Sometimes I feel like I ride on the coattails of creative people. Back in January as I was surfing my favorite blogs, I came across this post on Ultra Vroom about cardigans and fabric necklaces. I instantly fell in love and had to have a fabric necklace for my very own. I week or so later I remembered the large stash of white jersey hanging around the basement and hap-hazardly made my own version of Annie's fabric necklace. If I remember correctly, I wore that necklace for 4 days in a row. I didn't really take it off until Penelope bumped her mouth on the table and bled all over me (Penelope is ok, BTW). It was with much sorrow that I parted with the necklace long enough to launder it. I love my necklace so much, I've been wanting to share it with you for sometime, but haven't worked on the tutorial until just now. Here it is! I hope you like it. Materials:

• 1 XXL or XXXL men's t-shirt
• Scissors and/or rotary cutter
• Sewing machine and or needle & thread

Cut off the bottom hem of the shirt. Cut 9 2-inch strips out of the shirt. Cut open one end of each strip. Stretch the jersey through your hands to allow the fabric to curl inside itself. Group strips into threes. Sew coiled ends together. Secure the end to a stationary object (like a couch) with a safety pin. Start braiding. I find that a tight braid looks nice, but avoid pulling and stretching the fabric. Once finished braiding, sew ends together to make three separate rings of fabric. Cut a 5 x 7 inch square of fabric from the remainder of the shirt, fold it over the three braids and sew. Sew the tube as close to the braids as possible for a snug fit. Trim excess fabric. Turn right side out. Voila! Your necklace is complete. Twist, and double over and you're ready to rock and roll! If you twist the loop twice before doubling over, the necklace looks like this (above). Twist the necklace once before doubling over and pull some loops longer to have a cowl neckline (above). So there you have it, in less than 15 minutes you can have a really rad fabric necklace 'round your neck. Hope you give it a try! Happy Weekend, All! P.S. You might want to check out Annie's etsy shoppe: Annily Green.

If you ask a designer (at least girl designers) what they enjoy designing most, most of them will say wedding invitations. Just ask a designer you know. For me, I like designing them because it's print (I love print design), I get an excuse to do something a little more formal, the wording is already laid out for me (I'm terrible with creative text) and it's a great way to get my creative juices flowing. A couple months ago, my engaged cousin asked me if I'd design their wedding invitations, of course I was just thrilled to. I had a lot of fun working on these, and I'm so excited to share the design with you. Chris & Cesia have a lot of family and friends; they printed and sent out 700 invitations. 700! So of course the cost of printing was definitely something to we had to consider. While brainstorming and discussing the design, they decided that they really liked the invitations I designed for my own wedding nearly four years ago. I feel like I've grown a lot since designing those, but it is flattering that someone liked the design I did so long ago! Here's a little bit of info about the creative process and the invitations themselves:

• A10 Envelopes & Invitation - I formatted the invitations to fit A10 envelopes; they are very inexpensive and you can find them in almost every color!
• Black and white digital printing - We kept the printing cheap, but used good-quality 110lb cream uncoated cover so it didn't feel cheap.
• Custom Stamp - Getting this custom stamp made cost about $35, and added a whole lot of color and variety to the invitations. This is also a great way to add a touch of your wedding to anything (i.e. favors, envelopes, centerpieces, thank yous, place cards, etc)!
• Sewn Invitation - This added a bit of variety and structure to the invite and kept the invitation and photo together. Additionally, it allowed us to include and hide registry information.
• Photograph - While I don't shoot engagements, I did take theirs. They were so easy to photograph! It was really nice to have full control of the quality and styling of the photograph.
• Fonts - I used Quicksand for the invitation text and my own handwriting for their names.

There you have it. Chris & Cesia were SO incredibly easy going and fun to work with on these invitations. Now I've got to work on getting the rest of my cousins married. ;)

I hope you all had a great weekend! Mine started a little early on Friday morning at 3am when I woke up with the stomach flu. Penelope had had something a few days earlier, but she was up and running within minutes. I was flat on my back the entire day. So no blog posts, no iPhone case tutorial (yet!), just hours and hours of Gumby. Thankfully, I got over the flu by Saturday morning; just in time to pack my bags and cart Penelope off to Phoenix for the next week. Penelope and I are having a fabulous time in sunny-but-not-too-hot Phoenix. It's especially nice since the weather in Utah is schizophrenic. Yesterday I wore first pair of sandals I've worn in months! It was so nice to sport some springy clothes! My sister-in-law, Shelley, wore such a fabulous outfit yesterday (as always), I'm featuring her for this week's Thrifty & Chic column. Here's the breakdown of what she wore:

