DIY Patches

A while back I bought this shirt from Goodwill that didn’t fit, but I couldn’t pass it up because it was $1.50 and some of my favorite characters were prancing across the front of it. A couple nights ago I finally got around to doing something with it and decided to make patches out of the design. This project is really similar to the iron-on rib cages I did last Halloween. I chose to do a more tedious version of this but it can definitely be simplified. For example, I cut around the edges of the characters but could have made a big rectangular patch which would require a lot less time cutting and sewing.

What you will need:

• shirt or fabric with graphic
• Pellon 805 Wonder-Under Transfer Web
• scissors
• iron
• needle
• thread

Step 1:

Cut out the design. Make sure you cut bigger than the final patch size. Cut out a piece of transfer paper that is slightly smaller than the piece of fabric. If the transfer paper is bigger than the fabric it will melt onto the surface you’re working on when you iron it.

Step 2:

Place the rough (kind of shiny) side of the transfer paper onto the back side of the fabric and iron it for about 10 seconds. Make sure you thoroughly ironed the whole piece.

Step 3:

Cut out the design. If you’re going to do a rectangle then you want to trim it so that the transfer paper covers the entire back.

Step 4:

Peel the transfer paper off the back of the design. Place the design on desired piece of clothing and iron for 30 seconds. The directions on the Transfer Paper say to put a damp cloth in between your fabric and iron but I never do that step… I’m lazy.

Step 5:

Once the patches are ironed on I like to stitch around the edges of them to make sure they’re secure. The edges will start to peel up if you skip this step. This is another reason to take into consideration how close to the edges you cut the design, the more intricate the design the longer it will take to stitch. I know you can skip the iron on steps and just directly sew a patch onto a piece of clothing but I really prefer when it doesn’t get all weird and bunched up and whatnot.  I’m still new to typing up these DIYs so sorry if it’s kind of hard to follow.

Alaska is always sneaking into my photos.

 

DIY Flower Headband

I was in Hobby Lobby to get some chalk but after walking through multiple aisles of artificial flowers I couldn’t resist buying the supplies to make a flower headband.

What you will need:

• sewing measuring tape (optional)
• scissors
• 3/8″ black elastic (I used Sew-ology and it comes with 2 yards)
• hot glue gun
• needle
• thread
• flowers

These rose bundles are $6.99 at Hobby Lobby and come with an average of 30 roses each. It takes about 19 roses per headband so you can only get one headband from one bundle but three headbands from two bundles. I had most of the materials on hand so the only thing else I purchased was the elastic which was $1.29. I spent a total of $13.28 (Hobby Lobby is almost always running a 40% off one item coupon) and there’s enough material to make three headbands which breaks down to $4.42 a piece.

Step 1:

Using the measuring tape measure around your head. Cut elastic to same size, make sure it’s not stretched out. Now that I’m writing this I realize that you don’t even need the measuring tape haha you can just wrap the elastic around your head.

Step 2:

Overlap the elastic 1 inch, put a pin in it to hold it in place. Without stabbing yourself place it around your head and make sure it’s comfortable. Adjust as needed and sew together.

Step 3:

Pluck the roses you want to use from the bundle.

Step 4:

Make sure the hot glue gun is ready before this step. Pinch the rose closed and trim the plastic end off, also removing the star looking stem piece. Don’t let go or the petals will fall off. Apply a dab of hot glue and press the rose to the headband. Apply the pressure with the rose still pinched. If you let the flower open and apply pressure from the middle of the flower it will mush it and make it look bad. You’re going to want to leave 1/2″ to an 1″ between flowers. You want the roses to touch but not be squished together.

There are a whole bunch of variations you could make. Different flower colors, thicker elastic with two rows of flowers, bigger or smaller flowers, etc. Have fun!

Months

I’m going to try and start using this again!

I don’t want to attempt and catch up from where I left off haha. I made most of my Christmas gifts this year and one of them was a calendar for my mom. I hand drew all the month titles and scanned them in. I thought I’d post them so you guys can use them if you’d like. Enjoy!

Click here to download original files.

I disappeared so quickly

I was on a roll for a whole three days. I’ve been spending all my free time painting skulls. I absolutely must finish before I head home. I’ve been wanting to post photos and stories but haven’t wanted to break away. We leave on Wednesday which breaks my heart. How does a month go by so quickly? When I get home I’m going to finish assembling the skulls, pack and ship them. Then I go away for a few days and when I get back I’m going to finish all the Kickstarter rewards and ship those out. I feel guilty about making people wait on their rewards so I’m throwing in a little surprise to hopefully make up for it. There may be some exciting things coming up, I’ll post as soon as I know. Sorry no photos in this post. They’re all on Sam’s external hard drive which is being used. Actually I’ll add one.

How did my hair fade so fast!?
Sam and I are making shortbread cookies and then headed to the beach for yet another campfire. Doesn’t get old.
I’ve been so inspired the last two months I don’t even know how to handle it.

charlavail
 

 

Sailing in Kachemak Bay

Distracted by movies and sugar skulls last night we accidentally stayed up until 4:30 in the morning.

Less than five hours later my alarm was going off and we were dragging ourselves out of bed. I woke up with a sore throat and feared that going out sailing in 55 degree weather was going to guarantee I’d get sick, but I feel fine.  We got bundled up in our jackets and scarves and headed in to town with Chelle and Charlotte. We rode in the back of the VW Bug which followed behind Linda and the family in their truck. They dropped us off at a artsy little coffee shop for an hour and a half while Gabi went to her horseback riding lessons.

Bagels and caffeine didn’t seem to be helping our morning delirium, neither did the plastic pigs and dinosaurs sitting next to the salt and pepper.

