Hey, Thanks!

Just popping in to say thanks for hanging out with me. I've never even met most of you but it's nice to know that I'm part of a much larger community of crafty folks. When I get into a bit of a creative funk, it's always encouraging to have you all here reading my antics, commenting, and creating your own beautiful things for me to look at. If I could, I'd send each and every one of you a goody. In lieu of that, I'll wish you a great day. Pin It

I Love Spray Paint

Of all the ways to makeover an item of furniture, spray paint is my current favorite. If you've got so-so furniture taking up space in your house, some spray paint could help you fall in love with your rooms again. Seriously, it's well worth the few bucks and hours. At the end of the post, I've made a list of some helpful tips that I've learned (mostly the hard way) about using spray paint.

Over the last couple weeks I've been working on making over the dresser and mirror in our master bedroom. Redoing those pieces has completely changed the whole room for me. It is a tiny (really really tiny) room and our furniture was a sad mix of mismatched items that have been begging for some cohesion since we moved into this house (about 6 years ago...). All their matching dreams have finally come true!

Before

Stenciled dresser (which was done by my aunt and has been in the family since I was a baby, but wasn't working with our other furniture)
& dark brown mirror that used to hang in our bathroom. 

We were so reluctant to commit to this motley grouping that we never even hung the mirror, just leaned it against the wall. So sad.

During

5 cans of Valspar black gloss spray paint and some wonderfully sunny days to paint on the patio.

Even our little lemon tree in the background.

After

Coordinating black mirror and dresser with some cheap decorative touches that I love. 

I've finally committed to my furniture and I am very happy with it.

 

In hindsight, I probably should have used matte finish paint to match all the matte finish frames in our room. Maybe when I have too much free time this spring I'll get right on that...maybe.

If you get the urge to spray paint some of your cast-off/craigslist/hand-me-down/thrifted furniture, here's a little help:
-Do a light sand on the piece before painting and use a tack cloth to remove all the little dusty bits (you don't want your beautiful finish ruined and hard work wasted).
-Do it outside (good ventilation) when it's not too breezy (unwanted overspray) and not too cold (it will take longer to dry).
-Shake the can often while working to avoid clogs.
-Use slow strokes when painting to get the most paint on the surface in each sweep.
-On the other hand, don't put on heavy coats because they'll wrinkle and piss you off.
-You can make the most mismatched furniture look like it belongs together by simply using matching paint colors...minor miracle.
-You don't need to sand between a couple light coats, just put them on back to back.
-Don't be afraid to try a new color! If you don't like it, sand it off and paint over it. Paint is cheap and it's an easy way to inject color and life into a room.

Happy painting!

***featured at The Shabby Chic Cottage Transformation Thursday, Remodelaholic's Anonymous Meeting, Tip Junkie's Tip Me Tuesday, My Backyard Eden's Make It Yours Day, Me and My Bucket, Somewhat Simple's Strut Your Stuff Thursday, Simply Sweet Home Friday Favorites, and Someday Crafts Whatever Goes Wednesday*** Pin It

Pattern Challenge: Burda 7661

 

Dolly, Me, and the Dress

I made a dress from a real pattern! I've started and scrapped lots of patterns in the last couple years (yes, I've balled up tissue paper patterns and cut pieces of fabric and just chucked it) but this is officially my first completed real pattern. Somehow tutorials, patterns in books, winging it and the like don't seem to be "real" patterns to me...totally illogical.

This is also the first pattern on my list for the Pattern Challenge (check out the button in the left sidebar) and it was a quick project. I bought Burda 7661 last summer and sat on it until about 4 days ago. 4 days ago was when I realized that we were taking family pictures Friday (today) and I didn't want to wear a single thing in my closet. What's a girl to do? Well, I had just signed on for the Pattern Challenge and I had a pattern. I dragged the boys to Joann and found a cotton/linen blend I liked. I'm good under a deadline so these were ideal conditions for me...a little odd but it works around here.

 

I made the dress, not the top (though I may revisit this closer to summer and make the top). The pattern is overall easy to make and I would recommend it. There are very few pattern markings which makes prep a little easier. It's all straight-stitching and a 5/8" seam allowance. No zippers or buttonholes if you have an aversion - just a button and loop on the back. The only thing I might do differently next time is use a fabric with less body. Because it gathers at the waist I think it would be more flattering to have less bulk.

Before stitching down the casing for the belt tie around the waist, I'd recommend trying on the dress and pulling a ribbon or measuring tape around your waist to make sure the placement works for you. Everyone's figure is different and the wrong placement could really undermine how flattering this dress could be.

I excluded the pockets and made the following changes to the pattern because I'm just 5'2" and the pattern is based on a 5'6" figure:

-brought up the shoulder straps by about 1/2"

-took several inches off the hem

-moved the position of the "belt" casing up by about an inch

Here are some pictures 

(put together as a collage using this)

And me in the dress...

