I was lurking around on the internet the other day and came across these viking shoes.  As I scrolled through the post, I saw it was a tutorial on how to make them, so of course I had to make some myself.  I went out to my craft store and bought some leather remnants for less than$5 and hoped there would be enough to make a pair of shoes.

Before I cut into the leather, I made a pattern out of felt and put it together.  I made some modifications to the original pattern to try to make them into flats instead of sandals and I wanted to make sure it would work.

Here’s the pattern all put together

Drawing the pattern out on the leather.  I had JUST enough!

All cut out.

Rounding out the little tab things.

With a marker, I marked out where the holes should go.

Here I am, wishing my boyfriend still had his leather hole punch.

The exacto knife worked alright, here are the holes!

The leather cord was more expensive than the scraps of leather I bought!

Lacing up the back.  If you make these, make sure you pay attention to how you’re supposed to thread it, I messed up a LOT on this step.

Lacing up the toe area.

Almost done!

All done and pretty comfy!

Back.

Front.

I think these things are pretty cute and they’re quite comfortable.  It’s just thin leather though, so these ones are more suitable to just be house slippers.  I’m thinking about ordering some thicker leather and maybe a shoe sole or something to see if I can make something that would be fit for wearing outside.

So yesterday I posted my huge failure in trying to bleach my Sex Bob-omb shirt and today I promised to show the spray painted one I ended up making and wearing instead.  Luckily I had another black shirt hiding in my closet, so I whipped up another stencil…

With this stencil I decided I’d try out bridges, because I saw someone use bridges to make sure everything was lined up correctly, and then carefully cut them out with an exacto knife.

Here I am, cutting them out.  If you do this, be VERY careful not to cut your shirt.

All cut out and ready to paint!  I stuck cardboard in this shirt just like last time to protect the back of the shirt.  I’m using some Krylon plastic fusion hammered metal spray paint because that’s all I had on hand and I didn’t feel like going out to buy a whole can of paint just for this shirt.

If you’re spray painting, go outside.  I didn’t feel like going into the back yard with the dogs so I hopped out the window onto the roof.

Spray spray spray!

Lookin’ pretty done here.  I let it dry outside and closed the window so the fumes couldn’t get inside.

After it dried I took it inside and carefully started peeling the freezer paper off.

No bleeding!

Woo hoo!  There’s some slight over spray up by the collar but it’s not nearly as bad as the bleached monstrosity that happened with the last shirt.  Since it’s just a tiny bit of over spray I was able to get it all off.

My boyfriend actually taught me this trick, just use tape to pick up the over spray!  It worked like a charm.

Ta da! Here it is in action!

Since I used spray paint, I’m sure the logo will fade somewhat after washing it in the washing machine, but I kind of wanted that effect so I’m totally cool with that.  If you aren’t cool with that, then you should look into getting some spray on fabric paints.  I’ve seen them at every craft store I’ve gone so so they shouldn’t be too hard to find.

So Thursday was awesome, I wore the shirt!  It was at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, so they had Scott Pilgrim themed food and Universal Studios paid for each person to have one of the choices of foods and one drink, and Edgar Wright was there with 5 of the cast members!  When I heard he would be there with some of the cast I fully expected like 2 of the cast members to show up.  Michael Cera, Anna Kendrick, Mary Elizabeth Windstead, Brandon Routh and Jason Schwartzman were all there and after the movie they did a Q and A which was pretty awesome.  I ended up meeting Michael Cera and Jason Schwartzman, but everyone else slipped by really fast to get to the after party (that I sadly couldn’t go to because I brought my 16 year old sister… the after party was 21 and up).    It was still awesome!!

I’m a pretty big fan of the Scott Pilgrim comics and I was super excited about the movie, nevermind the fact that I love Edgar Wright movies.  So when I got the chance to enter a contest (hosted by Ain’t It Cool News) to win two tickets to an advanced screening last Thursday I knew I had to at least try.  All you had to do was enter a picture of yourself rocking out and you could enhance it in Photoshop if you so desired.  So I made my little sister (who was the one who would go with me if we won) put on her Gideon shirt that we made the other day and jump around with her ukulele while I took pictures.  After I picked out the best picture I added in some effects that fit in to the movies style.  And guess what?  We won!!  Here’s the winning picture:

Immediately after hearing that we won I knew it was time to make my Sex Bob-omb shirt.  I wanted it to be a black shirt with the logo bleached on, so after scouring the internet for tutorials on how to do such a thing, I ended up with a roll of freezer paper, a black shirt and some diluted bleach.