• headband: handmade, won at a church event
• top: retro handmade
• skirt: retro handmade
• shoes: hand-me-downs from mom

Firstly, can you believe she's a senior in high school? I just wish I had that kind of style savvy when I was in school. Shelley has confidence that all women would kill for. She's super adventurous, always makes the most genius ensembles and has the best eye for vintage/retro goods. She's so inspiring to me! Secondly, the top and the skirt are handmade hand-me-downs from my mother-in-law, Linda. Aren't they awesome? I know Linda made the skirt in high school, but I think that she made the skirt sometime in her twenties. Both items are very well constructed, you wouldn't know it was handmade. Linda is awesome at sewing. So, there you have it, a completely awesome outfit all for under $0 dollars. Amazing, right? What/who are your Thrifty & Chic inspirations? Just a side note and a little shout out. . . I am so proud of this photo. SO PROUD. This is what came straight out of the camera! I made no corrections or adjustments, only cropping and resizing. Since taking Nicole's photography class and reading her book, I've gone ALL manual. I'm shooting with manual white balance, exposure and aperture and LOVING IT!

For St. Patrick's day, my mom used to turn tables and chairs on their sides, mess up the sheets and then sprinkle Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and gold coins all over. She'd also dye all of our food green and once in a while she made corned beef & cabbage. YUM. Love that stuff. Are you doing anything fun to celebrate? I'm being totally lame and not doing anything fun or creative for St. Patrick's Day, but I am so proud to have some Irish blood in me (err, we're pretty sure there's Irish in there). Maybe someday I'll get to go there and meet all the rad folks of Ireland.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everybody!!

Isn't this the  most adorable little girl's apron you've ever seen?!?

I have a fun little challenge set up for you! Last month's flickr challenge was so much fun, we have to do it again! For this month, Puking Pastilles, a sweet etsy pattern shop, is sponsoring this month's challenge. The theme is "go green". You know, it's kind of a play on words, green is a great color and it's also a great way to live (I'm so clever). Submit your crafts using either versions of the term "green" for your chance to score some fabulous boy-themed fabric and a PDF pattern of your choice from Puking Pastilles! If you don't even know how to sew, it's not a problem, Puking Pastilles offers virtual sewing lessons. Cool, right? You can check out a sampling of free videos on their YouTube channel. This is going to be fun!! Here are the challenge details:

• Items must be made and photographed by you (unless you’re the one modeling the handmade item – but please, don’t hire a professional).
• Photos must be uploaded and added to the flickr group by Wednesday March 31, 2010 at 11:59pm MST.
• Judging is subjective and as non-biased as possible. Entries will be judged by Georgia of Puking Pastilles.
• One (1) Winner will be announced Friday April 2, 2010.
• US entries, only.
• Multiple entries are encouraged.
• Comments on this post are NOT entries.
• To enter, join IS•LY’s flickr group (click here) and add your crafts that are earth-friendly and/or the color green!

Bonnes Chance, everybody! Have questions? Please comment below.

I've been slowly collecting thrifted boots for some time. I love boots. I realized how much I loved boots around my senior year of college when I discovered that walking through snow in boots wasn't nearly as miserable as with flip-flops. It was also then, that flat boots were starting to get not-ugly. I've got 4 1/2 pairs of thrifted boots. The half is because I lost (I don't know how) one of my black cowgirl boots. Just one. One! Grrr. The other boot just sits there in the closet taunting me, You know you want to wear me. but, wait. . . my mate just randomly disappeared in the abyss of the basement. OH! Too bad. Looks like you're going to have to wear the SAME boots you wore yesterday. HA. HA! Sometimes I have little temper tantrums about that while I'm getting dressed. Sometimes Chris thinks I'm a 12 year old trapped in a 25 year old's body. Sometimes he's right. Usually it's during the summer when I find the best boots, but this last week was an exception. Do you want to see the break-down of each boot? Here we go. . . (from left to right)

• The taunting single boot - $6: These were the first thrifted pair of boots I ever bought. I love the detailing on the boot and the uber-pointy toe.
• SF throwbacks - $8: I always complained how bad the thrifting was in San Francisco, but I found these gorgeous babies there. They weren't that expensive, either.
• 80s Yugoslavian Boots - $6: These suede babies have such cool detailing on the side. I just wish they weren't black so the details would be more pronounced.
• Old School Riding Boots - $4: Whoever owned these fab boots before me was a real cowgirl, because they were worn in as if they were always in horse stirrups. Seriously.
• Black Beauties - $6: Like I said. I love my newest addition. They're beautiful and delicious to the touch.

