Friday, August 29, 2014

An Egg-ceptional Way To Send A Message: A Message In An Egg

I saw this DIY project on pinterest and was quite interested in creating the message in an egg for my fiance. The only thing I didn't like about this project was that you could clearly see two holes on both ends of the egg, which gave away how the message was put into the egg. I wanted to make some changes in this DIY project so that there was some mystery behind how the message got into the egg.
Things you will need:
- 1 egg
- Thumb-tack or needle
- Paper
- Scissors
- Pen (I used a fine tip sharpie)
- Hot glue gun and glue stick
- Toothpick
- Paints and brushes


Now let's get started!
The first step was to poke a hole in each end of the egg with a tack or needle. One hole should be a bit bigger then the other so you can later fit a small scroll inside. To create the larger hole, you will need to slowly chip away at the initial small puncture. After you have created two holes (one at each end), you will need to blow the egg out and let the inside of the egg dry.


While the egg is drying you will want to take this time to cut a small strip of paper and write down your message like I did above. I actually wrote three messages but you can write as many as you want. After your message is written you'll want to roll the strip of paper you wrote so that it resembles a small scroll. After the inside of the egg is dry, stick the small scroll into the egg through the larger hole. To plug the holes up you'll want to take your hot glue gun and put a small dab of glue onto each side of the egg. While the glue is still hot take a toothpick and flatten the dab of glue. After the glue is dry (which literally only takes a couple minutes) paint your egg any which way you'd like and then you're done!!! 

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Initiate No-Sew Shirt Reconstruction

Do any of you have any baggy old shirts stuffed away in your drawer? I sure do. I barely ever wear them so I decided to take one and initiate a shirt reconstruction project. My fiance bought me a baggy Kermit shirt for a $1 for the intent as a pajama shirt. I chose this one for this project. I will probably be making more of these shirts in the near future with some other shirts I have lying around.
So grab your shirt and lets get started!


 First you will need to fold the shirt in half and cut the sleeves off. The white line indicates where you should cut. The sleeves aren't needed, so you can throw them out if you want. You will also need to cut the bottom seam off and discard this scrap. After you cut the bottom seam off you will need to cut the side seams up so that you can open the shirt as you can see below.


You can cut along the white lines or you can eyeball it. Just make sure that your strips are a 1/2'' wide and that the line to the left which cuts off that excess is made. Make sure you cut up to the bottom of the collar but DO NOT cut the collar. Pull each strip to roll up the strips so they aren't so bulky and don't look so raw. I had twenty strips in the front and twenty strips in the back but you can have a little less or more depending on your shirt size. 


Now starting with one of the sides begin to separate the strips by two. Take the two strips and put a knot in them like I did above. Tie each knot as seen on the upper right picture to create a diamond shape. You will notice on the second row that there will be two odd strips left over but on the third it will even out. You will continue making these diamond shapes for at least four rows or you can do six rows depending on how large of an arm-hole you desire. Just make sure that you have the two odd strips on each end. 


Remember to do the front and back of the t-shirt so that you end up with four odd ends. To make the arm-hole you will want to take the odd end from the front side and back side and tie them together like so. After you do this with both arm-holes the strips will be even and you can begin knotting to create the diamond shapes like before. You can choose to do as many extra rows as you want depending on what length you would like. 


And now your t-shirt is done. An old baggy shirt upcycled into a macrame crop-top.
I hope you enjoyed this DIY.

Good luck on your t-shirt reconstruction projects.