DIY: Fangirl T-shirts

Once upon a time, there was a semi-angsty college kid who had finally begun to develop her own taste in music. One of the very first albums she fell hard for was Fall Out Boy's "From Under The Cork Tree" sometime during her sophomore/junior year of college. As you may have guessed, that college kid was me and that love continues to this day. (Fun fact: if you Google my name and Fall Out Boy, you'll find the article where I was randomly called by my college newspaper while listening to that album.)

As you know (or don't know because you don't care) Fall Out Boy went on hiatus in 2009 and I was sad that I never got to see them in concert. But then they got back together last year AND were coming to Columbus. So much fangirling! Luckily for me, in the meantime I had rekindled some college friendships, one of which was just as excited about the Fall Out Boy reunion as me. Somewhere in the midst of totally freaking out about the new album, we decided to make our own FOB t-shirts to wear to the concert.

I guesstimated how big these should be and free-handed them onto freezer paper.

Using much research (read: Pinterest) we decided to try both the freezer-paper/spray-with-bleach as well as the write-with-a-bleach-pen techniques. We wrote lyrics from The Phoenix "change you like a remix" and "raise you like a phoenix" on the fronts of our shirts, and used the freezer paper to make bigger letters for the album/tour name on the backs.

This is my pal Bre, getting ready to iron her letters down.

As it turns out, writing with bleach pens is not something I would recommend if you like precision. The flow is hard to control and unless you use VERRRY thin lines, your words will bleed together. Or where your letters cross back over themselves, like in my "k" below. Or if it globs out too fast, because there is no undoing bleach. We also did a little spraying on the front to make it look similar to the backs.

Cursive was maybe not the best choice, but I have to say I still like it even with the blurs.

Ironing on the freezer paper actually worked pretty well. If you were doing something really intricate, it might blur your lines a bit, but with our big block letters, the edges came out surprisingly crisp. However, I would also recommend going easy on the bleach spraying. At first, it will look like it's not doing anything, but it will eventually get there so be patient. If you want to bleach it all around, get close and spray right at the shirt. If you want a more splattered look, stay back a little ways and sort of spray over the shirt so the bleach falls like a nice, toxic rain.

Here they are, after the bleach did its job and we took off the letters.

Once the bleach had done as much work as we wanted it to, we carefully peeled off the letters and rinse our shirts in cold water in the sink to get most of the extra bleach off. Then we just washed them like normal (but not with anything else you might not want residual bleach on, obviously.) And then after all that, we ended up running late the day of the concert, so Bre didn't have time to change into her shirt, and I forgot to take a picture of me wearing mine, so I got you this shot from the concert instead. It was so awesome: they played most of my favorite songs from all their albums, and I could not be happier that I got to go.

So fun. So loud. So much sitting in the parking garage after. So worth it.

These shirts were actually pretty fun to make, and as soon as I have another reason to make a t-shirt, you can bet I will be doing this again. I knew that my black shirt would bleach to that rusty color, but I actually like that Bre's fuchsia shirt went pink with bleach, so I'll probably experiment with other colors too. So what do you guys think? Want to DIY some sweet band t-shirts? 

DIY: Rinse & Scrubs

Happy New Year! (Is it too late to say that? Happy Current Year then.)

This week/weekend I spent a lot of time cleaning my kitchen and simultaneously messing it up some more. It's a fun game I like to call "Never-ending Dishes" and it's not really that fun. The main reason for this was preparations for my oldest nephew's birthday cake (another story for another post), but while I was at it, I decided to make some things I've been seeing around Pinterest.

The recipes I chose were this hair rinse with rosemary and ACV, this salt scrub inspired by LUSH Ocean Salt, and this lip scrub inspired by LUSH Mint Julips. The rinse I made according to the recipe and I've only used it once, but it did make my hair smell good all day. So the jury is still out on that one. I changed a lot of things in the scrubs though, so here are my altered versions.

Citrusy Salt Scrub
1/2 c. fine sea salt
1 1/2 T. lime-infused vodka
1/4 to 1/2 c. coconut oil, melted
10 drops Lemon essential oil

Salt scrub ingredients! (And reusing an empty LUSH container.)

You basically mix all these things together to a consistency you like, so it's pretty simple. I did infuse the lime vodka myself (1/2 a lime, zested and chopped plus 3 T. vodka, mix and let sit for three days then strain), but you could probably sub in 1:1 citrus juice to vodka, or even all juice if you don't have vodka. If I made it again I would add some orange or grapefruit zest to the scrub itself for more citrusy goodness. (Citrusy is too a word.)

The original recipe calls this a face scrub, but I used it on my feet and it seemed pretty rough to me, so I probably wouldn't use it on my face. But hey, I'm a sensitive little flower. I usually like scrubs for shaving my legs, so we'll see how that works. If it's still too harsh, I'll give it to someone else and just use the rest of my sea salt for something else. Like French fries.

Warm Vanilla Lip Scrub
1 T. vanilla sugar
1/2 t. honey
1 to 2 T. coconut oil, melted
Dash of cinnamon

Once again, mix everything until you have a nice consistency and pack it into little containers. I've seen other recipes for this that call for castor sugar (which is white sugar ground more finely) so I put my sugar in the littlest cup for my Magic Bullet and blitzed it a couple times first. And if you don't have/don't want to buy vanilla sugar, you can use regular sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Mine will just look fancier than yours because of the cute little vanilla seeds in there. #opulenceclub

Fancypants sugar scrub! (And reusing more empty LUSH containers!)