Using freezer paper as a stencil is a pretty cool trick that I’ve only used once, and never with bleach, so this was a very new experience for me.  Here is everything in preparation of the stencil.  Freezer paper, a printout of the logo (I found it by doing a google image search), an exacto knife, the shirt, and (not pictured) an iron.

Rip off a sheet of freezer paper and put over the printed logo.  The freezer paper is pretty thin so you should be able to see the printed image clearly enough to trace it out.

Next, use your exacto knife to cut the image out.  I didn’t cut bridges for the inside details of the face because I figured I could just cut them out, place them in the right spot and just iron them down.

I live in a house full of animals so I have to de-hair anything I want to stencil on.  I’m sure if I skipped this step, the freezer paper wouldn’t have stuck very well.

Iron that sucker down!  I put it on the cotton setting (because my shirt was 100% cotton) but I didn’t let the iron sit on the stencil for too long.  Just enough to get it to stick down.

Here’s the stencil, ready to go!  I ended up using more freezer paper around the edges to protect it from over spray from the bleach.

Find a piece of cardboard that is about the same size as the shirt and carefully put it inside, to protect the back of the shirt from the bleach.

I put my shirt in the bathtub and sprayed it with a mixture of about half water and half bleach.  Everything I read about this process said that the bleaching happens fairly quickly, so don’t leave your shirt unattended.  For me, it felt like the color change took ages, but eventually it did start changing.  I was worried that I wasn’t using the amount of bleach or something so I kept spraying the shirt, thinking that eventually it’d help.

Here you can see it finally changing to that reddish color that black shirts end up bleaching to.  While this was happening, all I could think was “Hmm, this freezer paper doesn’t seem like it’d be that great of a barrier for the bleach, what if it just soaks up all the bleach and bleaches even where the paper is…”

So after it got to the red bleachy color I desired, I rinsed it with cold water and started excitedly peeling the freezer paper off and…

…

…well…

…Shit.  Well it seems like I was a little heavy handed with spraying the bleach… and looking back, I should have found a spray bottle that sprayed a finer mist, and I should have barely spritzed it.    So I thought, maybe I could salvage this mess…. perhaps drawing the black back in with a Sharpie marker?

Okay, that didn’t work.  Well damn, what a waste of a black shirt

I think I’ll have to revisit this freezer paper stencil with bleach again.  But for my Sex Bob-omb shirt I ended up doing what I know… and that’s stenciling it on with spray paint.  Tune in tomorrow for that post!

I was browsing through Craftster a few days ago and saw a super cute bracelet made by fellow poster milesapart714 that she made based off a $300+ designer bracelet.  Her version was $3 and, in my opinion, much cuter.  I just knew I had to make one.  The next day I drove off to my nearest craft store and headed straight to the jewelry section.  Everyone that lives around me must have had the same idea because all of the short chains suitable for this bracelet were sold out, so I had to settle on buying a 60″ chain which was thankfully on sale!  After gathering all the materials; chain, jewelry findings, a charm and embroidery thread my total came to $7 bucks.  A little bit more expensive than milesapart714, but I now have enough materials to make a few of those bracelets and more if I really wanted to.

Here are some pictures of the making of the bracelet:

All my materials gathered up.  I used a darker silvery chain because it matches more of my stuff.

I taped the ends of the thread so it would be easier to thread through the chain

Here it is, finished!

Some close ups:

All in all, I wish I got a bigger chain but I do like how mine turned out.

I had some of the embroidery thread left over that was already bunched up and ready for more braiding, but not enough for another bracelet, so I tried my hand at doing something small… a ring! Here’s a picture of it:

I hadn’t sealed the knots yet with glue or clear nail polish because the bracelet didn’t seem like it needed any, but the ring is already starting to unravel so I decided to be safe and seal them.