To avoid falling asleep in the booth we roamed around the store next door. I was easily amused by the fabric section which had Dr. Seuss prints.

I was tempted to buy this little guy for a certain someone but I already can’t figure out how I’m going to get everything home. While waiting to be picked up outside I had a wonderful phone conversation with my mom. Miss her constantly. Around 1:00 we were down on The Spit, unloading the kids and headed towards the sailboat.

It wasn’t long before I was rolling up my sleeves and submerging my arms in to the freezing water.  At one point I was vertical and not sure what was keeping me from falling in. Sam has a photo but the seam in my tights makes it look like my pants are four inches below where they should be so I’ll save myself the embarrassment.

The starfish wouldn’t let go.

I did have luck prying another one off of his post! I love sea life.

It’s been a couple years since I played with starfish. I was stupid excited. Little kid status. Sam and I ran down the dock to catch up with everyone since we were so mesmerized by the critters. We sailed for a few hours and it was beautiful and peaceful. Fog was lingering and the mountains were out of view but it was still wonderful. I felt so bad for Sam, she was scared at first and then sea sick. I climbed out on the bow and hung my feet over the edge. Multiple times we could see sea otters playing in the distance.

All the above photos are Sam’s or from her camera. Here are some of mine.

After sailing we went to a pizza shop on The Spit. The fog looked absolutely insane. A perfect line on the horizon.

Sam and I passed out when we got back. We woke up around 9:30 pm and sat down at our computers. We haven’t been up since and it’s 3:57 am. During that time we edited photos, watched Into The Wild, worked on sugar skulls and now we’re watching I Love You, Man. I cried my eyes out during Into The Wild. It makes me want to get all sappy and write an entry about life but I’ll save that for another day since I just realized how tired I am. We don’t have plans for tomorrow so maybe I’ll use the free time to post all those photos I mentioned and write about my thoughts on the movie. I’ll end with a stop motion I made from today. The song is Mr. Moon by Eisley. I’ve recently started listening to them and I like what I hear.

Goodnight.

Can’t believe I spent the longest day of the year in Alaska. What is my life.

Positive vibes.

Charlavail

Moose wake up call

Our attempt to go to sleep early last night failed miserably. We fell victim to youtube videos about Christopher McCandless and Aron Ralston. Needless to say we downloaded both Into The Wild and 127 Hours by the end of the night. It would have been neat to have had  the time to walk to Christopher’s bus in Denali. I think sleep came to us around 5:00 am, I’m not really sure but I know the birds were chirping and the sun was coming up. A few crazy dreams later I was waking up to Linda alerting us of moose in the yard. We came downstairs to find this out the window:

 After awing at the babies we decided to get dressed and head in to town. We chose to eat at Don Jose’s again because it was delicious when we went last week. Bad decision. It was good but not nearly as good and it came out to like $20.00 a person which bummed us out. We went across the street to the Salvation Army to pick up supplies for a new project. While there I stumbled across these goodies.

An old Curves shirt turned dress. Thank you to whoever made this, I’m in love with it.

And Mickey Moose. I could not pass this up.

But as I said, our main mission was to collect these:

The beginning of our soon to be Octopus Garden. I’ll post details as the project progresses. After thrifting we swung by Safeway to get our daily dose of chai. Sam asked the guy at Starbucks for a “chai latte, no water” except coming from Sam it sounds like “wooder”. The guy looked so confused and she said it a few more times until she realized that he wasn’t understanding the water part. My cheeks and throat hurt from laughing all day every day. We came back to the house and dinner was almost ready. Linda was starting dessert and it smelled and looked amazing.

Kabob dinner was delicious and even though I was full full I didn’t say no to dessert. Homestead pie before being consumed:

 

Obviously tasty… 

After dinner Mark asked us if we would run and pick up some heavy cream. Out here that means go to Safeway which is a 45 minute drive. It is also one of the prettiest drives I’ve ever done so I don’t mind doing it multiple times a week. Mountain views the whole way and I think we’ve seen a moose almost every time. After asking several dumbfounded employees we felt quite certain they were honestly out of heavy cream. So we headed back feeling terrible about not being able to fill the simple ingredient request. On the drive  two bunnies and a bird all tried to get smushed within a matter of seconds. Now we’re back and about to put on 127 Hours and start sugar skull production. I have a ton of photos to go through and edit. I’ll get to it, I promise! I’m making that promise to myself.

charlavail

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot too late

It is beyond me as to why I didn’t start a real blog earlier. My fear of using bad grammar and not being able to captivate my experiences has held me back. I already regret not documenting previous adventures and I don’t want that to continue. I will try and make this an all inclusive blog: travels, artwork, bakery, friends, family, etc. I think I’ve also dreaded the back story and catching readers up to the who, what, when, where and why. So I’m going to skip that step though I’m sure little details will be filled in as time passes. I’m currently sitting in Linda’s kitchen, next to Sam and two freshly emptied bowls of rainbow sherbet, which were devoured on the back porch while looking out at the mountains and swinging in hammocks.

We’re sifting through Alaska photos and working on stop motions. Say Anything and Manchester Orchestra are on repeat.

We spent the last week further north in Anchorage and Denali. The late nights and sleeping in a moving RV lead to 12 hours of sleep last night. We woke up at 4:30 in the afternoon today and even though we’ve only been up for about 8 hours I think we’re going to head to bed. Our sugar intake is just going to lead to us giggling for an hour, unable to fall asleep. I’m tempted to stay awake and share photos from the last two weeks of Alaska exploring but I think we’re hiking tomorrow and I don’t want to be a zombie.  Hopefully my first entry is my shortest entry.

charlavail