOMETHING to it.  I finally got around to painting it a couple days ago.  And I took some photos today. I’ve never taken advantage of my lovely enclosed porch for photos before (silly me), and I’m surprised I ventured out there after I got locked out a few weeks back.

What do you think? I love this thing so much that I don’t really want to get rid of it. I must find more pitchers and do more of these. I need vases and pitchers, stat. I have no room for them though, so sadly, unless I get rid of some of my current inventory, this will be my sole pitcher.

Molly Nagel is a freelance artist, graphic designer, cake-master and pretty much dabbles in a little bit of everything artistic or crafty. I’ve known Molly for a few years. We met back in college through my friend Kelly during graphic design school.

I’ve been following Molly’s blog for a while now and have been LOVING her beautiful flower paintings. She’s got a store on etsy, and I’ve definitely favorited all the flower paintings…. and wisted the ones she isn’t selling.

Here’s a smattering of her flower paintings…

Besides flower paintings, Molly does a lot of dog portraits on stone. I’ve been wanting one since my weiner dog died back in April, but haven’t found my favorite picture of him.

If you get a chance, check out her blog!

I couldn’t wait to blog about this, so I’m blogging on the 25th, but this won’t go public until the 27th.  :)  That way the surprise isn’t spoiled!

My girlies from high school and I are going to Chicago this weekend and we decided to surprise Adria by turning one of our nights into a bachelorette party — laid back of course.

Adria’s friend, Magan who she knows through craftster.org swaps made stenciled t-shirts and I made a crown and sash (which turned into a lei instead) and “naughty” cookies.  I originally was going to make a patchwork sash but couldn’t decide how long to make it since Adria is a good 5-7 inches taller than me.  I also was going to make “party peters” but couldn’t find the appropriate cookie cutter and was tired of going into porn shops looking for one. I decided to use a cookie cutter I already had and use my imagination to come up with something almost as good.  I came up with “party panties” instead.

Here’s the crown — I made fabric flowers from leftover fabric from this quilt using this tutorial and added rhinestones and used some dimensional fabric paint (aka puff paint for those of you around when it was rampant in the ’90s)

As you well know, I have absolutely no patience for anything. So the above photos have wet paint. The silver swirls will dry as translucent with silver glitter.

And here is the lei. Also made from fabric flowers.

Also note my medal from the Des Moines Marathon and the Capital Pursuit 10-Miler. Not that they’re as pretty or exciting, but I thought I’d point them out because it’s going to be a long while before I get another one of either of those!

AND here are my Party Panties.  :) They totally did NOT turn out the way I wanted them to. Mostly because I, again, have no patience and wanted to make the frosting when I was on my lunch break on Monday and accidentally added too much milk in my haste. Frosting=runny. I didn’t have $ or time to get more powdered sugar from the store, nor did I want a bag of that lying around my cupboards (you’d be amazed at what I can concoct when I want something sweet)…so I froze the frosting and dealt with it. The yellow was some store-bought that I had in the freezer.  If I could do it again (which I’m sure I will) I’d frost all the panties white first then go back and add all the fun colors. There’s just not enough frosting on the cookies. I might even go as far as to frost them all skin-toned first so there’s more frosting coverage. Oh well.

YAY. I’m soooo excited for this weekend. I’m probably having a blast as you’re reading this. I’ve never pre-blogged before.

FINALLY I get to blog about this! 

I had a baby shower for my friend Lindsay today and I made her little man a few onsies and a couple for my niece. I couldn’t blog about it until now because I was afraid she might see.  I tweeted about it a while back because I figured she isn’t on twitter, so she wouldn’t see.

Without further ado, here are my onsies!

I’ve had a few requests for me to post a listing for these on my etsy store, but I had to hand stitch these and for now, it’s not really an option for me since I don’t have that kind of time (or won’t shortly since my co-worker will be leaving soon so I may have more to do at work). 

I might list the ones with the ties. Those I can machine stitch – but my machine is broken right now, so it doesn’t really even matter! I’ll have to wait to see when I get a new machine. Maybe the new machine will work better and do tighter curves so I may be able to machine stitch the whole thing.

A while back I bought a buttload of dishware. I finally got around to making some things AND taking photos of them.

I’m too lazy to repost everything since I just posted this all on etsy and craftster…so here’s some photos.

Upcycled with some lace

Gotta have my morning tea!

...even if it's neon yellow!

I based this on Michael Miller's Lava Flowers fabric collection. Cup/Saucer are from The Cellar for Macy's in Casper.

another cup from my parents' collection (stains from easter egg coloring on the inside) — if anybody wants this, let me know — I won't sell it on etsy because of the Easter egg color stains!

not sure how else to describe this. Started with a lace pattern and tried coloring it in. Just a LITTLE bit much for me.

Sketchies on a Glading McBean Franciscan El Patio plate

red on the outside, white on the inside. definitely one of my favs!

love it.

ta. da.

I’m totally lazy so I’m just going to literally copy and paste what I just posted on crafster.org. also, i want ice cream…so I’m going to make this quick.

I made some corsages tonight for Kelly and I to wear tomorrow night at Revenge of the Prom.

Fancy.

We have totally awesome dresses from our rad 80’s new years party and thought we could get a 2nd use out of them and get another chance to wear some big hair and side ponytails. 

I ventured to Hobby Lobby and got a bunch of supplies (flower stems happened to be on sale for 50% off!)….roses, beads, black tulle with glitter, elastic, hot glue gun, floral shears and some floral tape.

Here’s what I ended up with after a half hour of tinkering:

craappy camera. seriously, i swear, i'm getting a point-and-shoot someday...

I figured out where I wanted the roses to set and I taped them with floral tape (which, by the way, is kind of rough to use if you’ve never used it before–it sticks to itself, but don’t pull too hard or it’s going to break!).  Then I cut the bottoms off with the shears and wrapped the wire parts with floral tape so they wouldn’t poke me. I bent the stem I created by taping in half and moved the flowers around a bit to figure out how they would look on my wrist.  Then I glued some leaves in (there weren’t any leaves that close to the flower, so I pulled them off and placed them).  I took some of the black tulle and kind of balled it up and glued that to the bottom of the whole thing.  Then I took a strip of elastic (that I measured around my wrist), sewed it together so it was secure, and sewed it to the bottom of the corsage-in-the-works.  THEN I glued it down to make sure it would stay.

Exciting.  Not exactly rocket science, but it was fun to pick up something I don’t normally do. I’m usually on the knitting board or lurking on the cooking board.

Also, I plan to post some action shots of the corsages at the event after it happens. I’m EXCITED!

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Now playing: 3 Inches of Blood – Crazy Nights
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