I love my four pairs of boots. I added the fourth to my growing collection just last week in the same shopping trip where I scored the hideous dress. I think these boots are gorgeous. They're in excellent condition, made from top notch leather. I really like the leather details on the back and that the boot rises higher in the front. They're also surprisingly comfortable to wear, even with a broken toe! Are you riding the boot trend? I personally love my thrifted boots, but so many of my friends are freaked out by the thought of wearing previously owned shoes. Are you the same way?

Earlier this week I went thrift store shopping at a D.I. location near where I grew up. Funny thing, this was the first time I've ever been to that particular location. The goodies I found there were awesome. I even found a few things like a yellow velvet Anthro-style chair and an olive green pants jump suit that I didn't buy. Among the awesome finds was the most hideous $6 drop-waist dress. I say hideous because it was all sorts of bulky in the middle with equally bulky bishop sleeves. I can't do the billowy bishop sleeve, no matter how many times I try it. You know the feeling when clothes wear you, rather than the reverse? That was the tale of this dress. I mean, seriously. Look at the before photo:

Like how I'm covering up my face? I hadn't put on my face or done my hair, so I looked pretty scary.

This dress has loads of potential, though. From the moment I saw it, i fell in LOVE with the fabric. I'm a sucker for greys and stripes. The best part about the pattern is that it goes well with blacks OR browns! I love the versatility. I'm also digging the doily decolletage decoration. It's freaking sweet. I'm pretty sure that this dress was handmade. There were no tags and most of the seams weren't finished with a Surger. Sweet!

Do I look like I'm in pain? I'm not putting any pressure on my left foot, because it was KILLING! Yowzas.

This project took me the bulk of yesterday to complete because Penelope didn't nap much, laundry had to be done, I broke my toe and the dress needed loads of unpicking. I'm sure if the planets were all aligned yesterday it would've taken me under an hour to do the shirt, because it wasn't very hard to do at all. Cutting and gathering the sleeves was pretty easy, adding the band on the bottom of the shirt was easier than hemming (in my opinion), it really boiled down to the deconstruction. That just took a lot of time. I only planned on doing the shirt refashion, but there was so much fabric left over just screaming to be made into a dress for Penelope. I used one of Penelope's old dresses as a guide. All I did was a little gathering at the waist, sew it onto some white jersey (for stretch) and add straps. I think she looks SO adorable in her new dress, but she wasn't so happy about wearing it this morning. We had our first fight over clothes! Yup. She's getting opinionated all of a sudden! Today we wore our matching clothes to our play date with Alma & Oliver to the Tracy Aviary and Hatch's Family Chocolates. We got a lot of attention at Hatch's for our matching outfits, that was fun. Our little matchy-matchy day has gotten me so excited to plan our Easter outfits! I just need to find the right fabric for it.

I was up until 2am Wednesday night finishing my newest collection of digital kits for Design House Digital. I put in a lot of work on this collection and I'm really excited for the end result! This week I made some patterns for boys AND girls. Chris's favorite pattern is the hex with the dots. I totally agree with him, I think it's a handsome pattern. I'd love to see it on fabric someday. A girl can dream, right? Click on the image to view product page: I know the digital scrapbooking thing is really new/intimidating to a lot of you. I really try to have more than just digital scrappers in mind when making my kits. You can always print out the papers and use them for cards, wrapping paper, bookbinding, etc. If you hate your blog layout and want something a little more fresh than some of the really crappy blog graphics that are out there (No names will be names, but you know who you are!), why not buy one of my blog graphic kits? I hope you like them and buy them. Thanks so much to all of you that have been encouraging and to you that have purchased my kits! I really, really appreciate your support in my work!!

I've been looking forward to sharing my living room with you for some time. Like 7 months. While moving sucks, the silver lining in the crappy moving cloud is redecorating. I LOVE the chance to decorate a new space. There's nothing that makes furniture and wall hangings look new again like a completely different space. Our new place is completely different from our old apartment in Menlo Park. Our old apartment had SIX south facing windows with flat-white painted walls. Everything about our last apartment was bright white. Our new house has dark brown hardwood floors, tan travertine tile, tan walls with a little bit of white trim. It doesn't scream bright white; so my black, white and rainbow wall decorations I used at the Menlo place wouldn't have really worked. Coloring aside, we sold most of our furniture before we left California so I pretty much had to start from scratch anyway. While it's taken a good six months to collect all of the furnishings for this room, I've managed to do it all under $390! The only reason why it's that high, was because 70% of that was spent on the couch. Here's the breakdown:

• couch - $300
• coffee table - $35
• tufted bench - $15
• 2 red chairs - $10
• lamp - $15
• side table - $8
• rug - FREE thanks to my parents
• 2 large frames $6

