chezlin ·
While on vacation my sister said something super quotable, and I decided to take said quote and make it into some art for my kitchen. I did the same technique as I had done a few years ago to make some art for my living room. Basically I just took some thrift store art, masked out a phrase, painted over the whole thing and then peeled off the lettering. It's super easy and turns out really nice!
chezlin ·
I had a little vacation coming up so I decided to whip up a pair of sweat pants to wear while traveling. It's horrible to wear uncomfortable clothes while you're stuck in a car or on a plane. I also ended up making these sweats reversible because I found this great fabric at the store!
chezlin ·
chezlin ·
Today I'll be making, and showing you how to make a faux double horned necklace. I've been seeing a lot of people wearing this type of necklace seemingly all over the place, and I ended up wanting one so badly. And of course I decided to make my own rather than buying one! Instead of using horn I made faux horn with polymer clay. It's nice because when you use polymer clay you can customize it a bunch of ways, size, color, shape, etc. I really love how it turned out and I hope you guys like this project too!
chezlin ·
The weather is getting nice so it's perfect for taking a trip to the park to hang out and paint a little bit. This week I'll show you how easily to put together your own travel sized watercolor (or gouache) kit that you can just throw in your pocket, purse, bag, etc. and be on your way!
Click here for an affiliate link for the aqua brushes.
I hope you like this weeks project! Now get out there and paint! :)
chezlin ·
I showed you guys how to make paper clay two weeks ago, so this week I decided to show you a few different projects you can do with this clay! A shallow dish that you can use as a jewelry holder, coin holder, etc. and a lidded vessel that I ended up decorating to look like Totoro (of course you can decorate yours however you'd like!) Shallow dish:
Lidded vessel:
And there we go! I love how these turned out. Unfortunately I'm all out of paper clay now, but I'm itching to make more so I can make some more projects!
chezlin ·
When I made the post about how to make a paper mache deer head from scratch, I mentioned an optional ingredient: air drying paper clay. I used a homemade version, and I ended up liking it so much that I decided I'd share with you all how to make your own! I got the recipe from ultimatepapermache.com. That website is a great resource for almost anything paper mache, so if you're interested in anything like that, definitely go check it out, it's great.
This clay is pretty great, I really like working with it. It dries extremely strong, even when it's pretty thin. It takes fine detail and you can sand it after its dry. Also, since I used baby oil it smells kind of nice too.
chezlin ·
A while ago I started a "self-portrait-a-day-for-a-year" project and I never finished it. I don't even think I hit 100! I think I didn't set enough ground rules for myself, so I just gave up on it. I decided I wanted to start again, but this time with some rules I actually have to stick to.
So really, it's not that many rules. It's enough to give me some guidance but also not too many where I feel constricted.
Here's the one for today, 2.19.15:
photoshop/mirror
After this week, I'm going to go back to posting the roundup of portraits for the week, starting this Monday, 2.23.15. I will, however, be posting them every day onto my tumblr, so if you can't wait then feel free to follow me there!
chezlin ·
Hi, all! A few days ago I posted a tutorial on how to make Halloween decor out of paper mache, and today I'm going to show you some ways I chose to decorate said decor. Hopefully this can give you guys inspiration on your own Halloween decorating!
I hope you all enjoyed!
chezlin ·
Six years ago I posted a Halloween costume I made that featured a working wind up key. Four years ago I posted a tutorial on how to make said key and around Halloween it's almost always my top visited post. My husband has been wanting me to make some tutorials in video format, so I thought what better tutorial than this! So lo and behold, here's the video!
Here's a quick little photo recap of the video:
Supplies. Not pictured are some pliers and a screwdriver that I used to take the toy apart.
The sacrifice. Poor guy didn't see it coming.
This toy was nice because it was held together by just two screws. After unscrewing I just pulled the mechanism out. This is all we need from him!
In the original tutorial I used pliers to break off the wind up toy grip but this time my dowel(aka the piece of bamboo I had lying around) already had a hole in it and it was the perfect size with the grip still attached, so I just kept it on.
Mark the center point of the belt, cut a teeny tiny hole and stick the wind up mechanism through. You want to tack it down with a small dab of hot glue, taking care not to glue the moving parts.
Oh yes, the belt. That's how we will be securing the key to our bodies! I had this black elastic belt that I never wore anymore so I just used that.
To hide the white boxy mechanism cut a piece of matching fabric (I used fleece) and attach it on the belt. You can either sew it on or hot glue it.
Making the key pattern out of form core board. I traced a glass and then free handed the rest of it.
So in the previous tutorial I said to use a strong glue, namely a two part epoxy, since people will be cranking that thing all night. However, I have since tested it out and using a high temperature hot glue gun works just as well. You can still use a stronger glue of course, but hot glue does work.