Anyone else just feel goofy "modeling" for the camera? 

My sweet husband did such a great job on our little photoshoot - thanks, sweetie!

Pin It

Pattern Challenge to do list

Like I mentioned earlier, I joined the Pattern Challenge over on See the Seitz (click on the button in the left sidebar for info). The idea of the challenge is to set goals for yourself and then blog about them culminating in pattern reviews upon completion. So here are my goals...

1. Make Burda 7661 in time for family pictures (which were today!)

2. Sew an every day summer dress by April...still figuring out what pattern to use

3. Sew a dressy dress to wear to my uncle's wedding in August. My 3 1/2 year old will be the ring bearer and I'm pretty sure he'll freak out on the aisle and I'll be carrying him the rest of the way. Hey, if I'm going to end up in wedding pictures I better have a great dress. I have a few patterns to choose from and just have to decide.

4. **added** At least one spring top so I can participate in Made By Rae's Spring Top Week again.

I like dresses if you can't tell...really like dresses. Goal #1 is done and I'll post on it later today or tomorrow. Hopefully it doesn't photograph like a bad Home Ec project.

Have a great weekend! Pin It

my dirty laundry...again

You're probably tired of hearing about my adventures in laundry detergent making, but I've just got one more little thing to add. And then I'll shut up about it. Promise.

If you can get your hands on Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda and some Fels-Naptha, it is completely worth it. Before I was using Oxi-Clean and Ivory and it seemed to get our clothes clean, but over time I realized that it wasn't working as well as the store bought stuff. So my husband found Washing Soda at Ace Hardware (right on the shelf, not even special order) and my sister found some Fels Naptha at the CVS drugstore by her house - random. (Apparently, it takes a whole team of people to make my various projects happen...) This mix is worlds better than what I was using before.

To recap, here is the recipe I found on both TipNut and Instructables:

2 cups of grated Fels-Naptha
1 cup of Borax
1 cup of Washing Soda

 (I like blending them all together in the food processor to help it dissolve easily)


As if you don't have enough reasons to try your own detergent (huge cost-savings being the number one reason for me), now I've tested the Washing Soda/Fels Naptha and you can trust it. Happy Laundry Day!

ps: if you've never tried plain white vinegar instead of fabric softener, you should try that too! I promise it leaves no vinegar smell on your clothes and it doesn't leave a residue like softener. It won't help static but if that bugs you just throw in a dryer sheet. Read the comments below before you try vinegar! Thanks, Mel!
Pin It

No Way!

So I just discovered the blog Come and See the Seitz (gotta love the name!) and entered in Sarah's $50 Allmodern.com giveaway. And I won! No way! It pretty much made my whole week and I went "shopping" this afternoon (and not just the window variety).

But, even more fun is the Pattern Challenge Sarah is hosting (hence the new button on the left sidebar). If you've ever wanted to make clothes for yourself, this is a great time to jump in. I'll post more about this later in the week, but for now go check it out. What a cool idea! Here's a sneak peek of the pattern I plan to make...

Pin It

Guilty as charged

I feel guilty even posting this while the rest of the country is dealing with record breaking snow. But maybe it can make the rest of you feel a little warmer for a few minutes, even if it is vicariously fleeting.

We live in San Diego and it is an amazing climate. I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but sometimes I have to remind myself why we pay more for housing, taxes, groceries, gas...you get the picture. And when we have days like today, specifically evenings like this, I am reminded of what an extraordinary place we live in.

I have lived in Southern California almost my entire life, with brief interludes in Texas and England (of all places). As a child I spent more evenings than I can count playing outside no matter what the calendar said. I remember the long shadows and the slight breeze. The sunset against telephone lines. The smell of a charcoal grill. Riding my bike around the block and feeling there were no limits on speed or possibilities.

And tonight my boys brought these flooding back for me. I sat on the driveway while they played up and down the sidewalk. The sun was sinking lower and lower behind our telephone lines and the breeze was just the slightest of movements in the air.

Pin It

Happy Valentine's Day

 

Happy Valentine's Day to you and your loves!

I hope you have a restful Sunday full of snuggles and laughs. 

Here are little bits of lovey dovey goodness from around our house.

Two dozen roses from my ever sweet husband...sigh.

 

The handmade card for Daddy...

Duke, my first {oversized, hairy mutt} baby.

I love his lap dog tendencies and big puppy dog eyes.

And the fudge I conquered. 

That's right, I won. 

Victory is sweet, especially chocolate victory.

Pin It

Drumroll Please....

Thanks to everyone for joining in on the giveaway fun! 

Using random.org I chose winners and they are:

Bundle A: Comment #6 HAbadie

Bundle B: Comment #2 Lynne

Bundle C: Comment #3 Eve

Congratulations! 

