Upcycled summer shorts

Turning old pants into shorts is one of the easiest upcycles ever, and one that I tend to practice every summer. 

Because inevitably, every time summer comes around, I'm stuck with several pairs of kids pants from the previous season that I know will be to short to wear again in the following fall. If they are still in good condition (holes in the knees, they're OK too, you'll cut them out anyway), I usually turn them into shorts.

Of course you can do this both with boys' and with girls' pants, but I find it so much fun to work with girls' pants, because there are lot more possibilities for creativity. 

I've made these a couple of weeks ago, and my daughter has been wearing them regularly since then. I started with an old pair of plain jeans: 

I cut the pants legs and hemmed to the length I wanted for the shorts. Then all I did was to sew a hot pink lacy ribbon on the edges.

As an afterthought, I decided to add an iron-on applique I already had in my stash. The colors matched and the shorts look a lot better with it. At least from the perspective of a five year old girl. 

It took me less than half an hour to do all this. Now she has one cute and unique pair of summer shorts and I still saved some money in the process. Win-win all the way!

For more ideas on how to reuse & upcycle kids pants, click below:

Enjoy,

DIY scrap wood gift tags

At the beginning of the year, I was invited to join a wonderful group of bloggers for the Handmade Christmas Bloghop 2016 (thank you!).

The idea is to show everyone that you can actually make your own Christmas gifts (and finish them in time). It's true that in those last few weeks before December 25th we are all rushing to get everything done, but if you start early, you can actually accomplish a lot. You will save money, you will give people meaningful gifts made with love and you will not need to shop around for the perfect gift at the last minute. Hence the 12 months - 12 bloggers - 12 gifts idea. 

Every month one of the bloggers suggests one different handmade gift. And while I'm scheduled to post mine only in October, I wanted to use some of the ideas already posted to make some gifts too. 

Only, instead of a gift I made...gift tags. 

Here's the background story: 

Ever since Pili, from My Sweet Things, and Gail, from Purple Hues and Me, posted their Christmas decor ideas using scrap wood (you can see the complete list of projects so far at the bottom of this post), I've been meaning to make something similar.

But I had two problems. One, I had no scrap wood around. My grandfather used to work a lot with wood, but no one in the family inherited the talent (I certainly didn't), And two, decoupage is a technique I have never tried before. Not knowing if I was going to be successful, I also was not going to spend money buying wood.

But then my kids needed some canvas for a school project, and with the canvas came these bits of wood:

They were supposed to fir into the corners of the canvas' wood frames, to keep the angles straight, but were not really needed to the school project. Instead of throwing them out, I decided to use them. Because of their size, the only feasible alternative I could think of was to turn them into gift tags.

So...I glued them in groups of four, with a red ribbon in between:

And then printed a Merry Christmas message that could fit over the tags and glued it too.

I tried to distress the sides a bit, and though I was not entirely successful (probably because I used regular printer paper and didn't let it dry completely), I still like the rustic look of those tags.

Afterwards, I was thinking I probably could have stamped a few of them (instead of gluing the paper on top), and that's certainly on my list of things to try whenever I manage to find other similar bits of wood.

For now, I think these tags will perfectly complement those handmade Christmas gifts I'm planning to make!

Check below all the projects posted so far in the 2016 Handmade Christmas Blog Hop:

An InLinkz Link-up

Remember it's never too soon to start working on your Christmas projects!

And if you're into woodworking or looking for great beginner projects, here's a fun selection of projects:

27 Fun DIY Bandsaw Projects You Can Start Today

Happy Thursday,

Disclaimer: The link to the 27 Fun DIY Bandsaw Projects You Can Start Today is used in this post with the consent of its respective owner. All content within that link is also the responsibility of its respective owner.

Old basket to doll bed upcycle

Or maybe I should say bunny bed?

Even though I encourage my kids to be creative and they are used to seeing me work on my own crafts, sometimes they still manage to surprise me. Last Sunday, after church, my son came to me and said Carrot needed a bed (Carrot is a soft toy bunny he received from his grandmother last Easter and that has been sleeping with him ever since). 

Now, if that request had come from my daughter, I would have not been surprised because she always needs a bed for every one of her dolls. But coming from an eight year old boy that's usually focused on video games and anything with wheels, it was unexpected. And endearing too. As I'm betting in a couple of years he will not only forget about this but feel embarrassed if I ever remind him, I decided to comply. Kids grow up too fast as it is, so I might as well enjoy what's left of their childhood while I can.  

