Last Thursday night Madeline and I headed up the gorgeous Parley's canyon to hang out with a bunch of lovely ladies (and a few men) at EVO. It was SUCH a great conference! There were all sorts of inspiring, not-a-dry-eye-in-the-room keynotes & fabulous instructional panels on SEO, branding, product reviews, marketing, etc. My experience would not have happened if it hadn't been for Avery office products, who generously sponsored me & 7 other lovely ladies. They graciously provided us with our conference passes, meals and excellent lodging. We were in heaven hanging out in our 4 bedroom, 5 bathroom, 3 livingroom, 1 sauna penthouse. Seriously, Avery hooked us up! I love it when large companies make personal connections in social media and put a face & personality to their brand. They also had some neat products to share with us & other conference goers as well. I'm really looking forward to making my very own custom binder. Les Madeleines of Salt Lake City made these delectable treats. The suite party Avery sponsored was just hoppin'. We had delicious food, great music & awesome company. You know you've got a successful party on your hands when the party goes 'til 2am, and it was only scheduled until 11pm! Madeline and I ended up kicking a few party-goers out so that we could clean up & go to sleep. Sleep was definitely not one of those things that really happened last weekend. I still haven't caught up on my ZZZs. (this post is not in chronological order, btw) Friday afternoon, I rode a gondola up to the top of the Canyons and attended the photography workshop where we listened to four panelists talk about different ways to make photos more interesting and pretty. I felt a little advanced for the session, but I still learned a few great tips & tricks. For example, If you shoot in f22 or higher and point your camera at the sun, you'll get a pretty sunburst effect that you wouldn't otherwise get in a lower aperture. I tried that on Saturday night at the closing party & it worked! Sort of. I'm blaming the un-interesting photo on my rush to head back to the hotel to pack. The closing party was a lot of fun, but I was so exhausted from the weekend, I stupidly didn't take advantage of the venue. I did take some fun pictures of everyone having a good time, though! To see more pictures of the EVO conference craziness, check out their flickr group! Three cheers for Jyl, Rachael and their minions!! They put on such an inspiring and educational conference! Can't wait until next year!

Here's yet another way to spice up your t-shirts when you get a little bored with the plainness of them all. I did this a few weeks ago to two of my plain tees. I'm threatening to do this on all of the t-shirts I own. Seriously. Watch out! This little ruching technique takes literally 2 minutes; the perfect way to jazz up an outfit on your way out the door. Here we go: Cut the collar off: only cut a little around the back & cut more around the front to make a deeper neckline. Don’t go too deep because the elastic thread will pull it lower. Toss excess collar aside. Find the center of the front collar. Measure down 6-10 inches (depending on bust size), marking a line with your magic pen. HAND wind your bobbin with elastic thread. Thread your machine with matching thread on top. Sew along your line. Don’t backstitch. Turn your tee inside out and pull on the elastic thread until your shirt is as rouched as you’d like. Using a seam ripper, pull the front thread through to the back & tie a square knot with the two threads. Trim loose ends after securing the thread in place with a square knot. Dab the front of your shirt with water and a Q-tip to erase the magic marker line. FINI! Click the button below to download the printer-friendly PDF version.

This tutorial is free for personal use and should not be distributed without my consent. If you would like to use this tutorial commercially, please email me. Thanks!

Happy Friday, everyone! I'm blogging from the fabulous mountains of Park City at Evo conference! It's been awesome and exhausting. Thanks so much to Avery for providing me with this fabulous experience.

Head on over to Skip to My Lou for an exclusive printable made by yours truly, to help you figure out what to do on those boring summer days. Have a happy weekend!!

I had an elaborate plan to make a bikini with high-waisted shorts. Meh. That didn't happen. I have terrible luck finding sweet swimsuits in my bust size, which is why I was insane enough to think about making one. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great swimsuit companies out there that would likely have something I would love, but my price range is about $20 for the whole ensemble. Not per piece and not per square inch. Yeah. I'm such a cheapskate. As luck would have it, I found the perfect bathing suit on sale at Target. There was only one left and it fits me perfectly! I have yet to wear the suit out of the house as you can tell from my pasty white skin, but I love it. Just a couple of days ago I got a hair-brained idea as I was waking up (isn't that when all the crazy ideas come?) to make a short romper cover-up for my new suit. There was no way I was going to let the idea escape me so I did it right then. After more than 7 hours of drafting, sewing, unpicking and sewing; I finished it. It's kinda time consuming to sew something with out any pattern or dress form to work on, but I made do. I made it out of the raddest vintage stripe jersey knit material, which coincidentally matches my suit perfectly. NOW, I'm ready for summer. Are you? P.S I love my new gladiator sandals! Thanks, Madeline, for pointing me in the right direction for these babies!

