Tutorial Tuesday #9: Bridesmaid Totebags

I am so excited I can finally sit down and blog again. I am also super excited I get to share my first tutorial in forever today! I still have a lot of wedding projects that I never got to share, so don’t be surprised if that’s what most of my tutorials are for a while. Oh, and Christmas crafts. 

Today I want to share with you one of my favorite projects from the wedding. And funny, it wasn’t even a decoration. These were actually my bridesmaids’ gifts.I made a lot of handmade things for my gifts to try to keep it cheap. Because let's be honest, weddings are a rip-off. 

How I did it was really easy but a little time consuming. 

Here's what you need to make your own tote bag

Supplies:

Blank linen tote bag (Hobby Lobby)

Fabric Paints or Acrylic Paints (In whatever colors your heart desires) and Fabric Medium

Masking Tape

Ruler

Freezer Paper

Cricut or X-acto knife and Monogram Template

Foam Brushes

Instructions

1. I taped my bags front and back to make stripes. I used my ruler to help guide where I put the tape and I made my stripes an inch long. You could do any pattern you wanted really, but stripes seemed easiest to me. *Also, make sure you put paper inside of the bag to keep the paint from bleeding through.

2. I mixed 1 part fabric medium and 1 part acrylic paint (brown) and painted my stripes. I ended up doing two to three layers. But be careful, because the tape likes to buckle once you start painting. 

3. After the stripes dried, I took all the tape off. 

4. To make my monogram, I used the same technique as in my Muggle T-shirts and my Keep Calm T-shirts. 

5. I tied a large ribbon around each of them and a stamped "handmade for you" label. 

6. I filled the tote bags with a homemade pumpkin body scrub (recipe found here), a pair of brown flip flops, a hanger I made for each of them, and a makeup bag I had monogrammed with each of their initials. The makeup bag had some of my favorite things in it. Examples - Lipgloss, Essie nail polish, sunglasses (the ones we wore in the pictures), nail polish remover, a small candle, and some other stuff I can't remember. 

And there you have it. My bridesmaid totes. And just for the record, these would be great gifts for any occasion! Not just weddings ;) Hope everyone had a great Tuesday!

Pearl Shoe Clips

Hope everyone had a great week. It's finally the weekend! (If you didn't know)

And since that means no school, I'm obviously going to craft.

But today's craft is semi-school-related:

Pearl Shoe Clips

Since I have to dress up to visit patients at the hospital, I have started wearing flats all the time. The only problem is, out of my 4387538 pairs of shoes, I only have, like, 2 pairs of flats. Promise I'm not exaggerating. I started brainstorming ideas to dress them up or make them different because they get really boring.  I had already made the bow clips for them, but that was just because I'm a tad bit obsessed with bows and I can only wear those with certain colors. This led me to pearls. Pearls are always classy and can be worn with pretty much anything. Just ask Auburn sorority girls, they wear them with their over-sized t-shirts and Nike shorts. ;) Just messin.

Supplies:



White felt
Blank hair clips
Plastic Pearls (52 total)
E6000 glue (or other strong glue)
Scissors

How To:

Cut 2 -1.5" felt circles
They don't have to be perfect - promise

Put a dab of glue on the bottom of your pearls and arrange them in the above fashion on your felt circle. The outside pearls are going to be slightly hanging off the felt, so I put a little glue on the sides of those so they stick to the pearls in the middle. Also, make sure the holes in the pearls aren't seen from the top, unless of course, you don't care. I'm too OCD.
Let these dry before gluing the top layer.

For my top layer, I glued one pearl directly on top of the bottom center pearl and then 6 on the outside of that one. The only difficulty with this, is the pearls on the outside are going to try to fall into the creases of the bottom layer. So, I had to hold them in place until they dried just enough to hold themselves.

Lastly, glue your clips to the bottom. I clipped mine to a piece of paper while it dried so the clip didn't glue shut. (That's happened to me before.)

Finally, you have something to dress up those boring flats!

Told you I only have 2 pairs.

Happy weekend!

DIY Cluster Necklace

I just wanted to post to show you guys my cluster necklace I made during girl's night on Monday. 

 It's super easyto make if you have any patience at all.

Supplies:

Headpins
Pretty beads
6" of regular chain
16" decorative chain
Pliers
2 jump rings

How to:

I followed this tutorial to learn how to make a loop
Put one of your beads on a headpin and use your pliers to cut excess off the top. I left about 1/2 an inch of headpin above my bead.
Then, using your pliers, make a loop and hook it onto your regular chain.
Repeat until you have as many clusters as you want.
At each end of your regular chain, add a jump ring and hook it onto your decorative chain.
Make sure your decorative chain comes with a clasp already attached.

Lastly, admire your new necklace :)

Hope everyone's having a great Wednesday!

Bows! Bows! Bows!

If you know me at all, you know I am obsessed with bows. Like, I have a very unhealthy obsession.  If it has a bow, I have to have it.  It also doesn't help that a lot of projects circulating in the blog world contain bows. 

That leads me to today's project:

Bow shoe clips

There are so many different versions of these in the blog world, but this is the one I decided to go with.

They take quite a bit of patience, unless of course, you know how to use a sewing machine.  I do not, however, so I spent the last couple hours hand-sewing these babies and watching Harry Potter movies to prepare for Thursday night's premiere! :)

Talk about multitasking.

All you need are:

Small pieces of pretty fabric

Small clips

Scissors

Needle

Thread

Hot Glue Gun (or Fabric Glue)

Then, I just followed the directions exactly as the tutorial says

Here are my final products :)

The ones that are smaller than all the others were the first ones I made.

I thought the size of the tutorial ones would be too big and I decided to make them smaller.

However, I was wrong, as usual.

Kind of obsessed, even if my sister did laugh at them

 :)