I had this basket in a corner of my craft room from quite some time: 

 

I vaguely recall that it came with flowers delivered to the hospital when one my kids was born (can't remember which). For a while we used it to store toys, but then the handle broke and I just held on to the basket, thinking I would make something out it one day. 

I told my son to go through my fabric stash and pick whatever he liked for Carrot's bed (not that he had a lot of choice because most of my fabrics are girly and Carrot, has been determined to be boy bunny). This was the end result:

I made everything as I went along, so no pattern and no tutorial this time, but I'll just give you some pointers in case you ever want to make something similar:

• I traced the bottom of the basket onto the back of the fabric and cut two pieces, which were sewn right sides together leaving a small opening on one side, turned inside out, filled with a bit of polyester filling and closed. This works as the mattress.
• I cut a strip of fabric long enough to go around the inside of the basket and wide enough to cover it from the mattress up to the top border. I sewed it to the mattress. 
• Then I cut another strip of fabric this time to go around the outside of the basket. The top of this strip is sewn to the other one (the one lining the inside of the basket) and the bottom is folded and sewn into an elastic casing. This way the basket is lined inside and out with one single piece (because everything is sewn together) and the elastic not only helps to keep everything in place but makes it easy to remove for washing if necessary. 

My son cut himself two rectangles of fabric to make a pillow (and filled it with the polyester), and I also made a small blanket (again, his choice of fabric), lined with the same fabric as the basket and with a small trim as embellishment. 

All in all, it took me less then an hour to make everything, and Carrot has been happily sleeping in his own bed ever since. So I'm calling in a very successful upcyle!

(it works well as a doll bed too, but that Barbie did not last long in there...)

The downside? When my daughter found out what we were making for Carrot, she immediately came up with a doll that did not have a bed yet. Since I was freshly out of baskets to upcycle, I had to improvise. I'll share that adventure next week...

Happy Tuesday, 

 

Ikea Hack Lego Table

We are all huge Lego fans at our house (yes, even me; having kids is a great excuse to play with Legos again), but we've never had a Lego table. Lately, though, I decided we needed one, mostly because having Lego constructions spread out through the living room floor was starting to bother me. I wanted something simple and cheap, that can be easily discarded when the kids grow, but at the same that that did not clash with our other furniture. When I saw an old Ikea side table next to the trash cans at the end of our street early on a Saturday morning, I knew I had hit jackpot! It was the right size, and, most of all, it was the right price.

Someone had discarded it, though, because it looked in pretty bad shape, but the damages were all superficial, just a lot of nicks and bruises and peeling paper cover.

At first I thought about painting it, but those tables are actually made of cardboard, not wood, and I didn't know if the paint would hold. In the end, I used a dark brown self adhesive paper I already had at home (leftover from lining some shelves years ago) and covered the table legs and the sides. And then, because I had to join several pieces of adhesive paper, I added a pretty ribbon to hide the "seams". This is how it looked afterwards:

You can see the top was a bit damaged too, but I wasn't worried about that, as I was going to cover it with the Lego base plates.

Which was also a great opportunity to try out my brand new hot glue gun. I don't know how I lived for so long without one!

Here's the end result: 

I had to buy a few new base plates, because most of the ones we had were old and broken (they've been around ever since I was a kid, which just shows that Legos are durable toys), so you can see the difference in color from the new to the old plates, but the kids wanted to keep that road, and I wanted to cut expenses to a minimum. 

Because the table was larger than the four big base plates we had and I needed the scarred tabletop covered entirely, I cut a few of the older plates to fill in the blank spaces (but making sure Lego pieces would fit in perfectly between the joined plates.  

I hot glued all the pieces to the table top and let the kids have a got at it.

No complaints so far. Total cost: just the three new base plates. Everything else was free or something we already had at home. Not bad for a Saturday morning's work!

Happy Tuesday!

Refashioned Classical Lampshade

Hi everyone, I'm back with my latest upcycling project, a lampshade this time!

Here is the story behind it. 

A "new" skirt: the easiest upcycle ever!

I have seriously been trying to clean out my unfinished projects pile before we go on vacation for a few days and this was a long overdue upcycle. Actually, I'm not even sure you can call it an upcycle. It's just an effort to have my daughter wear one of her favorite skirts (and mine too) for a while longer.

Upcycle: easy & inexpensive DIY napkin rings

...using cardboard tubes and washi tape!

These are perfect for summer! For backyard parties, birthday parties, tea parties or any other kind of party! They are virtually inexpensive, can be made in a matter of minutes and can be customized to match just about any decor you want. And if in the end they are lost or damaged? No big deal, you can just make more next time.