Please excuse any weirdness over the next few days. I'm working on updating the look & feel of IS•LY. Cross your fingers that my wordpress won't explode, ok?

I found these gorgeous olive glass goblets on a D.I. run today. I'm so excited about them, I had to share them with you right away. I found the set of 6 for 75¢ each. Not bad, eh? I think these would be so perfect for a regal outdoor dinner party in September when the trees are starting to change. Don't you? I think I'll go ahead and pencil a party in for mid-september.

Last Friday, one of Penelope's friends had a birthday party. The theme was purple (Maren's favorite color), and we all dressed up in purple – it was sort of a purple people eater theme. Genius idea, right? In honor of the purple party I made Maren a little purple creature thing with some of the remaining bits of fabric I still have from my favorite SF bay area event: Fabmo. It's been such a long time since I've made a stuffed creature, I forgot how easy & fun they are to make. As soon as I got my sewing machine to work correctly, this purple people creature took about 15 minutes to make. I used a brightly colored canvas material for the body, velvet embroidery thread for the "hair" and a fabric paint pen for the facial features & tramp stamp. Did you make anything fun this weekend? Please share!

My brother has a pretty rad collection of hats. On memorial day he was wearing a sweet handmade floppy-billed cycling cap that I absolutely fell in love with. I'm not a hat person so this is a big deal for me. Turns out, my brother was looking for some more hats just like this (because the lady who made them, stopped) and was wondering if maybe I could replicate it for him. Gladly I obliged, because this also meant that I'd have to make a couple for myself and I'd have a pattern to make as many hats as I wanted. I gladly took the hat off his hands & started working on a pattern. I've since made 5 hats and have the pattern pieces for 7 more. I might be a tad obsessed. It helps that they're easy to make. Yesterday we had a picnic in the park with Jake, Polly & Ove & we all wore our new hipster caps. It's a pity I only had my camera phone to document the occasion, but at least it was documented.

I've been working on decorating Penelope's room for the last 5 months. UGH. Progress is slow especially when my most productive time is when Penelope is asleep in the room I want to work on. I'm so close to being done, I can smell it. Last night I spent about two (or was it three?) hours working on a pillow for her new rocking chair. I found a really sweet chevron pillow over at PB Teen that matched Penelope's color scheme perfectly, but I've already splurged on so many things for her room I couldn't justify spending $25 on a pillow cover. I know. I'm cheap. Instead, I made my own chevron pillow from fabric I already had. The pillow still wasn't  cheap considering it took all of my mind grapes for 2-3 hours, but it was a fun experiment. Susan directed me to two zigzag quilt patterns (Anna Marie Horner & A Quilt is Nice), but I definitely didn't want to cut out a million 2 inch squares, cut them again diagonally and then sew them all together. I wanted small chevrons for my small pillow so the squares didn't make sense. Instead, I cut a bunch of diagonal strips & fudged my way to make my own chevron. It worked. I have SO much more respect for quilters now. Penelope was so cute about this pillow this morning. She exclaimed, "MY Pee-YO!" as I was trying to photograph it. She did NOT want me touching it. Aw, I'm so glad she likes it!

Last weekend I found a recipe for homemade york peppermint patties that only calls for 3 ingredients with an optional 4th. It's definitely my kind of recipe! I had to give it a go. Mine didn't turn out nearly as beautiful or small as the ones in the recipe. Mine also (probably) turned out a LOT stronger than hers, too. I think my brain fell asleep at the wheel when I was adding the peppermint because they're UBER strong. They're so strong, you only want to take very small bites at a time. They're still good, though. I packaged three of them to give to some ladies I visit & couldn't help but use my neon orange vellum envelopes for the packaging. I'm definitely going to give this recipe another try sometime, but I'll certainly pay more attention when I'm adding the peppermint.