Not bad, right? I have to tell you about the couch. I was planning on splurging big time and buying a {new!} couch from Urban Outfitters, but I kept wimping out at checkout. I really didn't feel comfortable spending $600 on a couch that I've never seen in person {I'm really that cheap}. Would you? Well, I waited too long. Before I knew it, OU sold out of the MCM Couch I had been eying. I admitted defeat and decided that I really didn't want to spend that kind of money on a couch, anyway. I spent a few days scouring KSL {SLC equivalent to Craigslist} where I found THE OU couch I had been eyeing, for half off ! WHA?!? I quickly called the girl and bought it that night. I swear it was nothing short of destiny. The coffee table and tufted bench were also a thrill to find. I went thrifting at a pretty child-unfriendly thrift store (multiple levels are just so annoying when you're hauling a baby and a cart full of goodies) and I went to the as-is section and found my gorgeous coffee table. I quickly pounced and awkwardly stuffed the coffee table in the cart, because some equally savvy shopper was eying it, too. Phew! About 5 minutes later, the same thing happened with the tufted bench. I love my bench. The red chairs are so dear to me. I love furniture that remind me of my friends and family. We were up in Idaho visiting our dear friends Chad & Alexis and Alexis showed me 6 of the raddest chairs she bought for $5 a piece at an estate sale up there. She totally saw how jealous I was and sold two of them to me. Alexis is a really nice friend, one day I hope to have the same shopping and style savvy as her and her mom. One day I think I'll recover these chairs, but the upholstery is good enough to hold off for now. Maybe I can be cool like my other friend Susan and take an upholstery class. I'm really happy to have one room in our house decorated and complete. When the rest of the house is a mess, I just sit on my new favorite couch and revel in the complete-ness of the entire room. Ahhh. The next big projects are finishing Penelope's room and working on our master bedroom (aka the hopeless cause). So, have you found any sweet furniture finds recently? Please share, I'm listening!! Cool stories behind cool furniture are such a favorite of mine.

Our 24" iMac is broken. It's been broken for a while when it was freezing up every five minutes, but it actually stopped working last night. LAME. Hallelujah for time machine, Applecare, iPhones and our dinosaur Powerbook. Without them, I might just keel over and die. I've been working on some fun projects that I can't wait to share with you, but since the computer is caput, they'll have to wait for later. To give you a preview, here's what you can expect to see next week:

iPhone Case 2.0

I had a brilliant brainwave the other day where I figured out a totally new and totally awesome iphone case design. I'm excited. I hope you are, too.

Nearly Completed Living Room

I'm not sure I'll ever be done decorating this room, but it's so close. Close enough that I really want to share it with you. I finally have artwork on the walls and furniture on the floors. It's almost a complete style 180 from our last apartment, which is always fun.

I hope you have a fabulous, and exciting weekend void of any computer failures or errors.

It's been nearly 7 months since we moved into our house, and I finally finished decorating the living room! Yahoo! Last week as I was hanging the remaining artwork on the walls I decided that our living room was severely lacking a cool, gaudy lamp. I hadn't been on KSL longer than 15 minutes when I spotted this gem. I was afraid Chris would be annoyed at the hideously awesome lamp, so I didn't call or email the guy about it. That night I showed the listing to Chris to gauge his interest. I was pleasantly surprised at his reaction: me: So, I found this awesome ugly lamp on KSL. Wanna see it? Chris: Sure. me: See? Aren't the cherubs hilarious? Chris: Woah! $15? Rad! So, when are you going to pick it up? me: (shocked) Well, I haven't even called the guy. I thought you'd hate it. Chris: What?!? No way, this is totally rad. You should get it. Those may not have been his exact words, but I remember how shocked I was at his enthusiasm over the lamp. I didn't realize the lamp was over 4 feet tall until I went over to look at the thing. SCORE! It barely fit in the back of our Element. We also had to get a side table for the lamp, $8 and one thrift store later, I had it. Perfect. My living room is now 99% complete. Also pictured: My mom gave me the Mme. Alexander doll when my parents moved to NC. Turns out my mother-in-law has the same little Indian Mme Alexander doll. I think she's super cute. The 4 books below the doll are a treasure of mine. I found these for 25¢ each at a we're-bulldozing-this-school-so-everything-must-go sale. I thought their covers were really cool. When I took them home and flipped through them, I thought their out-dated styles were also really cool. When the series was blogged about on a really cool design blog, and I knew I had found a sweet hidden treasure on that crazy sale day. So, have you found anything on the cheap that you thought was just funky then it turned out to be even cooler than you thought? Do you like my gaudy lamp? I'll be posting pictures of the entire room soon, so you can see how well it goes with the room.