Cluster Earrings

This may be one of the quickest projects I've ever done.  I think I completed it while waiting for the hubster to check his hair and put on his shoes before we left the house to run errands, so yeah, maybe 5 minutes.

You'll need:

beads

head pins

fish hook earring wires

round-nose jewelry pliers

wire-cutters

jump rings

I used the Martha Stewart beads and pliers, but of course any will work.  

String up any number of beads on the head pins.  Cut off the extra wire, and twist the end into an eye.  Repeat this process for as many "strands" as you want on each earring.  As you can see, I only had 4 "strands" since I was limited by the number of beads.

Once all your "strands" are done, hook half of them onto a jump ring and attach to the hook earring.  Then repeat for the other earring to complete the set.  

Super easy right?  And the best part is you can make the clusters as long and as full as you want!  I may try this with some of my leftover glass beads next time!

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Gearing up for Summer and the Neverending Bow-Tying that Comes With It

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes.

It's spring, and inevitably, spring and summer brings wedding season.  Wedding season brings beautiful bridesmaid and flower girl dresses, lots of them with colorful ribbon sashes.  And if a flower girl moves more than a couple of feet in any direction, chances are those ribbon sashes will need to be tied and retied into a bow, over and over again.

I was the bridesmaid who was in awe of the seamstress who tied my white satin sash into the perfect bow.  How the?!  I don't even remember when I figured this out.  Maybe my marriage to an Eagle Scout made me more aware of the knots I was tying, who knows.  At a friend's wedding, I was called upon to tie huge ribbon sashes into bows several times because otherwise, they flopped and drooped all over the place.  

Now, I don't know if you will find this useful, or if this is known information all over the world, and I'm just the last DIYer in the world to think this is cool, but here's how I tie a bow.

Hopefully, you start with double sided satin ribbon.  One sided ribbon makes things a bit difficult, but still do-able with more finagling.  Tie the first knot so that the right side of the ribbon goes under the left side of the ribbon.  

Make your bunny ear with the right strand of ribbon.  The left strand is pointing up, or hanging out above the sash line.

Wrap the left strand OVER THE TOP and around the bunny ears without twisting the ribbon.  Push through the hole to create the other ear.  All of this is done without any twisting.  By wrapping over the top, you are creating that center piece nice and straight. 

Pull tight, and you've got a straight and beautiful bow.

If, however, you decided to drop the left strand, and wrap it BELOW and around the bunny ears...

then, you've got yourself an extra knot.  It doesn't look so bad now, but when your sash/ribbon is 2 inches wide, that extra knot gets pretty hefty, causing the drooping and flopping that you don't want.

Here's what happens if the left strand is pointing down instead of up.  You make your bunny ears and wrap the left strand where it wants to go - below and around the bunny ears.

Now, you've got an upside down knot.  I swear I didn't take this picture upside down!  If you were just tying shoelaces, this won't matter, but it's much more visible in wide ribbons.

You might think, oh, no problem, I'll just switch direction, move the ribbon up, and then around the bunny ears, but now you've got that extra knot again.

It works the same for left-handed knots too.  Basically, always make sure the wrapping part of the ribbon is on top of the sash, and bring it DOWN and AROUND to finish the bow.

This idea also works even if you don't make the bunny ears.  Here's a square knot where I followed the natural progression of the ribbon and brought it down over where I want the final knot to be.  I use this technique a lot with sashes on everyday dresses and those fabric belts you see on suits to oversized t-shirts.

I hope this comes in useful for you someday!

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Pick-up Truck Pouch

This was a project I did for So You Think You're Crafty last summer, and I realized I never actually shared it.  Considering how bad I am at sewing, this was an accomplishment for me, but it also scared me enough to maybe not go near the sewing machine for a good long time.

Real life trailers are often shipping containers that hold stuff, like bananas and diapers and Gap jeans.  My little cloth "trailer/pouch" is also a storage container, this time holding little things like small toys, crayons or a light snack.  Get it, get it?  Big storage, little storage?  

I found a simple boy-ish (or gender neutral) star printed fabric and made the body of the truck using a tutorial from Make-It Love-It as inspiration.  Then there's a lined zip-pouch made using a tutorial from Skip to My Lou.   Instead of setting the zipper in the middle, I offset the zipper to the side so I could add a handle to the pouch.  

The trailer/pouch is removable and has a removable handle that can be snapped on.  You can choose to attach the handle to the bag to make it self-sufficient as a dopp kit, or attach the bag to the truck and carry the whole thing by the handle.  I thought I was being so clever, but really, I was just creating more pieces to pick up around the house.  The handle is now MIA, the truck is in the play kitchen, but at least the bag is still being used to carry portions of his ever-growing Hot Wheels collection.

I was hoping this would be a hit on a long road trip last summer.  Not so much.  At last the truck doesn't hurt when he throws it during his numerous temper tantrums.

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