While looking for rentals last year, our place was listed as a two bedroom. Well, it wasn't really. It has one bedroom upstairs & one downstairs in the unfinished basement. The second bedroom wasn't really habitable before we moved in. We liked the finished part of the house, so we signed a rental agreement under the condition that the owner would make the second room liveable, i.e. remove the mysterious puddle of water in the middle of the floor, install carpet, paint the walls, install a ceiling and add a rod in the closet to make it functional. You know what they did? They installed the cheapest, ugliest carpet they could find and stapled (YES) faux wood paneling to the ceiling. See. . . We didn't have a closet OR a dresser for nearly two months. IT. WAS. AWFUL. Our landlord wasn't going to do anything about it, either. So, Chris (the awesome husband that he is) installed a metal rod to the ceiling studs of the closet using a bunch of industrial chains. See, we couldn't just put any rod in because the closet wasn't/isn't framed. Yup. The landlord's grandson was in the process of ripping apart the studs of the closet to refinish the basement when he got accepted to dental school. Our basement was never finished. We lived in this dump for about 5 months. I was so sick of sleeping in a dungeon, I made Chris fix it up with me. Now it looks like this. . . Sigh. This was a much needed improvement. If we actually owned the place I think we would have spent more time & money fixing the carpet, trim, door & closet but considering we may move out of this place any time it was just the right amount of investment. Here's what we did:

• painted the walls white
• added a new light fixture
• stapled white bedsheets to the ceiling
• installed old kitchen cabinet to the wall for storage
• made a shelf (from scratch! Chris is awesome), installed it & painted it white
• added a headboard
• hung artwork
• added curtains to hide the closet
• added curtain to the window

Here's what we spent:

• Paint: $28
• Ikea light fixture: $30
• White bedsheets: $18
• Lumber for shelf: $7
• Headboard: $8
• Milk glass vases: $3
• Brass cages: $1.50

Awesome, right? We managed to give this room a complete face-lift for under $100! I love my new headboard. Susan pointed it out for me while we were thrift shopping together. I love the simple design & the rich color. Some day I think I'll recover it with a hounds tooth or chevron pattern. Wouldn't that look sharp? It works well in this room for now. Our room is also rather A-symmetrical. Because of the off-kilter window & random raised-wall thingy, we went for an A-symmetrical look with decorating. Certainly not my typical style for decorating, but it works. I'm still not sure how I feel about how the frames are hung. I'll probably rehang those at some point. The cabinet (above) was from the previous kitchen & just taking up space in our basement. We painted it white & installed it on the wall. It's the perfect place for my accessories & shoes. We had an awfully hard time finding a dresser when we moved in, we just opted to buy stackable Ikea bins instead. They're not as gorgeous as the dresser I have in mind, but they're cheap & functional. We figured it was better to buy these bins than a dresser we didn't like. This way, if we find the perfect dresser we'll just repurpose the bins as storage for my growing mounds of fabric or something. This shelf was in the kitchen of our last apartment, but works perfectly in this little nook by the bedroom door. We stash our pocket contents here when we come in for the night. For the longest time we didn't have anything covering our closet. It's so nice to finally have something hiding all that chaos. I found these brass cages at the thrift store just last week. Aren't they fun? I wonder what the original owner used them for. Here's my favorite decoration: our death masks. We made those when we were dating. Such a great reminder of our courtship! There you go. We no longer live in a dungeon. Hip, Hip HOORAY! Additional Info:

• We got our bedding & shams from Target 4 years ago as a wedding gift.
• We did not paint the ceiling (the reason why I covered it with bedsheets) before attaching the bedsheets.
• We were really lazy & just painted right over the wood paneling. No priming. Next time we'll prime before we paint, but it doesn't really matter since we'll likely move the end of next month.
• Since the house has an unusually tall basement for a home built in the 1930s, stapling the bedsheets to the ceiling makes the room feel cozier, but not smaller.

•I M P O R T A N T•

I've received a few emails from concerned readers regarding the code of this bedroom. The shelterpop article was actually a little misleading. There is a window in the room (as evidence by the light in the after photos), it's just covered by a curtain. The window measures about 2'x3', which is pretty incredible for a basement window of a house built in the early 1900s. The window is also above ground (nice!). Bottom line, it does count as a room as far as Utah rental laws are concerned. It was just a poor excuse for a room before I got my hands on it. Additionally, we don't live there anymore. Our current bedroom windows are GIGANTIC! Hooray for loads of natural light!