5 minute upcycle: empty can to pencil holder...

...using self adhesive paper and washi tape.

No clutter in 2015: update & roundup of DIY upcycled gift packages

Hi everyone, I hope you're having a wonderful week! Tomorrow is Friday, the weather is great in our little corner of the world and I'm looking forward to a super busy weekend. We have a birthday party on Saturday morning, a meeting at church on Saturday afternoon, and then another birthday party and a soccer game on Sunday afternoon. I have no idea how I'm going to survive this...

But onto decluttering. These past two weeks I have been mainly focused on discarding several things, from books to clothes. I went back to my clothes closet and took the opportunity, while exchanging winter for summer clothes, to remove a pile of stuff that I will not be wearing again. This is the second or third time I go through my closet since the beginning of the year and just proves that decluttering is an on-going job and not a once in a lifetime experiment.

Then I got rid of a few more books. Some were added to my digital library and others were not. Even though it's sometimes hard to part with my books, my free time is already so limited that there are a few I will not be reading again for sure, so it's pointless to save then, even in digital format (our digital world can get cluttered too, right?).

I have also been upcycling a lot, though lately mostly focused on gift packages, since I've been using a lot of them for all the birthday parties we've been attending.

Here's a roundup of some of the upcycling I've made so far transforming regular boxes or packages into gift packages:

1 - storage box to fabulous gift package

2 -plain mail package to cute gift package

3 - cereal box to gift bag

All three were already sent to their due recipients with gifts inside.

These projects can be made using materials that we all regularly have at home and not only save you money but help you declutter. Get rid of all those boxes that you stored because you thought they could be useful one day, turn them into something that will make someone else happy and your closets emptier!

What's next? I have two more upcycling projects finished but I need time to write the posts, so given our tight schedule for the next few days, it will probably take me a while before I can share them. I'm in the middle of a tutorial on how to turn adult pants into kids pants with built-in pockets, but again, you better not wait up for it. And I have two more boxes ready for upcycling into gift packages, one of which is needed for Sunday, so I'll have to hurry.

I'll let you know how it went next week.

From plain to fabulous: upcycled gift package

We've been drowning on birthday parties. Maybe it's because it's spring, but apparently half of my kid's friends were born in April and May.

Last weekend we only had one birthday party, but the previous weekend we had four and we already have two more scheduled for next weekend. Let's just say I've been making and wrapping a lot of gifts.

A couple of weeks ago I shared a tutorial on how to make a gift bag out of a cereal box (missed it? it's here). It's been very useful, and I already have a few empty cereal boxes lined up to make more. Today I'm showing you how you can turn a plain cardboard box into a cute gift package.

Boxes are particularly useful to wrap fragile gifts and, in my opinion, better than wrapping paper or paper gift bags because recipients can reuse them (for storage, for example).

In my particular case, I was looking for a fun way to wrap this diary gift set:

(I posted about this diary gift set here, and you can find the tutorial here; it is an easy and fast handmade gift, especially for girls).

This was the starting point: one perfectly plain brown cardboard box that we received in the mail with something my husband ordered online.

It was the perfect size to fit the diary gift set inside, but too boring and plain, especially for the birthday party of a little girl turning eight.

So I went back to the scraps of glittery self adhesive paper (leftovers from the homemade Christmas cards) and cut some shapes. The only other things I used were a piece of purple tulle, also a leftover from last year's Halloween costumes and a bit of pink tissue paper. Here are the "ingredients":

I actually would have preferred purple glitter paper, but I didn't have any, so I went with pink instead. The rest was made using the silver glittery paper. Oh, and I used the Sizzix to cut the stars, but if you don't have one, print the shape you want and just trace it in the back of the paper (or use cookie cutter to trace the shapes, that works very well too).

Here's how it looked with just the glitter paper on:

I placed the tissue paper over the bottom of the box to carefully wrap the gift around it...

 ...and then tied the purple tulle around the box to close the opening:

This was the end result:

This is proof that a fabulous and professional looking gift wrap does not have to be expensive and there are lots of items around your house that can be repurposed for this. It saves you money and reduces clutter.

Don't have glitter paper? Use colorful cardboard shapes, glitter glue, regular wrapping paper or even magazine cutouts. Or go online and print cute and fun digital papers (Pinterest has loads of them, free for personal use). No tulle? Use fabric scraps, yarn scraps or matching ribbons. The possibilities are endless, you just need to stretch your imagination a bit.

Have a wonderful week!