Of Hats and Hair…

I made myself a lovely hat, which quickly became a popular item, which I actually sold to a few friends for the holidays.  This is one order:

It doesn’t look like much on the table, but when you put it on….

Glitter Glue Princess calls it a “squishy mad hatter’s hat”!  She’s right – all I need to do is extend the body some for a cute halloween hat.

Moving past the subject of hats and on to hair.

Glitter Glue Princess decided that it was time for a change.  She took a picture of Selena Gomez into the hairdresser, after much consideration for bobs, angled cuts, and lots of pictures of hair that wouldn’t have looked good on her.  Keep in mind these pics were taken without the lovely hair straightening tools that hairdressers love to use, and that the kiddo now pines for.  There’s always xmas, right?

Here is the before:

And now the after:

Her bangs weren’t quite long enough, but they will definitely grow into this style.

Sigh….  She looks so much older now.  I definitely have a problem on my hands.

Surprise! tutorial – how to make a surprise ball

We’ve been making these for the last few years for Glitter Glue Princess’s pals.  This year, 2 young ladies were chosen.  What follows are photos of one of the balls being made.

The photo below shows everything we put into the surprise ball.

 

This year it was really all about a charm bracelet, and three charms that the kiddo selected for each girl.  She also thought they could use lanyards for their school id’s that matched.  We bought a big book of xmas stickers and cut them up to share between the girls, added a target gift coin, and a few more trinkets, and there you have it!  One roll of streamers makes two to three balls, depending on the number of layers and amount of trinkets contained.

I do mine differently than a few of the instructions out there, as I use one continuous piece of crepe paper to do the wrapping.  Initially, that was problematic, as the crepe paper roll would twist while you were winding.  But…  I found a solution!  A pencil and an extra set of hands, or something to set the pencil upon, makes quick work of the roll of crepe paper, and speeds you up immensely.

First, you pick the bulkiest thing you have – in this case, it is this:

 

To make him more compact, he was rolled and taped to make the center of the ball.

Then, you just start wrapping,

and wrapping,

and wrapping.  The goal here is to wrap with your items to come out with a round shaped ball at the end.  So, if you start with something flat and tubular as I did, you need to build up the sides to get to a ball shape.

This is what you end up with after you have wound all your trinkets up into the ball:

 

Next, you just tie on a ribbon and a gift tag!

They work great for birthdays, christmas, and even valentines day, if you are so inclined.

Now if you excuse me, I have to deliver some gifts…..

A new coat.

Sorry I’ve been lax in my blog updates – too much to do this holiday season, and not enough time to do it.

I finished a nice coat for myself over Thanksgiving that I want to share a picture of:

I had to go to Minnesota for work, and was unsure if my corduroy coat I had been wearing in our balmy weather would be enough.  I didn’t think it was time to pull out the down coat, so a girl has to do what a girl has to do – make a coat for in between!

I used Christine Jonson’s Easy Coat Pattern, in the short length.  The local fabric store had some nice Polartec Wind Bloc, which was nicely reversible.  This fabric is EXTREMELY toasty, so much so that I really didn’t button the coat very much.  I ended up with a very lightweight comfy coat, that could work for business.

Oh….  And look at my facing!

Lolcats – now with more vampire.

http://www.popsuede.com/

This is the best twilight inspired thing I’ve seen yet… Now I don’t have to go see the movie – bwahahaha.