For painting I did two coats of black as a base and then finished with a single coat of an antique copper.
Do not use spray paint! If you've made your key out of foam core board the chemicals in spray paint will react with the foam and eat it away. Craft paint is the way to go here.
Almost done!
You'll just want to put a bit of hot glue into the hole of the dowel. I had a pre-existing hole, but normally you would have had to CAREFULLY drill a small hole on the end of the key.
And here it is on the back of my costume!
And in motion!
So I hope you guys enjoyed the video. Is that something I should do more often? Let me know! It's pretty weird to sit there and talk to the camera, but it turned out alright I think.
chezlin ·
*dusts off this ol' blog again* Hey guys, it's been quite a while since my last post and a lot has happened since then. For those of you who would check up on my blog to see if I have been posting, thank you for checking in and I'm sorry I abandoned this thing for so long. I have quite a few projects to post and many ideas churning in my head, so I should be back to posting normally soon, so please stay tuned!
chezlin ·
When I was at the grocery store the other day I noticed some huge rocks among the mangoes and pineapples in the fruit section. These things were actually a fruit called mamey sapote. My fiance and I like to try weird new fruit, so I grabbed one and continued on with my shopping. When I got home I researched a bit about this weird fruit and found out it's supposed to taste like a mix between a sweet potato and pumpkin. Interesting. I also found out that you're supposed to let it sit on the counter for a week or so to let it get good and ripe before you eat it. I'm impatient so right when the week mark hit I cut this guy open. I probably should have waited longer. 
Supposedly when the fruit is good at the store, the flesh inside should be bright pinkish red when you scratch off some of the skin. If the flesh is yellow or green don't buy that one; it was picked too early. After that you wait for the fruit to get good and ripe before you cut into it. Apparently you're supposed to wait until the skin holds an indent when you poke it. Of course I didn't wait that long.
At this point I realized I really should have waited longer. In videos I watched I people easily cut into the fruit but for me it was very hard.
Cracking this thing open.
And here's the inside! With the huge seed inside! When the flesh is really ripe you're supposed to be able to just scoop it out with a spoon, but since mine wasn't ripe the texture was more like a sweet potato. There was a tiny area where it was soft like that so we got to taste test it a tiny bit. It was... interesting. It was pumpkin-sweet potato-melon all at the same time. Very strange. All in all, if I found one of these at the store again I'll buy another one just to try one more time since I really know now the importance of letting it get really ripe before you try to eat it.
Back to the seed: oh yeah, look at this guy! It was already cracking open (you can't tell in the photo. It's cracked on the dark brown part of the seed). You know I'm going to attempt to grow it. I did the zip lock method, the same method as the mango.
Speaking of my mango plant, here's a little update:
A few days after I planted the seed, a little sprout started to emerge!
And only three days later it's already this big!
This thing is really taking off. Super exciting!
chezlin ·
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#46 watercolor and gouache #47 acrylic #48 acrylic #49 watercolor and gouache |
#50 watercolor, gouache and acrylic #51 India ink, acrylic and metallic craft paint #52 watercolor, India ink and acrylic The last image is how #49 and #50 should be viewed with proper lighting. |
chezlin ·
My birthday is on Thursday, so for this week I'll be showing off my birthday manicure that I gave myself last night. I didn't really have a plan in mind, I just kind of grabbed two random polishes and went to town.
I used Sally Hansen's Pedal to the Metal and Milani's Silver Dazzle. I also used Seche Vite for the top coat, which was awesome because I was able to pick up my knitting needles and work on my knitting project with practically no wait time. I love that stuff.
Hope you enjoy!
chezlin ·
This is actually a manicure I did a while ago, but I'm just now finding the time to put it up. I really like the look of ruffian manicures, so I decided to do my own twist on one, using my favorite nail polish as the base.
The base is Milani 3D Holographic "509 HD". Unfortunately I don't remember which nail polish I used as the top color, sorry!
chezlin ·
Earlier this month, my baby sister graduated from high school and it's still blowing my mind... she's about to go off to college like an adult- so weird, I still see her as a snotty little kid, hah. Anyhow, I wanted to sort of theme the gift my boyfriend and I got her on the college, (UT Austin, woo, Hook em'!) she'll be attending in the fall. The first thing I made was some hand painted wrapping paper recycling the brown packing paper from some packages I had recently received.
Their colors are burnt orange and white, so I used orange paint and painted a sort of fish scale/wave design. After it dried, I used this tutorial to make a bow.
Here is everything all done! For her gift, we got her an orange Camelbak and I painted a longhorn on it in white. Our original plan was to completely fill that bottle up with one hundred $1 bills, but then I got a better idea. A money lei.