If your email address is in your profile, I'll email you to get your mailing address. 

Otherwise, you can email me at kbiermann (at) gmail.com.

My helpers packing up the fabric

On their way to the post office!

I really like giving things away and am already thinking of other things to gift so stay tuned...

Pin It

Um...I'll pass

Don't worry, I have a good explanation for this nastiness.

I have a wicked sweet tooth and I try to fight it pretty hard so I'm not 600 pounds at 5'2". But a girl's got to have some treats and I do like making treats. So about once a week, the boys and I settle in after naptime to make cookies, muffins, or some other kind of goodie. Yesterday I decided we would make fudge. I've never made real fudge and the recipe in my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook looked easy enough. I had my sweet husband pick up a couple missing ingredients on his way home from work and we set to work.

Things were going well until I was ready to transfer the fudge to our very neatly prepared 8"x8" pan. The recipe said to spread the fudge from the saucepan to the baking dish, you know like warm slow-moving lava that you push around in there. Only problem was that my fudge was nowhere near spreadable. It was like fast moving lava that just flowed right from the pan to the dish. This didn't seem right. I reread the recipe again and again. I hadn't forgotten anything...strange but moving on.

Red flag #2: the butter that I had smeared on the foil lining the baking dish (very carefully following the recipe's instructions) started melting and creating nasty little pools of lipids along the edges of the dish. This was not good.

My 3 1/2 year old of course wanted to see our magnificent fudge and was a bit underwhelmed. I told him we had to let it chill for a few hours and then we could eat it. Of course, how this disgusting mess would become yummy fudge was totally beyond me.

If anything, it actually became more disgusting after chilling and I am not afraid to show you. There's no soft-peddling that. Just gross. If I say I screwed something up, you can bet I really did. No jaunty self-deprecation here.

As I'm giggling that night telling my husband about our botched kitchen adventure and how very hard I tried, he gets a blank look and asks, "Did you use the whole can of evaporated milk?" Thinking what a silly questions this is, I tell him that of course I did, the recipe called for a whole can. He went on to explain that my recipe called for a 5 ounce can while the grocery store only had 12 ounce cans. Well that would do it.

We're going to try again today after the boys wake up. I have all the correct ingredients and will triple-check not only what goes in but how much. Let's hope that I'm not beat by the same recipe twice.

sidenote: My husband, brave and foolhardy man that he is, told me he tried the alleged fudge and it was the most delicious pudding he's ever had. I'm not that brave. Pin It

Speaking of giveaways...

Anna over at Noodlehead is hosting a giveaway for the awesome backpacks she made for the "Celebrate the Boy" month. Seriously, they are just too cute for words. Head on over to http://noodleheads.blogspot.com/2010/02/400-giveaway.html to enter. It closes tonight so move quick. :)

Have a great day! Pin It

Extra! Extra!

Good Morning & Happy Monday! I am up to knees in extra fabric (well maybe not literally...) and I am realizing that it is silly to keep these fabrics when I might use them some far off day. So I am giving some away in my first little giveaway for the little blog. Some are smaller pieces, some are full yardage, but they all have potential to make some really cute projects. I have been so inspired by others and always encouraged by having you all around so I want to do something nice for everyone else. Feel free to pass it along - the more the merrier.

Here's the lowdown...
I've got 3 separate bundles of fabric up for grabs. Leave me a comment for each bundle you want. For instance, if you only want Bundle A then leave a comment saying you would love to win A. If you want Bundles A & C leave 2 comments, one for each bundle.

Include the following in your comment:
-what bundle you want
-what your absolute, all-time, hands-down favorite craft blog is so I can go check out all kinds of new craftiness. I love discovering new blogs for inspiration!

Here are the goods...

Bundle A
black & white cottons
garden print lightweight cotton  (63"x34" + some)
white eyelet (22"x38")
textured white cotton (23"x9" & 23"x34")

Bundle B
baby/toddler fabrics
blue ABC print minky (23"x17" & 20.5"x20.5")
pale blue star patterned minky (37"x24")
cows & moons cotton print on yellow (2 yards minus 18"x11" piece)

Bundle C

home decor fabrics

large scale sage green paisley (33"x38" + some)

a print I just love (1.5 yards)

a detailed picture of the second fabric

 

I'll leave comments open through Thursday 

and then pick winners Friday morning based on random numbers. 

I'll post the winners here on Friday morning so check back then!

Good luck!

Pin It

Belts Belts Belts...revised

If you use this tutorial I'd love to see your creation! 

Feel free to post it to the Handmade Mommy Tutorials Flickr Pool.

Updated: I could not handle the ill-fitting d-rings and had to remake my little man's belts because I'm a little strange like that. You benefit with an even better tutorial since I figured out a better method! And here's a shot of the wonderfully perfect fitting d-rings.

