Tuesday's Projects

I went back to being creative and making things again.

Tuesday's project was making a pair of yoga pants (long shorts) based on this tutorial here. I made mine out of a large D.A.R.E. t-shirt. Not bad considering I was very confused most of the time. I want to do another pair...and have it come out better than these. The t-shirt was a bit warped from being washed, so I had to "make it work." (I so will never be on Project Runway to hear Tim Gunn say those words to me personally.)

But they're kinda cute, neh? And they're my first real t-shirt reconstruction project. And a somewhat complicated one (for me) at that.

After that the nerdy, but still creative, side of me came out. And I hopped onto the computer and made a virtual reality 3d soda bottle with a 3d creation program called Blender. It needs some tweaking (for one thing it goes through the hand of the avatar/person holding it). I could make it an object that just sits on a table. But it's not bad considering a year ago when I tried to use Blender I could not make heads or tails of the program and truly felt like my brain had been blended when I tried to use it.

And that sums up my creative endeavors for the day.

Keeping Your Keys Covered

I've just been making two kinds of covers for keys.

First I was looking at those plastic covers that covers the top of the keys. And I started to wonder if I could make some myself. When I saw some that were made of leather stitched together I knew it could be done, so I made two practice versions made of felt. They need some adornment, but they turned out well enough...and very simple to make.

The next one is a key cozy. I saw some on a Japanese crafting website and thought it was pretty interesting. So I decided to make my own, but again I turned to using felt to make it easier.

I don't know how the Japanese use these, but this could be worn as a "necklace" or around your wrist, or loop around your purse handles...or just toss in your bag.

I posted a how to tutorial on how to do the key cozy here.

Lamp Revolution Evolution

So one of the thrift stores in town is closing until they can find another place (probably looking for more affordable rent). Although I rarely find anything to purchase there I thought I'd check it out since things were on sale. I thought I was going to leave with only a packet of vintage trim for sewing, when I suddenly spied this floor lamp in a jumble of junk in a corner. (I wish I had a better picture of it from the side.)

I snagged it for $1. Now honestly I'd be scared to try to use it for a lamp. So thankfully that isn't what I intended to use it for. I removed the cord. And I tried to remove the area that the light bulb and lampshade would go into...but it wouldn't co-operate so I left if for now. I may try to remove it again later if I can think of a way to do it so it will look less like a lamp.

Because now...it is a place to hang skirts and shirts that we have in the store. It's too short for the dresses and nighties. But it helps out a lot. And hopefuly it's unique in a good way?

Sneeze Some Happiness On Me!

One of my sister's was telling me about this study she read about while in the doctor's waiting room. Basically it said that happiness could just be a bit contagious. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/05/science/sci-happy5

The study found that knowing someone who is happy makes you 15.3% more likely to be happy yourself. If your friend has a happy friend it increases your odds of happiness by 9.8%, and even your neighbor’s sister’s friend can give you a 5.6% boost.

Shigehiro Oishi, a University of Virginia psychologist who studies the causes and effects of well-being, said the importance of geography was a profound finding. Although we are connected with friends and family members who live far away via cellphone and the Internet, these results indicate that there is nothing like a face-to-face interaction,” Oishi said. “We are told to get connected by cellphone companies, but in order to get connected you really have to live close by and interact face to face.”

They say they don't understand the reasons why you might be more likely to be happy if your friends and family are. But I personally believe that a happy friend can effect our thinking in positive ways. We might for example think, "If they can have fun and be cheerful during hard times maybe I can too." "Seeing them be happy reminds me to not take life so seriously." Or, "They have such confidence in me that I can follow my dreams...maybe they're right." And so on.

While I've basically been a loner most of the time and not hung out with happy friends that much I think I caught a teeny little bit of the happiness bug from exposure through reading books and listening to audio books of happy and positive people such as Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, Iyanla Vanzant, and tons of others in the "self-improvement" or positive thinking, etc. field.

But still I frequently lack that face to face connection that would increase my chances of exposure to this happiness bug.

You know probably the best way to catch anything contagious is to hang around a group of pre-schoolers. And since they seem to be a pretty happy bunch I bet they're just full of the "happiness bug." ;)

Pillowcase Skirts - Re-do and Vintage Dress

My pictures of the pillowcase skirts I made and of the vintage dress were so bad I decided I had to take advantage of the somewhat warmer weather and redo them. So the mannequin and I went outside (this time she was wearing a cropped tank top of mine that I used to wear when I did kickboxing that I had forgotten about) and had a little photoshoot. The pics still aren't great, but are an improvement.