Here it is all wrapped up! Now on to the leis~
I was looking around online for different kind of leis that people would get for graduation, and soon I came across the money lei. How perfect, after seeing these I immediately decided that would be a way better way to give her the $100 that was originally going to be put in the bottle. I soon ended up convincing my mom and sister to give her money leis as well, with me making them of course. I wanted her to be completely swamped with these things. I decided to make 4 $50 leis so she could receive one from my mom, my sister, my boyfriend and myself. The tutorial I used used one hundred $1 bills, so I took colored paper(blue and yellow - her high school colors) cut them to the size of a dollar, folded them up and made 50 spacers for each lei. That ended up actually being way too many. The first lei I made alternated: dollar, blue, dollar, yellow, etc. and it ended up being very, very long, so I started making different configurations for each lei afterwards. For example, one was ten $1 bills, three blue, ten $1 bills, three yellow, etc. Also, instead of taping the dollars, I used two paper clips per dollar to connect each side of the bill. After hours of folding and assembling these things, I was finally done!
So many $1 bills all folded up and ready to be assembled.
Here's an in progress shot.
And here she is after graduation! Completely swamped, just as planned! :D All in all, I'm completely happy with how these turned out and how unique the leis ended up being; I was really surprised to see she was the only one that received anything like that!
Congratulations class of 2012!
chezlin ·
Christmas is just around the corner, so what does that mean? It's time to bust ass on your crafting projects so you can be done in time to give them out to all of your appreciative family and friends. I hadn't knit anything in a while until recently when a friend asked me to teach them how to knit. I've been working on knitting projects every day since. I just thought I could write up a quick post and show you guys what I've been working on lately!
This is a close up shot of the scarf I knit first. I used a pattern I found off Ravelry.com but unfortunately even after digging around for it, I can't find the exact one I used. If I come across it later I'll definitely post it. I actually messed up reading the knitting chart, but it still ended up working out.
I absolutely love how this one turned out. It was my first attempt at blocking, and I think it worked out quite well. I didn't really measure anything out, I just stretched and pinned, so some areas are kind of wavy but overall it looks good. I used the Tiger Eyes Lace Scarf pattern I found on Ravelry. Personally I think it looks more like owls than tigers.
This is my current project. I found the pattern on, you guessed it, Ravelry, but I actually couldn't find the Ravelry link in my history- I could only find the direct link to the pattern. So here it is! It's actually grown about two feet since I took this picture. It's quite a fast and easy knit. I like how it's turning out so far.
Here's a close up of the knit. It reminds me of rice. :)
I like to consider myself as an intermediate level knitter, I've knit some scarves, gloves, socks, hats... but there's one thing that will always scare me. Sweaters. It is my goal to knit a sweater soon. Here is the one I'm going to attempt to knit: Hundred of sheep, but I decided that I won't start a sweater until after Christmas so I can use my time to knit more gifts for people. Here's hoping I won't chicken out!
chezlin ·
So I've been pretty busy with crafting especially with Halloween right around the corner, and thankfully I've actually managed to take some pictures for you guys to see! I was meaning to make this post earlier but time caught up with me so here we are. Sorry about that! To make up for that, this is pretty much going to be three posts in one! I have two parts of my costume I need to show off as well as a semi tutorial on how to make a wand for my sister's costume. So here we go!
I'm going to be Poison Ivy from Batman this year. So first things first, for my costume I decided I wanted to wear some sort of heel. I wanted to see if I could score some green pumps from Goodwill, but I ended up going home with these:
I decided I could just cover them with some leaves and be done with it, so I ended up with these:
Which look... okay. I tried them on with my dyed tights, but I didn't really like how they looked with everything. I was just going to suck it up and deal with it, until one day I decided that I NEEDED some knee high super villain looking boots. I looked up some tutorials for converting high heels into boots, and found a simple boot cover tutorial by Sarcasm-hime. Easy enough! I got green vinyl from the fabric store (it was half off! Score!) and got to boot-coverin'. I've seen where people just sew the bottom up and leave a hole for the heel, so you can just slip the cover off and on, but I opted for a more permanent solution. I used hot glue to secure that sucker down. Here they are:
They ended up kind of wrinkly since the vinyl fabric wasn't cooperating very well, but I think they'll work out just fine for my costume. This actually worked out a lot better than I thought it would, and I'm probably going to attempt to make more boots sometime.
