Upcycling a Tee into Jewelry & Giveaway!!!!- closed

So I tried to think of a tutorial that would suit the first week of celebrating the past year of me blogging. With all the the crafty people out there in blog land, I was at a stand still...then I thought back to the first gift I made as a crafter for my sister 2 years ago just before I decided to start my blog.

I made her a necklace from a t-shirt...I know there are lots and lots of tutorials out there but I have come up with one of my own.

Materials needed:
t-shirt
scissors/ rotary cutter & cutting mat
hot glue & gluesticks
thread and needle
sewing machine
felt scraps for making rolled flowers

So now let's get started now that you have your materials....

1. Laying your shirt out flat in the cutting mat, cut off the bottom seam
2. Now I cut from the bottom upwards, at about 2" strips. Keep cutting until just below the arms of the tee.

3. Now you have strips of tee, if there was a seam in the sides if the tee, cut it out.  The next thing you are going to do is take a strip and give it a pull and cause the strips to curl up on themselves. Keep doing this with all the strips until you have as many as you want it to be thin or thick necklace.

4. Now you can just wear the strips like this but I embellished them, if they had no side seams. If there was a side seam or two on the tee (which mine had one side seam), I took on strip and cut of the seam as you see above. Then I laid them on top of each other shortest to longest then used my needle and thread to sew the ends together.

5. Once the strips were sewn together I wanted to cover the ends so I took one strip and starting in the middle and working out to one side then back across I covered the ends. I tuck the end in between using a crochet hook and put a dab of glue on to secure it.

That is it for making the necklace. Only thing I would suggest is to maybe twist one end of the necklace before sewing the ends together for a little bit more flare.

Now for the embellishments....Sometimes I use the bottom seam you cut off but for this one I took some felt scrap and a left over strip and made a few rolled roses and a large petal flower..... Then I hot glued them directly onto the area I wrapped to cover the ends, next time I would make a pin or something to clip onto the area so if you want to change up the embellishments you could.

There you have it my tutorial for an Upcycling t-shirt necklace.

Now would you like to have it for your very own????
If you said yes, then please leave a comment below saying you are a new follower or been following all along. I will draw for the necklace on April 25th (giveaway closes April 24th at 11:59 pm EST)!
***One comment per person please!****

Good Luck and enjoy making some t-shirt necklaces for yourself or as gifts!!
I also made bracelets using the same idea.

Ciao for now,

Some FUN-ucational ideas...

Hi everyone... I hope you all are enjoying the Blog-versary giveaways and are entering them all so you get a chance to win some great items. There are a few more coming up next week as we come to a close for the celebrations, so come back and check them out.

Today, I just wanted to show you some little things I have been working on lately. The family will be going back East in May for my baby sis's wedding...we will be staying for almost an entire month!!!! So we will be driving down and the thought of spending 16 hours or more with the kids in their car seats I have been trying yo come up with things for them to do to keep them from getting cranky and sick of being strapped in outside of the stops and refuelling. We have our portable DVD player which is always handy but who wants to watch movies for 16 hours...not me. So I thought of some FUN-udcational things they could do.
Monkey has become quite the little learner lately. Taking after Princess during her homeschooling periods. I had some shape and colour lapbooks I created out of inspiration from wonderful sites out there. And after showing him a couple of times he was able to correctly match them all.
I have been like a pack-rat every time I go to the local home reno stores, gathering paint chips left and right...doesn't feel like stealing to you??? I know I always feel like I am stealing but when Mr. Man asks what I am going to do with my paint chip stash,  I always reply "make stuff, of course." So I used the Snail Trail tutorial for creating word families and made up our version. I actually added more word families, while I was working on them so we could discuss them as Princess learns the primary ones first (-at, -og,-it,-an,-ox, -un, etc).  Then I had some of the Disney Behr ones from HD, and was wondering what to do with them other than create a matching colour game.. and came up with this....

One from Monkey and One for Princess, of course to cut down on squabbles. 

 So I took the paint chip and removed the shapes off the top (did you know they most were easily peeled off (you'll see why I say most)

 here it is peeled off

 see why I said most...black was the very difficult to peel off, had to take scissors and trim around to clean it up

 Ta-da!!! All peeled off

Then Ijust glued them around a piece of card stock, laminated the card stock and the second set of matching, picked up pack of hook and loops at the dollar store and stuck on top of the laminated version and back of the second set and it is good to go. 

 Finished Colour Matching Travel Game!

So I say "ha-ha" to Mr. Man who didn't think I would every use the paint chip stash for anything!

Other Paint Chip things in the works:
shape paint chip matching travel game
paint chip matchbooks and journals

Monkey's Easter Egg Matching colour Game (using paint chips and colourful plastic easter eggs) he
                                                                         matches the egg colour to the paint chip colour.
Easter Bunny Garland (an idea I got from a blog but cannot find the link to give it too you, if you know it can you put it in the comments. Sorry to the blogger, I usually bookmark these). [Pics to follow]

Ciao for now,

Alien Invitation Tutorial- Update---Found the SD card!!!

I have been meaning to post this tutorial for months now and some how kept forgetting to so here it is...

Alien Invitation

First, I created the shape of the alien in Picnik and came up with the cupcake collar you see below. If you are interested in this download, leave a comment below with your email and I will email it to you.

Alien Cupcake collar

I had planned to use this cupcake collar instead of doing all the decorating of the cupcakes but changed my mind. Sorry for the lack of pictures I lost my SD card I had stored them on...if I find it I will fill them in.

So I printed out the collar onto card stock and then cut it out with a knife and traced it, in pencil, onto lime green card stock, I purchased at Michael's. Then erased the pencil marks.

backside

Placement of eyes and mouth, no antennae

I dug out my Cricut and cut an oval 4-5" in diameter  on the green card stock and using my bone folder I folded it in half. This created the mouth.

oval w/ folded crease there barely

gluing

mouth on

Eyes on

     The eyes came from the Cricut as well...3 white circles of 3/4" in size and 3- 1/4" black circles for the pupils.

The purple strip was drawn freehand on purple card stock and cut out. 

purple neck rim

back

All get glued on to the alien base. once dry I wrote the invite information.

It says...

"Ooohhh....She's 3!

Come celebrate with her family, friends and toys

Sunday, August 8th

From 4-6 pm

RSVP by August 6th"

I had wrote this but you could have easily printed on the green card stock and cut it on the Cricut using the centering feature....I am still working on this feature on my Cricut (not able to find out the answer to my question as to whether you do each cutout centered shape with text or if if you do it once it will repeat it?)

There you have it 

The Alien Invitation

Ta-da!

Sorry for the lack of pictures....I have been tearing my house upside down trying to find the SD card.

Ciao for now,

Felt Linguine Tutorial

Well, Princess decided she wanted to be a chef today now that she s back to normal and I asked her what kind of food she wanted to prepare and she told me pasta so I thought, why not linguine??!!!

So here is how I made her felt linguine

Felt Linguine in the strainer (courtesy of  IKEA)

Material:
Cream coloured felt -9X12(from Michael's)
Scissors/ rotary cutter
Cutting mat (if using the rotary cutter)

I used scissors (quicker for me)

1. Fold the felt in half (9X12), short sides meeting

2. Fold in half again, short sides meeting again

3. Cut the felt at 1/4" to 1/2" widths across the felt

4. Unfold the pieces and let you child serve up some play pasta to their toys.

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial!

SYTYC Linky Party#4

Ciao for Now,