The *Easy* Empire Waist Dress

This started out to be something completely different.

I had this cute t-shirt that I wanted to make into a dress and I found a pattern that I thought would be simple enough. Well, I was totally wrong. I was so horrified by the outcome of the dress that I couldn't even take a picture of the ugly mess I had created. It was just hideous! I put the whole thing into a drawer with my other fabric to deal with later. So a few days later I tried to salvage the mess of a dress by adding a ruffle to the bottom. It just made it worse. I really should have taken pictures of this mess but it was so embarrassing. Not wanting to waste this cute shirt, I got out my rotary cutter and sliced it off the top of the mess of a dress and threw the rest away. I never wanted to look at it again. I still loved the shirt though so I was on the hunt for something to do with it. Browsing my favorite place Pinterest, I came across this darling dress:

Source: smashedpeasandcarrots.blogspot.com via Andi on Pinterest

I LOVE this dress! The pattern is simple enough and she shows all the steps for making it. It really was an easy dress to make. In her pictures, she shows it as a maternity dress, but she comments that it would work as a regular dress as well and she even makes a child size one following the same pattern. My thoughts on making a maternity dress - I would definitely use a jersey or stretch fabric because it would allow for so much more comfort and room to grow with you. The only difficulty I had came when attaching the shirt to the skirt. I think my shirt wasn't quite as fitted at the tank top she used. If I were to do it again, I would run a gathering stitch around the bottom of the shirt and pull it until it matched the size of the skirt, then pin them together. I think it would make it much easier to attach them doing that. I used a knit t-shirt as the top, 1 & 1/2 inch elastic for the waistband because the store was out of the 2 inch and then a patterned cotton for the skirt. Following her measurements worked really well for me to make my dress.

I was worried after all the trouble I had with the first dress that something would be wrong with this one but I have washed and worn it and it has held up. It is a great dress and super comfortable too! I imagine that it would make a great maternity dress for all the mamas out there. It sews up really quickly and truly is an *easy* dress!

100 Days to Christmas

September 16th is officially 100 days till Christmas! Can you believe it?! I know many of you probably aren't even thinking that far ahead yet. There are still Halloween and Thanksgiving and possibly tons of family events yet to be celebrated between now and then, but if you are planning on crafting you know you need to get a head start on those projects. Even if you aren't planning on crafting, getting a head start on the holidays is a great thing. There are so many great sales to take advantage of between now and then that with the right plan you can avoid much of the usual holiday headache.

One of the most important parts of my plan is that I keep a spreadsheet in Excel from year to year of who we have bought gifts for, what gifts we bought, prices, etc. This helps immensely with creating a budget each year. I can see who we still need to buy gifts for and add or delete people as needed. We draw names for one family Christmas gathering and this really helps keep costs down. I also add birthdays to the list because we have a lot of birthdays near the holidays. I have Excel track my expected budget as well as what I have actually spent. The one I use is similar to this.

Another list I keep is our Christmas Card list. I also keep this in Excel because it sorts all the addresses for me and keeps everything so neat and organized. This one is really nice. If you really like Word and Excel, there are a lot of great downloads for the holidays here . I try to keep things as simple as I can this time of year so if they are going to give me a template, I will gladly take it!

A lot of places will suggest getting a binder and getting super organized but most people I know don't have time for all of that. I suggest finding a calendar that you know you will use and starting today by putting every important date between now and the end of the year in there if you haven't done this already. Then use this regularly! It will come in so handy. It helps if it is something you can carry around, like your phone or a day planner. Everyone wants you to come to parties and events this time of year and it helps to know when you are available. Use it to mark down everything - store sales, parties, birthdays, nap time, everything. You won't regret it.

For the crafters out there, I love this time of year because all the different craft sites start coming out with holiday crafts. We will start seeing fall crafts, winter crafts and gift ideas all over the place. I will be linking them up and posting my own projects in the coming weeks so be on the look out! Plus we are moving soon so I get to decorate a whole new place and share that with everyone. Oh and this is my favorite Christmas tree possibly ever. It's from a Christmas at my Auntie's house and it always makes me smile, so I wanted to share it with you all to get you in the holiday spirit.

Personalized Wedding Gift

My husband and I just celebrated our second wedding anniversary last month. I wanted to do something to commemorate this for us. Since I seem to spend hours on Pinterest without realizing it, There were these really cool pictures that I loved on there. The idea is to make a map of us - our lives, marriage, etc. Since I am also in the process of redecorating my living room, I wanted it to match my new decor.

Here is what I came up with:

On the top right is our anniversary. I used my Silhouette to cut it out of scrapbook paper. This machine can do so many things, it is amazing! So in the program, I typed the numbers out and aligned them next to each other, then used the Weld feature to cut it all out as one piece. Then glued it to the background paper.

My favorite things are the maps and what attracted me to this project in the first place. Starting at the top is a map of where I lived when I was born, then where my husband lived when he was born, next where we met, and finally where we got married. I traced them and cut them by hand then glued them on to the background paper and outlined them in black to make them stand out.

