IS•LY | I Still Love you

I like thrift shopping. A lot. Last week I was in the little boys department looking for my favorite button-ups (for me) when I found the most adorable button up in greenish-teal plaid. I had to have it. It was a boy’s size 8, which is too small for me, and too big for Penelope. I bought it anyway. It was just too cute. Maybe Penelope will fit into it in 6 years?

After I brought it home, I knew that in 6 years not only would fashion be different, but she’d be dressing herself by then. I had to make it fit her now so I could take advantage of my great thrift find. So, what do I always do? Make it work.

Sorry for the crappy before & during photos. I couldn’t wait for decent lighting to work on the project. Here’s what I did in list form:

• lay the shirt flat
• cut out the sleeves
• lay one of Penelope’s shirts over the new shirt
• marked the waist & shoulder measurements & cut
• cut the sleeve to 3″ long on inseam
• cut a 1″ strip of biased tape – for sleeve hem
• cut 2 strips out of sleeve remnants for ruffle
• zig zag stitched edges of ruffle
• gathered ruffle
• attached ruffle
• stitched sides up
• gathered sleeves
• sewed sleeves to the shirt
• sewed biased tape to sleeve hem
• cut strip of jersey fabric for waist tie
• zig-zag stitched all seams

This project cost $1 to make & took just under an hour. I would’ve finished it sooner, if Chris hadn’t started watching Lost. Sheesh. I paired her new shirt dress with skinny jeans (Check out Susan’s tutorial on skinnies) and saddle shoes on Friday (below) and then paired the shirt dress with bloomers, leggings and saddle shoes on Sunday (above). I love this color on her so much, but not as much as I love her. Ooo, she’s such a cutie.

I’ve been bugging Chris for the last 6 months to get me an iPhone. Why the wait? Chris didn’t want to buy an iPhone when Apple might just come out with something cooler. Understandable. Now that the iPad is out, and it doesn’t quite make sense for us to get one (yet), I got to get my iPhone! Hooray! Now I can stop borrowing Chris’s for conferences & Whrrl posts! Life with my very own iPhone is so great. Everything is easier and more fun! The poopy diapers are more bearable! The dishes are more sparkly(er)!

Now that I finally have a nice phone, I’ve got to protect it from Penelope. I was planning on going to TJ Maxx or Ross to get a cover (because that’s where you go for cheap iphone covers), but Penelope napped for nearly four hours yesterday! Four hours was plenty of time to design and create my own case – and make a tutorial to share with you! I’m just tickled about how it turned out. I just love the pink/orange color combo.

This was a very easy project. If you have all of the materials ready, it would surely take less an hour to make (embellishing not included). Did I tell you that I love my finished product? It’s fabulous, and I’d surely make it again. I wouldn’t change anything about the pattern, but I would like to try using elastic instead of a small leather strip across the front. That might make tucking the flap away, a tad easier. OH, and did I mention that I LOVE how it turned out? EEE! I’m so happy about it.

Well, I hope you give this tutorial a try. If you do, please share pictures! I’ve just started a flickr group and I would love to see you join! Enjoy!! This tutorial (click above to dowload) is free for personal use only.

I found the most lovely no-sew, no-glue wreath tutorial online last week thanks to twig & thistle’s lovely wreath tutorial round-up. Most tutorials I find these days end up collecting dust in my delicious account these days, but not this one. It uses felt + ruffles, the two most trendy things on the crafty interwebs these days, so there was no denying it.

I added my own little pom pom mistletoe to the mix.

Sadly, I didn’t find any felt colors that I was happy with, so I used some scraps from my favorite Fabmo. Making the wreath wasn’t hard at all, all it really took (besides the materials themselves) was a good hour+ of tv and a thimble. Not Bad, eh?

Giddy like a 12 year-old-girl is probably the best way to describe my post-project mood. After I hung up my festive little wreath I couldn’t help but point out it’s loveliness to Chris every 20 seconds. Thankfully I have a very indulgent husband who agreed with me. You can find the fabulous tutorial at domestifluf.

Have any of you noticed how horrible I am at taking half-decent “before” pictures? I should be so ashamed. Then again, a bad “before” photo always makes the “after” photo look so much better.

I’ve had this shirt forever and I swear the neckline just gets lower and lower every time I wear it. Last time I wore it, I thought how great it would be if I did a simple refashion to bring up the neckline. I was going to braid an intricate insert, then I got lazy and decided a cowel neck could be cooler. NOPE. Not at all. It looked like I was wearing a knotted dickie and that put me in a pretty sour mood. I was just about to throw in the towel and proclaim the shirt dead, then my better half (aka Chris) reminded me that there was such a thing as a seam ripper and not all was lost.