Again, I'm talking about shoes. My friend Susan texted me the other day to see if I wanted these beauties. Of course there was no thinking involved, I made her buy them for me. Who wouldn't want brand new GOLD keds for $4? The only downside is that they're a size 6. I'm a 7. They sorta fit. Barely. I figure if they hurt my feet too much I can give them to my younger sister who will babysit for shoes ;). I think I need to wear these shoes, my gold helmet to match (safety first!), my most hipster clothes & cruise around town on my fixie. I think my coolness would spike 10 points if I did that. Don't you? Just for fun, I thought I'd include an image I took while playing around with my new Gary Fong Lightsphere. Pretty artsy fartsy, hu?

Last week I found a hole in my wardrobe: short-sleeve tops. Perhaps a reason to go thrift shopping? Yes. That's when I found this gorgeous blouse: I try every time I buy a bishop sleeve blouse I try to wear it as is, but I feel like the garment is wearing me! It's just not right. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to pull it off. Also, did I mention that I need short sleeve shirts? It didn't take me long to decide that something had to be done with those sleeves. All I did was hem the sleeve & take in the arm width by 2 inches. I also shortened one of the neck ties because it was a good 12 inches longer than the other one. So strange. I didn't take in the actual torso of the shirt but because the sleeves are so light and slim the shirt appears more fitted. Perfect-o! I wore this blouse to a luncheon with my grandma and felt really classy in my new threads. I also wore this blouse to church and Penelope got chocolate ALL OVER it. Thanks to the Tide pen I think the chocolate stains are no longer. Now I know this is one of those shirts that I should wear when I'm going somewhere without Penelope. She sure can spread the mess around!

Hey folks, I'm guest blogging over at Good Look Cook Book, a blog devoted to DIY design recipes that you can make at home. head over there and make a thank you postcard with me!

ALSO, today is the last day to submit photos of your paper crafts for May's flickr challenge! Anything paper & handmade counts. Four winners will receive over $60 in paper products and one lucky winner will receive this quote! Hurry!

A few of you asked if I would share my methods on the garland I made for Penelope's birthday party last month and I think it's time I share. This garland is quick and easy and has a slightly different look from the ones you'll see around the web. I love how fast this method is: from start to finish it'll take less than 20 minutes for an 8ft. garland. You'll be amazed. I sure do hope you give it a go!

• • • • •

Materials: Sewing Machine Coordinating thread Ribbon: desired length + 16-20 in. Quality Paper: cut to 1 x 6 in. strips

Set up your paper strips next to your machine, decorative side down. Insert your ribbon into the machine  with am 8-10 in. tail and place your first strip under the presser foot. Sew a straight, long stitch across the paper & ribbon.

Once you’re finished with the first end of the paper strip, curl (no creases) the paper up to show the decorative side and slip the edge in front of presser foot & sew to ribbon.

Repeat steps 2 & 3. If you’re uncomfortable with adding paper as you sew, you can pin paper to the ribbon prior to sewing.

Keep adding loops until you’ve reached your desired length, making sure that you have at least 8 inches of extra ribbon at each end. Use ends to affix garland to walls, ceilings, window treatments, trees, etc. Hang garland ribbon-side out. Enjoy! Click the button below to download the printer-friendly PDF version.

This tutorial is free for personal use and should not be distributed without my consent. If you would like to use this commercially, please email me. Thanks!

I made a skirt last weekend; using the leftovers from the pomegranate fabric I blogged about two weeks ago. In fact, I finished it just in time to be all matchy-matchy with Penelope at church on Sunday. SO FUN! There's something just so utterly fun about coordinating outfits with Penelope. I can't get enough! We did it with that awful dress I repurposed, then on Mother's day and then last week with the pomegranate fabric. Pretty sure this is the beginning of something ridiculous. I made a basic gathered skirt with a straight waistband. It wasn't too hard, but it did get a little tricky with the zipper. I couldn't seem to find my zipper foot anywhere and I didn't have any invisible zippers on hand. I ended up using a button-hole foot to attach the zipper, it worked. I'm hoping the zipper foot will turn up somewhere before I have to go out and buy one. Whatever. I'm sure Penelope already got to it and either threw it in the garbage or flushed it down the toilet. This skirt is really light weight and flutters at any slight breeze. It's a good thing when it comes to hot summer days, but a very bad thing when a gust of wind decides to blow my way. Going down stairs even causes the skirt to fly up! The skirt is also very see-through so I need to wear a slip with it; like the one I've been meaning to make for the last 3 years. Maybe this skirt will give me the motivation to finish it.