Big props to milesapart714 and her awesome tutorial!  Check it out here: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=356098.0 and while you’re at it, swing by their blog: http://www.studs-and-pearls.com/

In order to get myself back in the crafting groove I’ve been doing some quick and easy things like making simple jewelry and little amigurumi.  When I finish my crochet project I’ll post it here, but for now I have an awesome bracelet to talk about.  Almost a month ago Etsy ran a “How-Tuesday” where Simone Tan (a.k.a Groundsel) explained how to make a sailor’s knot bracelet.  I actually saw this post a few days ago and as soon as I finished reading it I grabbed the first skein of yarn closest to me and started to knot.  Here is the finished bracelet:

It’s kind of small and skinny because I just used normal yarn.  I wanted to make something chunkier so I headed to my local craft store and bought some thicker silver rope stuff and some even thicker cording.  Here it is with the silver rope:

This one is my absolute favorite and I’ve been wearing it every day since I’ve made it.  The silver rope makes it look more “fancy” so I can wear it when I’m being more dressy as well as just wearing it casually.

Here they are next to each other on me.  I think this style of bracelet looks better larger.  This brings us to the cording.

This stuff is really thick, and unfortunately I didn’t get enough of it to make a bracelet so that’s going to have to come later whenever I find the time to go buy more of this stuff.  Luckily it’s only like .29 cents a yard!  I think I’ll probably make a fabric bowl with this cording I have now.  I’ve been itching to make one for a while.

Sailor’s knot bracelet tutorial: Here!

Fabric bowl tutorial:  Here!

I have been a photography nut for a long time, and I knew it was just a matter of time before my crafty side collided with my photographer side.  Well this just so happened to take place just a few days ago when I found a website with instructions on how to make your own pinhole cameras.  I was so excited that I ended up making three of their pinhole camera designs; two for me and one for my little sister.  Unfortunately the first roll of film from their “Photos of Your Mother” camera was kind of a bust because I punched the shutter hole way too big.  They say to use a needle to poke a small hole, but I shoved the needle through, causing the hole to be gigantic… for a pinhole camera.  If the hole is too big the pictures will turn out blurry.  You really want to just barely poke through with the tip of the needle.  For shits and giggles, here are some of the photographs that came from that camera:

As you can see, the images are quite blurry and the spacing is way off, but with some tweaking I started getting those problems hammered out.  The next camera I tackled was the “World Pinhole Camera Day Camera.” Lucky for you, I documented myself making this one!

I just wanted a camera with solid colors only, so I just printed the instructions on the fast draft setting and used a light coating of spray adhesive to attach the pattern to some poster board.

Here's everything all cut out. I used bright green poster board and some black poster board for accents.

Here's all the pieces after I've peeled off the spray adhesive. It was pretty easy because I only very lightly sprayed them.

Here's the shutter mechanism almost done, just needs the film.

I used my awesome bottle opener to pop the top off an old film canister.

As the instructions say, I pulled out the center of the film canister and attached a piece of tape(make sure it's long enough!) to be able to grab the film.

I'm reassembling the film canister here.

This is why you need that tape, to grab the film from the other canister. Make sure to line up the film just right so your film won't get wound up crooked.

Installing the film.

Almost done! Notice how I shoved the tabs from the shutterbox INSIDE the film canisters. I didn't notice that you were supposed to do this (aka, I didn't read the instructions very carefully) and I had a tough time trying to fit all of this inside of the camera body.

All taped up and ready to go. Really if you wanted to, you could go around with this and take pictures, the body is really just for decoration.

I kind of had a tiny bit of trouble getting the shutter mechanism inside of the body, but I think that's because the poster board I used for the inside is thicker than the body poster board so it ended up being just a tiny bit too big to fit inside. I got it to work eventually though.

And the finished result! I use a paper clip to help me wind the film.

And thats it!  I actually haven’t finished the roll of film in this camera, but I did whip out a little matchbox pinhole camera and blew through that film really fast!  I actually like the design of that camera more because the guy adds a little “clicker” that helps out with the spacing of the pictures.  I don’t have pictures of that camera, but I do have the pictures from it:

In these ones, the quality is better, but the vignette is pretty extreme because matchbox pinhole cameras have a pretty shallow body.

