The Ugly Christmas Sweater

Well, it's that time of the year again - Ugly Christmas Sweaters!  Am I the only one that thinks some of those sweaters are actually really cute?  Maybe I just have the taste of a 70 year old woman.  Which might be completely true because my Grandma buys me clothes occasionally as gifts for the holidays and I usually really like what she buys.  Gma just got good taste!

I don't own a Christmas sweater anymore, so I figured I could make one.  I got this sweater from The Limited a year ago, and I love it over a cami.  Sadly, my dryer snagged it, pulling it out of shape, and it became unrepairable.  At least from the Renee skills point of view.  I just donated a few bags of clothes of mine, and this sweater would unfortunately have to make it into the trash if it didn't become my new Christmas sweater!  (although after Christmas it will most likely become a fatality...can't re-write destiny).

Materials:
Safety Pins
Christmas bows - as many or little as you want!
Sweater

Before we start, I'm warning you to expect throbbing fingers by the end!

Instructions:
 Decide where you want to pin the bows.  Using the safety pin, I strung it through the staple on the bottom of the bow.  Pin to the sweater in whatever pattern/design/cluster you want.

Mine is supposed to be a bow in the middle.  I personally think it looks like one, but Sid didn't think so.  But, he doesn't celebrate Christmas either, so I'm going to pretend he doesn't know what he's talking about.

This is, sadly, the best picture I have of me attending this year's Jingle Fells which is an Ugly Christmas Sweater bar crawl in Fells Point Baltimore:  Happy Holidays!

A Bright Idea?

As promised, here's Part 2/2 of the lamp shelf thing.  Last week I modgepodged some scrapbook paper on the lamp's shelves.  This week I'm sharing my "lampshade."  Can you sense my lack of enthusiasm? 

I've had this awesome idea in my head for a long time to create a lampshade out of buttons.  So I have literally been saving buttons for the past three years, you know those extras that come with new clothes as a spare?  I must be really thrifty with clothes shopping because when I went to my bowl of button collection, I literally have like 6 buttons saved up.  You can clearly create a fabulous lampshade with 6 buttons...

Alas, plan A will have to wait.  I did try to buy buttons in bulk at my local craft store but I found no buttons!  My home collection of buttons was more extensive.  How impressive.  I suppose you have to go to a fabric store for things like that.  Or maybe I missed the aisle that said "buttons."  Regardless, I was forced to come up with a plan B.  Luckily not that serious plan B...I jest.  And, as you can see in the picture below, this lampshade that has a hole in it was driving me crazy.  No lampshade is better than this lampshade.  Oh and here's a cat in a lampshade.  See, I already found a much better use for it!

 
Recently I've been making most of my own jewelry (stay with me, this has a point, I swear).  I took a jewelry class 2 years ago and I have never felt like such a shining star.  I was the golden child of jewelry making.  This was, of course, a basic intro to jewelry making class so it's basically stringing beads together but I personally believe I have a knack for it.

So I pulled out my beading box and decided if I couldn't do buttons, why not give beads a shot?

This was a terrible idea.  Okay, maybe not terrible.  I'm totally into putting forth my best effort into these craft projects.  But, most of the time I'm really happy and feel accomplished.  Time well spent, pat on the back for me.  This ended with one of those not-so-good feelings.  Almost like a "well, I kind of like it, I can grow and force myself to like it.."

Let's get this over with, and tell me what you think please!

Materials:
Wire cutters, pliers, beads, jewelry wire, fishing line, tissue paper, modge podge

Step One:
Cut wire and wrap around one end of lamp.  String random beads, and wrap wire around the other end to close.  Repeat for however many rows you want!

Step Two:
Cut tissue paper to size.  Modge podge onto the inside of the lamp for the "shade."

Step Three:
String beads onto fishing wire at various lengths.  Tie around top of lamp frame.

Although this is easy, it takes FOREVER.  And I'm unhappy because I think I need to use way more beads/wire lines/strings to get the look that I want.  But I used up a ton of beads and my fingers hurt from wire wrapping, and the total time was probably 4 hours.  For something that's so small scale, and probably not a permanent piece in my house, I just felt like this was wasting time.  I like the concept, and hope to use it in the future on a piece that I love and want to keep around!  I suppose all projects won't go as planned.  But that's part of the learning and blogging process of discovering life, right??

Scrappy

This is Part 1/2.  The holiday season is upon us, didn't it seem to get here so quickly?  Every year I tell myself "Okay, this year I'm going to get all my shopping and holiday errands done early so I don't have the scramble the week before Christmas."  And then every year a few days before Christmas I say "Oh crap, I didn't get any shopping done..."  I'm sure this sounds familiar to most of you.  Isn't it so tough to come up with the perfect gift for someone?  I promise I always have the best of intentions.  Sid's birthday is Christmas Eve too.  How awful is that?  Even if I nail the birthday gift then I have to wonder woman it and get a second awesome thoughtful gift the next day??  It's a good thing I'm a super hero.

So this atrocity in my house is a plastic, yes plastic gross, (the italics are supposed to highlight my discern), floor lamp/shelf.  Had I realized this was plastic I would have thrown it out but I thought it was a cheap wood.  Because that's obviously much classier.  So this guy is definitely a temporary item, but I figured why not snazz it up inexpensively a bit while it lasts.

Before:

Materials:
ModgePodge, Foam brush, Scrapbook Paper, Scissors/Box Cutter, Acrylic Sealer 



Step One:
Cut the Scrapbook Paper to size for the shelves.  The corners were a bit tricky, and thus I used a combo of my box cutter as well as scissors.

Step Two:
Using your foam brush, brush on a coat of ModgePodge to the shelf, and press your scrapbook paper on top.  Let dry.

Step Three:
Spray with your acrylic sealer.  Do this outside!  I'm super lazy, and thought I could do this in my sunroom with the windows open.  Terrible idea.  It smells toxic and I probably killed my brain cells.  Oops.  Also, I didn't use one but a high shine/gloss acrylic sealer probably would have looked better.

And that's it!  I love that super cheap scrapbook paper can easily snazz this bad boy up.  And you can virtually do this on anything - shelves, dresser linings, etc.  A fancier, more expensive option would be using wallpaper.  But, for this plastic guy, I think scrapbook paper is perfect.  Stay tuned for next week's Part 2/2:  The Lampshade.  In my mind it's going to be awesome.