Since pics on etsy work best if the pictures are square as the thumbnails are automatically cropped to a square shape, I decided to fill in a lot of the extra space on the sides with text and such. And it was fun to be a little more artistic by doing that...it reminds me a bit of a pic in magazine this way...although I guess it's really not.

If you look close you may see the wall looks a little funny because I fudged that with The GIMP (a program similar to PhotoShop)...the wall isn't that big in real life, so it was duplicated in order to help make the image square and not a rectangle.

I didn't do that with the picture of the vintage dress though. I do have another picture of it close up that is cropped to a square though, so at least that one shows up to better advantage on etsy.

But overall the lighting is better. And the background is better sort of (you can see the light colored fabric better against this blue than you could against the white I used before)...and it looks kind of rustic rather than like just blah regular walls with some patches of paint that does not quite match (which I never really noticed until I photographed the wall).

Hopefully it will help these items sell faster.

So that's what I did today. Fun. Now I'm off to a meeting I'd rather not go to, but I'll be dutiful and go do it anyway.

She's creepy...really creepy...but cute stuff follows...

I bet you didn't ever suspect that I have been keeping a body without arms and legs stuffed in a black plastic bag hidden away in a storage unit. Okay, so the body is just a mannequin. But a pretty creepy mannequin at that.

This may have been a better post for Halloween. But I brought the body out for the first time in over a year so I can take some pics of clothing items to sale on etsy.com.

I found this mannequin a few years about for $7.50 (I remember because the price tag is still on the back of her head) at the Catholic Thrift Store in town. She's not in the best condition. And her head had been painted white. And someone had also painted make-up and eyes on her with things like finger nail polish. So she was very garish and even more creepy than she is now. Well she looks most creepy when in the garbage bag. So maybe she wasn't as creepy back then.

I got her so I could use her to sell clothing on eBay (which I've only done a few times). Someday I plan to paint her, or maybe decoupage her with something like old dictionary pages (she'd be a smart mannequin then)...but I'll wait until warmer weather to do that.

In the meantime, I'll dress her up in pretty, floral skirts that remind me of spring.

If I put a shirt on her it hides the skirt that I'm trying to photograph, but being a little prudish I couldn't leave her top half naked, so I put one of my old bras on her (she fills it out better than I do). But I'm not being so prudish that I'm being embarrassed to show my bra to everyone on the internet here on a mannequin. Go figure. (Will future employers find this someday and hold it against me?)

So these are some pillowcase skirts I made that I just listed at my etsy shop. The pictures are terrible, but they're better than the first ones I took (the macro was turned on so the first were blurry).

My favorite shown here is the one with the little blue flowers. I'll be listing one more pillowcase skirt tomorrow (which is the prettiest one, pink, romantic, and girly it is). And also I will be listing a couple vintage things I have that I've decided to let go of (a quaint empire waisted dress and a sexy nighty).

Well, wish me luck that these will sell.

To See, Even In This, Light

Tonight I was working through one of my negative thoughts with one of my friends. I say work "through" because it seems at times as if I go through it, and it's over, I've traveled past, it is no more.

So afterwards I wrote down about how peaceful I felt. And then these words came to me, asking me to write them down (that experience you hear writers speak of so often, that the words, or the character, or story "asks" to be written down)....so here they are...

"When I want peace I look to my negative thoughts...I bring light to them and expose them as the lies they really are...and a lie exposed to light can only transform into truth and become light."

This is probably the most peaceful thought that I ever wrote in my entire life.

In science they have learned that energy can never be destroyed. It can only be transformed into something else, such as another type of energy or into matter, for example.

I believe our thoughts and emotions are energy too. And they cannot be destroyed...they can only be transformed into something other than what they were before. So many times healing doesn't take place because we are taught that things like hurt and anger are bad so we push it down and hide (because we don't know what else to do with it) and we pretend that it is no longer there. "I'm fine. I don't care." So I find it magical during those times when I can bring that hurt or anger forward into the light, and bring love to it, breathe onto it to bring the spark and glow of love that is hidden inside into a small ember. To see it transform, for the light to grow and transform and become larger. To become hope, a seed of hope, and then to grow into love.

Mmm...mixing metaphors. I'm tired and it must be time to sleep...a warm, peaceful sleep.