Embellished shorts

Hum, yes, we are headed for winter, so maybe it is not the best time to be working on shorts. But the fact that last week we had several warm, sunny days in a row and the need to drastically reduce my unfinished projects pile, pushed me to actually finish these shorts.

The shorts were actually pants when I purchased them a while ago, but in the meantime my son planted some holes in the knees. I covered the holes with patches, but then the patches got holes too...Well, it's an endless circle and not the first time I dwell on this on my posts. If you want you can check my older posts: boy-pants-to-girl-shorts and 3-easy-ways-to-reuse-and-upcycle-kids pants to get an idea of what I usually do to get the pants to last just a bit longer.

As this story goes, I'd had it with these pants, so I cut the legs shorter and hemmed them into shorts.

And then, because the whole thing had been in the to-do pile for a long time and the shorts wouldn't fit my son anymore, I decided to add some embellishment so that my daughter can use them.

I found this cute flower ribbon in my stash (anyone else addicted to buying cute ribbons?) and decided it was perfect for the job. Because of its shape it was not very easy to sew on so  I ended up using fabric glue in the center of the flowers and then hand stitched around the petals.

For good measure, I added a flower to each of the back pockets...

...and used the rest of the ribbon to make matching hair clips:

Here is the whole set:

Sometimes simple materials and a little imagination can sure go a long way...

Enjoy,

Hair clips again - part 3

And last but not least, after the sheep and the purple flower, came...the blue cupcake:

Why blue? I don't really know. I wanted a strong color to contract with the dark brown on the base and I guess I was tired of pink. The star buttons were added as an afterthought.

It came out slightly bigger than I expected, but it is still cute. Here it is, side by side with the crochet flower hair clip from yesterday's post.

See you around,
Teresa

Hair clips again - part 2

Remember yesterday's post? The sheep hair clip?

For the following hair clip in need of up-cycling I decided to forget felt and go back to crochet. Since the original clip was purple, I made a purple flower.

I used this pattern as a guide, just crocheting the first layer of the flower, added a white border and passed a thread in a lighter shade of purple through the center of the flower in a heart-ish shape (unintentional, it just came out that way and I kind of liked it).

Fast ans easy. The only downside? I found it hard to crochet such a small flower, so maybe next time I will try it with a ticker thread and a bigger hook.

Hair clips again - part 1

My daughter keeps losing her hair clips. Others are damaged. On a weekly basis there is usually a small group of clips that need to be up-cycled.

First came the sheep.

After sewing and gluing everything in place, I realized that the back was kind of ugly, so I decided to sew a circle (or a slightly cropped circle) to the back.

And here it is, a new hair clip without too much trouble. One down, a few more to go...

See you,
Teresa




Craft-O-Manic Monday Link Up Party #8

More pony tail holders

Remember the Valentine's day pony tail holders?

They were so easy I decided to make more, so I went through my buttons box and come up with these:

I actually started out like this...

...and I was halfway through sewing them when my daughter complained that she wanted pink pony tail holders, not white ones. Since this was meant to be an early-sunday-morning-before-church project, I decided not to waste a lot of time arguing with her and complied. So it came to this:

Still, because all I needed to do was to sew the buttons onto the holders...

...the little girl was still able to wear them to church. 'Cause if you're making one, you can easily make two, right?

See you around,
Teresa

Crochet Hearts Hairclips

Originally I intended to share these cute hair clips before Valentine's Day but...I'm keeping it real, remember? And in real life, unfortunately, not everything runs the way you plan and not all projects get completed in time. And this one, although fairly easy, should have been ready days ago. But it just was not meant to be.

However, since hair clips and hearts can really be worn any day of the year, I'm going to share them with you anyway.

Valentine’s day projects part 2 – hair clips

Remember yesterday’s project?

I cut some extra felt hearts, this time including red along with the two shades of pink, and dug around my craft supplies for simple hair clips (sorry about the dark pictures, it was already night when we finished and lighting was not the best).

Then all I had to do was to sew the hearts to each other (in a way that no thread is showing at the front) and glue the groups of hearts to the hair clips.

And there you have it: nice and easy Valentine’s hair clips (which the girl already used to school today, since she cannot resist when she has something new…)

Have a lovely Valentine’s day,
Teresa

Valentine’s day projects part 1 – pony tail holders

Valentine’s day is not a day we celebrate a lot in our house. Not even when my husband and I were dating. We did give each other the occasional gift, but the date usually goes by without a lot of fuss.

Since the kids started school, however, they are used to making a special project in class for Valentine’s day. Since my youngest is in her first year at school, I tried to explain her what it was all about and we decided to come up with something fun and that she could use (we have too much clutter around the house as it is, so useful was in order for the day). Hair accessories seemed just the right choice.

So I bought a bag of cheap ponytail holders (I forgot to take a picture, but it came with an assortment of holders in several colors). I chose the smallest size they had because (1) she does not have a lot of hair anyway and (2) if you make a pair, they can double as pigtail holders.

I’m lazy so I used my Sizzix Big Shot to cut some small hart shapes out of pink felt, but you can easily cut use scissors to do the job.

I chose 4 plain ponytail holders in pink and round buttons matching the colors of the hearts.

Then all I had to do was to sew the hearts to the buttons and attach the buttons to the ponytail holders…

And voilà: cute Valentine’s day ponytail holders

You can make them in any color, using matching or contrasting thread and buttons.

And because they are small, you can even use them as a ring.

While we were on a roll, we also made some hair clips, which I will tell you all about tomorrow.

See you around,
Teresa