I was going to make the mint version in the original post, but then I opened the cupboard and my vanilla sugar was staring at me. In my world, vanilla-cinnamon-honey is in the top three best flavor combinations of all time, so obviously I'm in love with this stuff. Also, it works like magic. My lips were so, so chapped that day but then I used this, licked off the rest (because it's completely edible and totally delicious), and put on the lip balm my sister made me for Christmas. It was the first time I hadn't been mad at my lips in about a week. Since our predicted high temperatures for the next couple days are in the single digits, I'm sure I'll be getting more use out of it soon. That is, if I don't just eat it.

The 2014 Pinterest Success Score (which is a thing I just made up) is now 1 okay, 1 undecided, and 1 love-it-so-much-I-would-marry-it, so I'm declaring this an overall Pinterest-win. I'm planning on keeping that up this year. What about you guys, make anything good from Pinterest lately?

First-Ever DIY: Thrifted Arm Warmers

We have already established that I love thrift stores (haven't we?) but now, thanks to Pinterest, they have a whole new dimension for me. What is it, you ask? Craft projects, my friends, cheap supplies for craft projects. I have quite a few blogs 'pinned' because they found something cheap at a thrift store and made something cool out of it. And today, I join those esteemed ranks. So let's get started.

I decided I wanted some arm warmers the other day. Because they're cute, and it's usually cold in my office where I type and click on things all day. Plus, it's getting to be wintery here in the NEOh and I don't like it. So there. My knitting skills haven't leveled up beyond Scarf World, and I've never learned to crochet, I had to come up with another plan.

The Plan: Find a cute and cheap sweater at a thrift store that fits your arms. (Obviously the rest doesn't matter since you won't be using it in this project.) Cut off the sleeves, add thumb holes. Ta-da! Arm warmers. 

The results of my thrift store trip. Total cost: $20.

Things You Will Need:
 - A sweater whose sleeves fit your arms pretty well (100% wool if you want to felt it)
 - Scissors
 - A bucket filled with hot water plus a little dish soap
 - A towel (if you are messy like me)
 - Rubber gloves
 - A blow dryer, or some patience

As you can see, I also had snacks on hand, as well as fabric glue and a sewing kit I didn't use.

Step 1: Cut off sleeves.
I recommend cutting them a little longer than you think you want the final product to be. I "measured" by putting one arm in, noting the stripe I wanted to cut, then taking it off and cutting it. If your sweater is not stripey, you might have to actually measure, or draw a line or something.

Step 2: Felting.
This is only possible (as far as I know) if your sweater is 100% wool. And it will cause skrinkage, so if your sleeves fit exactly how you want them to already, skip this step. The point of felting is to keep the material from fraying where it is cut by getting the fibers to lock themselves together, so agitation is your friend here. I did it because my sleeves were a little big, and so I wouldn't have to sew anything. I am, how you say, terrible at sewing.

Put the sleeves in the hot water + dish soap bucket. Put on your rubber gloves and pretend to be a washing machine, noises included if you are home alone and forgot to put in a movie before getting your hands wet. Do this until they are as felty as you'd like them to be. I didn't take mine all the way to true 'felt' because I thought they would shrink too much. You know it's felted when you can no longer see the original knitting stitches.

Left side: Original sweater. Right side: After felting. See how the stitch is kind of indistinct?

Step 3: Blow dry or learn some patience.
I wouldn't recommend blow drying them. Why? Because it took forever and didn't really work. If I wasn't so impatient, I would have spread them out on a towel and let them dry overnight. But instead, I continued to the next step with damp arm warmers. (If you have a clothes dryer, that would work too, but it might shrink some more, so keep that in mind.)

This is me invading the sleeve's personal space with my blow dryer.

Step 4: Cut thumb holes.
Once again, I "measured" using the stripes on the sweater. I laid the sleeve out, put my hand on it so the opening was under my palm, noted which stripes were under my thumb, then cut a hole opposite the seam. Again, since I felted the material, I didn't have to sew anything here. 

I cut through that black stripe because it's where I wanted my thumb to come out.

Step 5: Final touches.
For me this meant cutting off the fuzzy back edge and letting them dry the rest of the way. If you didn't felt, you'll probably need to sew your raw edges at the back and around the thumb holes so they don't fray. Or use fabric glue, or some kind of magic. If you want to add any embellishments, ribbon or whatnot, now would be the time to do that too, but I like mine the way they are.

Close up of fuzzy edge removal.

Step 6: Wearing your awesome project and taking dorky pictures of them. Ta-da!

Maybe if you'd wear a shirt with sleeves when it's cold out, you wouldn't need arm warmers.

Final Cost of Project: $2.00 for a thrift store sweater, so technically less than that, if I end up using the rest of the sweater for something else. If I don't, I'll give it to my sister since she cloth-diapers her kids.

Difficulty Level: Meh. It wasn't hard, just a bit time-consuming.

Satisfaction Level: Pretty high. I wore them the next day and they were toasty-warm. And since I picked a multicolored stripey sweater to begin with, they should go with lots of my clothes. (I am clever like that.)

The end! Hope you enjoyed my first foray into the DIY crafting blogosphere!