So next! I wanted some long gloves to make this costume complete. I had no idea on how to make gloves, so I started trying to search for some patterns online. I found some really complicated ones, and I even found how to draft a custom glove pattern that I tried out (with muslin!) but I got some of the measurements wrong and I decided that those types of gloves would be too much work for a little Halloween costume that I'd wear once or twice. I didn't want to make gloves that were as easy as just tracing around your hand and sewing along that line, but I didn't want to waste time doing the super complicated gloves, so lucky for me I found something that was in between those two. I ended up finding a video that taught you how to draft a pretty easy pattern for gloves. Click here to see!
So here's my drafted pattern. I messed up on marking the thumb. The bigger curve is the correct one. If you want to know how to do this, please watch the video I linked to above. He's much better at explaining it than I would be!
My master patterns!
He recommends using tissue paper to draw your pattern on, so I grabbed the closest tissue paper I had around me. Primary color polka-dotted tissue paper, ftw! 
I pinned the tissue paper onto my stretchy knit fabric and started sewing.
When done sewing, you cut out the thumb hole and then just rip the tissue paper right off! 
One finished glove!
And here's what it looks like on. Pretty wrinkly, but it will serve its purpose.
I actually liked making the more complicated gloves, but I'll probably try those out again with better fabric and more time.
So on to the last part. My sister wanted to be a wizard, so I ended up making her a long hooded cape and a wand. I don't have any great photos of the cape yet, but she will send me some soon. I did, however, take photos of the wand. So many, in fact, that it serves as a sort of tutorial! So here we go:
It started with a stuffing stick. I got it in a bag of poly-fil. You could just use a dowel or a disposable chopstick or something. If you use a dowel you'll have to sand down one end to make it tapered.
I wanted to add decorative elements, so I whipped out my trusty hot glue gun! You can do whatever you'd like. The stick is pretty skinny, so I was limited, but I just added some bands and dots and stuff.
Here's some of the decorations. Don't worry, it'll look better I promise.
I wanted to make a sort of handle and I had left over leather strips from my purse, so I ended up hot gluing it to the base of the wand. Lookin' pretty snazzy! Now pull out your paints! (You should probably wait until after painting to do this step, but I wasn't thinking.)
I just used some acrylic paints I had laying around. I didn't have brown, so I mixed the primary colors together-red, blue and yellow, and it made a nice brown color for me. Slap that paint on there! I showed my sister the wand at this point and she thought I had carved the decorations out. That means it's coming along!
To make the decorations pop, I painted them with some gold acrylic paint. I actually wanted to add some gems or something like that on the middle decorated part, but I had none so I just stopped there. I was pretty pleased with how it came out!
Here's the (folded) cape and wand together! When she gets those pictures to me, I shall post a better picture of the cape.
Phew! That was a doozy of a post! Sometime next week I'll post photos of my completed costume as well as my sister's. I hope this post was helpful to you guys! If you have any questions just leave me a comment and I'll answer it to the best of my ability! :)
chezlin ·
Look what I got in the mail today!
How exciting! About two years ago, I was contacted by Lisa Butterworth, Associate Editor of BUST, about putting a tutorial for my cassette tape coin purse in issue #61 of BUST Magazine. Of course I said yes. It was very cool to see my work in a big magazine like that. Fast forward to about 5 months ago and I was contacted by Debbie Stoller, Editor-in-Chief of BUST, about a book they were putting together that is a compilation of the best DIY, how-to and advice articles from the past 15 years of their magazine, and I was included! After the book was completed, they sent me a copy, and I received it today! Sooo pretty!
I'm really excited about it, and I plan on going through the book this evening and marking each project I'm interested in doing. Yay!
If you're interested in buying the book (and helping me make a few bucks as well) you can buy the book here!
chezlin ·
I'm planning on participating in a Warrior Dash next year, but I need to train so I'll be able to run and do the obstacles in a decent time. A lot of people dress up as viking warriors for the race, and I thought it would be cute to just have horns, since there's no way I would be wearing a costume or a viking helmet while running. I'd die. I didn't want to make a headband with horns on it because I was worried it would just fly off during the race; headbands always fall off of my weirdly shaped head, so I decided some hair clips could possibly work! I decided to make them now because firstly, they would make for a good addition to a costume that involved horns of some kind, and secondly, if I see them every day on my desk it will remind me to keep up with my training.
Here are the materials:
I cut out four horn shapes from the felt. Not pictured, I also cut out four triangular shapes- two to help shape the horn better and two for the bottom of the horn.
Here I am sewing up a horn. I sewed up the sides and two edges of the bottom and then flipped right side out, stuffed it and sewed closed.
And ta da! Clip in your hair!
And there you go! They stay in very well, I shook my head and ran around trying to gauge how well it would stay and it didn't budge at all. We'll see how well it stays in the race though...
You could definitely make different kinds of horns or animal ears or anything like that with hair clips, they're super cute!