It's not always easy to get perfect fitting clothes for growing kids. That's just how it is. Take, for instance, my 3 year old's pants that are long enough but too big in the waist. I've taken in the waist on some of them, but he's recently become very fond of a hand-me-down belt for the ones I haven't altered. This morning I suddenly realized that I could make him a couple more to avoid the scramble when the one lone belt is missing. Genius!

This is an inexpensive and super easy little project. I cannot believe that I kept looking for belts in stores instead of doing this months ago! No original ideas here, but I liked how the webbing looked in photos and thought it might be helpful for some of you. So here goes...

Materials:
Cotton or nylon webbing (I used 1" width)
Two D-rings in the appropriate size (1" to coordinate with the webbing)
Denim sewing machine needle

Measure your little one's waist and add 8" to that length. This is how much webbing you'll need for one belt and it leaves some room to grow.

Before setting to work, fray check your ends.

Now take one end of your webbing and loop it through both D-rings.
Fold the end over about 1/2" and then fold it over again about 1 1/4". 

Sew the loop shut.

Take the other end of your webbing and fold it over 1/2" and then again 1/2".
You want to fold this the opposite way from the other end and sew.

In the picture below, the d-ring end side is folded up and over while the other end is folded under. See?

You're done! Could it be any easier?

Pin It

BOYS!!

I'm a little late in posting on this, but Rae from Made By Rae and Dana from Made are co-hosting a whole month to Celebrate The Boy!

I LOVE this! A lot of crafts are geared towards girls (and they are adorable) but I've got two rough & tumble boys and there just never seems to be enough boy crafts. Well, this should give all us moms-to-boys plenty to work with for a long time.

And, added bonus, the sweet Anna from Noodlehead was a featured guest blogger yesterday. You've got to check it out. There's a flickr pool for awesome boy creations and they'll have a bunch of guest bloggers showing their talents. Yeah for boys! Pin It

One for the classroom

If you use this tutorial I'd love to see your creation! 

Feel free to post it to the Handmade Mommy Tutorials Flickr Pool.

We interrupt this blog to bring you an educational project. A FUN educational project. My mom, as I've mentioned before, is a sixth grade teacher and this post happens to be for her classroom. Tomorrow she'll be projecting my little tutorial onto her "smart board" in the classroom and her students will follow along to make their own caps. Let's hope I make sense...

Every year my mom does a coon skin cap project with her sixth graders while they read "Where the Red Fern Grows." I must confess that I was an English Lit major and have never read this book. And, to be completely honest, I've put it off because I know it's sad (I know, so grown up of me). My mom's sixth graders are tougher than I am.

The idea for the coon skin cap project comes from the fact that the character Billy's mom makes him one from the first raccoon (coon) he caught himself. And here is how you can make your own coon skin cap.

(fun fact: this is an inexpensive classroom project! You can make 28 caps from 2 yards of plush felt which costs about $6 per yard. At the end of the tutorial I include my mom's diagram for getting the most pieces out of your yardage. If you know a classroom that would enjoy it, feel free to pass it on but please give credit.)

Materials:

-3 pieces of dark brown plush felt (one 4" x 12", one 4" x 24", and one 9" x 6")

-Black show polish

-Hand sewing needle and thread (dark brown or black would blend best, but a lighter color will be easier to see while you work)

Preparation:

A day or two before you put together your cap, you'll want to make your stripes on the "tail" part so they have time to dry before sewing and wearing. Rub your black shoe polish stripes onto the fabric going with the nap of the felt. Make your stripes plenty dark - they'll dry and won't be messy. I promise.

Cut an oval from the 9" x 6" piece like so.

My little one "helping." 

There's no need to fold over the end of your oval. I just really like those chubby little fingers.

Get to it!

First, have your your little coon hunter wrap the long piece of felt (the 4" x 24" piece) with wrong side out around their head and pinch it together where it feels comfortably snug.

Draw a line on the felt where they were pinching it together and trim the excess about 1/4" out from the line.

Whipstitch your edges wrong sides together

Stand up the band on a flat surface (still wrong sides out) and place the oval on top, wrong side up. Line up the edges and pin the front center. Ease the sides in and pin them at roughly 3:00 and 9:00.

Trim any excess off the back of the cap (center back of the oval).

Whipstitch your edges together all the way around.

For the tail, fold your striped felt lengthwise, wrong sides together, and sew along the long edge.

Turn your hat right side out and gently push the seams out. Fold your "tail" piece so the seam runs down the center of the tail rather than along the side. And now pin the tail to the inside of the cap at the center back.

Whipstitch the tail to the hat going across and back again to secure it.

Now wear it proudly! Good job!

Click on the image below for the full-size layout diagram 

to get 28 hats from two yards of fabric.

Enjoy!

Pin It