I printed our name on thick yellow paper in the font LD Wrought Iron. Then tore it by hand to give it some texture. I tore another small piece to put at the top and glued a decorative button on to it. The final decoration I added was a rolled fabric flower. I could go crazy making these! Here is a tutorial from Happy Together on how to make the rolled rosettes.

I love the way it all came together and that it shows the story of our lives (plus matches my living room). The best part was that my husband loved it too!

If you want more inspiration, check out these two I found on Pinterest, they were what got me started:

Learning to Make a Shirt

I love Anthropologie! Like seriously L-O-V-E! I always find the most amazing things there but I always run into a few problems. #1 My budget doesn't have room for me to buy all the great things I see. #2 About half the time, the things I find and fall in love with are out of stock. #3 My husband would kill me if he found out I spent that much money on clothes/accessories/etc. Which leads us to the story of my new shirt(s). I found this shirt, which Anthropologie no longer carries, but I have been in love with.

It looked like it would be simple enough to make - just a front, a back and a sash. Boy was I wrong! I really wish I had taken a picture of the mess of a shirt I made the first go-round. It was hideous! That's when I realized that while I can sew, I really do need some sort of direction... maybe... just a little.




Lucky for me I found Sweet Verbena on Pinterest. She has a tutorial that looks almost identical to my dream shirt! I love her!!! So the first item on my agenda was to make a shirt following this tutorial.

I used a white jersey with faint yellow apples for the body of the shirt and then a yellow cotton for the sash (on the right). I had not sewn much on jersey before and making this shirt was a breeze. I had my doubts when she said it would be easy, but it was! It really turned out like a dream!

Now I was ready to tackle my mess of a shirt from my first project. I had sewn it on 100% cotton (the pink on the left). I basically ended up ripping apart the first project and sewing it back together following her tutorial. I was actually able to save what I thought was destined for the scrap pile. 

I now have 2 new shirts. They sewed up super fast too, which was one of my favorite parts. I always love a quick and easy project!

So if you are just starting out or dusting of your machine after it's been sitting for awhile, I highly recommend this project. It's fun, easy and you'll end up with a really cute and flattering top!

Crazy with Crayons

If you have been on Pinterest, you have probably seen a lot of art similar to this. I am pretty sure every person on there has pinned it.

These are plain artist's canvases, I didn't buy anything fancy - whatever was on sale at Michael's. With this one, I used three 24 packs of crayons minus the black, white, brown and gray. I arranged them by color to make sure they would fit on the canvas and lined them like the rainbow. Then I used my glue gun to glue them all onto the canvas. Next, I covered a huge area with newspaper - very important! I borrowed my mom's heat gun (similar to a blow dryer but it gets much hotter and has a more concentrated flow of air) and very slowly started melting the crayons. I found the best method was to hold it at a 45 degree angle above the canvas to better direct the flow of the wax and eliminate the spray. I would stop periodically and let the wax re-harden and then start again to get different patterns. 

On this canvas, I used a straight razor to remove the paper from all of the crayons and assorted them in a random pattern with some spaces in between. I wanted a more abstract look with this one. I followed basically the same steps as above but had to be more careful about melting the crayons themselves too much because there was no paper to protect them. I noticed that if I held the heat gun on them for too long, they would start to warp and I wanted them to maintain the look of a crayon.

After making these two, I went to the back to school sales and stocked up on crayons because I have so many ideas of how to do different pictures and patterns with them.

Little Girls and Tutus

I don't have any of my own kids yet, but when a couple of my best friends had a baby girl, I knew I needed to make her something wonderful. One of my very favorite bloggers Jessica at Happy Together makes the most amazing things. Absolutely fantastic things! On her site I found the most darling tutu onesie she made. With the addition of the tutu, it made the perfect princess outfit. I was in love! Happy Together has wonderful tutorials, so I knew I would be able to handle this even though it was my first attempt with anything related to kids clothes.

Here is my version:

I lucked out and found a great sale at Babies R Us on the onesie. I got all the tulle and ribbon at Joann's with their delightful mailer coupons. The tutorial is really easy to follow, even for my first tutu attempt. It turned out great and I even got a video of the happy baby dancing in her new outfit!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog. I'm Andi and I am going to be sharing with you all the crafting I do, plus some of the other things that may spark my interest. I am just learning how to make tutorials, so bear with me on that. My favorite thing to do is find something that inspires me and recreate it to show you that it's possible to do it yourself. Sometimes I will be inspired by just a picture and will hunt down a tutorial of something similar so that I have guidelines to follow or sometimes the project is simple enough that it doesn't need much direction. Either way that is my main crafting love.

I follow a lot of blogs and I LOVE Pinterest for inspiration. If you haven't been on there yet, you definitely need to go. Go now! It is amazing! Let me know if you need an invite. I'm definitely an addict and can spend hours on there without even realizing it.  But the good thing is that it truly is an inspiration board for me. I have made a lot of crafts from there and I will share everything I can with you.