If you want to make your own pinhole cameras then you can visit Corbis Readymech Cameras for the quirky cameras or matchboxpinhole.com for a more simplistic camera.  So far the matchbox camera was my favorite, probably because it was smaller and easier to just throw in my purse and because of the clicker mechanism that helps with the spacing of the photographs.

I just made this shirt yesterday and I couldn’t help but post it up here right away!

My older sister is always getting me in to comics and graphic novels, and most recently she got me on Scott Pilgrim.  If you haven’t noticed, they’ve made a movie based on this series – Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.  Because of my excitement for this movie, I decided to make a shirt from Vol. 6, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour.  I had been wanting to make it after I finished reading that volume, but the other day I saw some footage of Comic Con where they were screen printing a whole slew of shirts, the one I had been thinking of making being one of them.  So obviously that made me get off my butt and make one for myself!

Ta da!

I’m in the process of making one for my younger sister.  I also want to make a Sex Bob-omb shirt as well.

Check out my other tutorial on how to make stencils for your own shirts!

Okay, well this little guy is actually a dimetrodon which makes him a pelycosaur rather than a dinosaur, but we can just pretend.  I’ve seen this idea before, stringing up little trinkets and toys to create new jewelry, and for some reason I decided I needed a dinosaur necklace.  I was quite surprised at how hard it was to find small dino toys, but eventually I found a big pack of them for 3 bucks so I snatched it up.  Most of the dinos in the package are too large for what I wanted to do, so I need to figure out what to do with them.  There were, however, about 4 or 5 guys in the package that would work just fine.

Here’s the little guy I picked.

I used Krylon Fusion spray paint because it’s supposed to bond to plastic and I wanted the best possible chance of the paint staying on and not flaking off on me as I wore it.  I suppose I could have just used some cheaper stuff but I didn’t want to risk it.

Here he is, lookin’ all shiny and new.

I have a tiny drill that I used to drill into the plastic to make way for the jewelry findings.  I actually messed up because the plastic is very thin on this guys fin so I ended up drilling right through.  That was fixed by a very generous glob of glue.

And finally strung up as a necklace.

This guy is pretty cute and I can’t wait to wear it out!  Now I just have to figure out what to do with the remaining dinosaurs…

I’m finally going to catch up with the times and get myself on Twitter.  Unfortunately I couldn’t have my good old name “Chezlin” because I was too slow to jump on the bandwagon.  Boo, oh well.  So if you people want to, you can now follow me @ChezlinTM.

Keep a lookout for a new post coming up on Friday!

I’m Filipino-American so I know a few silly Tagalog words here and there that my mom says now and then.  My little sister and I like to combine some of these words to make completely nonsensical phrases.  One of these gems is “Ay sus ginoo, sapatos puwet kugmo!”  Any Tagalog speaker now should see that this doesn’t really make any sense, but that’s the point!  “Ay sus ginoo” is an expression.. kind of like saying “oh my god.”  I’m often greeted with that expression from my mom when I’m just goofing around the house.  The rest of it is literally, sapatos= shoes, puwet= butt and kugmo= booger.  So yeah, as you can see, it makes no sense.  Spanish speakers may notice the influence their language has had on Tagalog.

Anyway, the point of this post is that my sister and I wanted to make shirts with this phrase on them.  We would always talk about it, but never really do anything, so randomly I decided I was going to make mine at least… I didn’t know what shirt she wanted to use, and I didn’t know if she approved on the final layout of the letters.

Here’s the printout.

Here it is after I got to exacto-knifing.

I spray-adhesived that sucker down.

Then I sprayed black spray paint everywhere.  Notice that I had to do some more masking off with tape to avoid overspray.

The finished product.  There’s a little overspray on the neck, but I can live with it.  I loved how it turned out anyway.

So that concludes my experiment with stencils and spray adhesive.  I’ve done stencils before, but I’d always just kind of hoped they’d stay in place… I finally got my hands on some spray adhesive and used it!  Since making the shirt, I’ve kind of abused it.  I just threw it into the wash and dryer without setting the ink or anything, and it bled and smudged a little, but whatever, I’ll still wear it.