Instead of butchering another neckline I decided to re-enter my comfort zone and refashion the shirt into a dress for Penelope. Isn’t Penelope adorable? These sorts of refashions are a lot of fun, and not very time-consuming. I think I like that shirt so much better on Penelope.

Here’s a little preview of the tutorial

I think it’s high time I give you a tutorial on how to do it. Yeah, there are a million other tutorials out there on this type of thing, but this is my take on it. Since natural light is pretty rare around these parts, I thought I’d illustrate each step instead. Let’s be honest, I was really just looking for an excuse to use my new Wacom tablet. Please enjoy the free tutorial. Click on the button below to download.

This tutorial is free for personal use. It cannot be distributed without my written consent. All content is original and exclusive to IS•LY.

Melissa is in the process of scoring some extra Penelope time this evening by having me do her blogging for her. Apparently there’s some interest in how to create the little “Add This Button” widget on the right-hand side of this blog, and since I made the widget . . .

Step 1: Upload your image to the web. You can post it to Wordpress or put it on Flickr or whatever. You just need to get it up on the web and copy/paste the image’s URL into your code. Right-click on your image and select “Copy Image Address” to copy the URL to your clipboard.  Then paste the image URL somewhere easy to find.  I use a mac, so I the like to paste my URLs into a mac sticky note in the Dashboard.

Step 2: Find the page you want link to. Your button has to lead somewhere, so find the URL for the page you want to link to and copy/paste it a few lines below your image URL.

Step 3: Create your widget code. Take the full URLs for the image and the page you’re linking to and copy them into the following code snippets, making sure to copy over the bold text with the appropriate URLs.

Button Code

<div align=”center”><a href=”http://PAGE-URL” ><img src=”http://IMAGE-URL“/></a></div>

Text Box Code

<div align=”center”> <textarea cols=”19″ rows=”9″><a href=”http://PAGE-URL“><img src=”http://IMAGE-URL“></a> </textarea> </div>

Step 4: Drop each code snippet into a Wordpress Text Widget. Go into the widget editor in Wordpress and add two new text widgets.  Put the button code in the first and the text box code in the second.  Make sure to click the “Done” button after editing each widget and then click “Save Changes”.  If you don’t click “Done” and “Save Changes” you won’t see any results on your blog.

Click to Enlarge

Step 5: Tweak your layout. I can’t give clear instructions on this, but you’ll probably need to play with the spacing for your widgets. You’ll notice in the text box code the <textarea cols=”19″ rows=”9″> tag. The bigger the numbers, the larger the text box.  So if you need a slightly smaller text box to fit your blog, experiment with fewer columns or rows. You might try  <textarea cols=”10″ rows=”5″>. Just make sure that the code is easy to copy/paste for your users.  For instance, if the text box isn’t big enough to fit all of your code, you may want to make it bigger or use a URL shortening website like Bit.ly to shrink your URLs down to size.

Please post any questions or criticisms to the comments.  If you would like to see more HTML or CSS tutorials, just ask and I’ll see what I can do.

Here’s a quick and easy table top craft to dress up your dinner table! It takes only a small scrap of leather or felt to add some zip to an otherwise ho-hum napkin. These things are small, easy to store, and can be used as name tag holders for your next Fall feast.

Each cuff takes just a minute or two from start to finish, depending on how careful you are with the corners. Just cut out the templates, trace them onto your leather and get to work with your Xacto knife or scissors. I’ve included three different templates for your crafting pleasure, and I invite you to follow the Melissa Esplin Two-Step Program.

Step 1 is to recognize that you have a problem. Take a hard look at your table settings. Would you describe them as fresh and fun, or sad and wimpy.  If you answered “sad and wimpy” with a disappointed frown on your face, you should be congratulated for your self-awareness.

Step 2 involves firing up your printer and getting your craft on. If you find yourself making excuses such as “I just don’t have the time,” or “nobody really notices these things anyway,” or—heaven forbid—”drab table settings are a victimless crime,” stop right there. You’ve entered a No Excuses Zone. Your guests will notice your rad napkin rings. Your guests will think more highly of you. And you will turn over a new chapter in your life,  a chapter marked by renewed self-confidence and crafting zeal. Thank you for your time. That will be all.

(P.S. That last part was Chris’s doing. All his doing. Isn’t he clever?)