Hooded Cowl

Now entirely sure I'd ever wear this except for a costume, but I made this thinking it'd turn out more.. normal-ish... than it did. In any case,  here goes.

 Here is my rather awful attempt at a self-portrait via my phone. Apparently, the front-facing camera isn't nearly as good as the rear-facing one, but it shows essentially what it looks like.

This scarf wraps around my neck twice, with the hood centered at the back.

 I started out with some of this cloth, which you probably have already recognized from my scrap pile I used to make this scarf a while ago.

 To measure, I cut out a piece about long enough to fit around my face once.

It settled to about this length.

 I then doubled that length. Running out of green cloth, and my red not being quite long enough, I improvised. Don't worry about that extra seam.

 Wrapped around, this is what it looks like. Not bad, as cowls go, though I'd probably make it more tubular if I were doing this as more than a mock-up of the final.

 To make a hood, I folded a rectangle in half into a square (sort of), then sewed one side.

Flipping it right-side-out and putting it on (with the sewed edge at back), this is what the hood looks like. Next time to make it slightly deeper.

I sewed this onto the middle of the red section of my scarf, with the seams all on the same side.

And this is the result!

When I made a better (tubular, hemmed on the hood) one, out of flowy grey cloth, and a deeper hood.. it ended up looking slightly more like a cosplay item than something I'd actually wear in public, but that might just be due to the color/material. Feel free to comment with links to your takes on this.

Tricolor Infinity Scarf

I've been making a few infinity scarves lately, but it only just this morning occurred to me to post about them. So, I actually made a cooler one than normal to show you. It has stripes.

For those of you who don't know, infinity scarves are just circular tube scarves, but they're super comfy, and infinitely easier to work with than normal ones.

Note: it's important that you choose comfy fabrics for this. Remember that anything you make this out of will be right up on you neck, and near you face, so be conscious of that when you go to make a super chunky, heavy scarf in the middle of summer.

 This scarf was actually made from the scraps of the fabric left over from a quilt I made almost a year ago.

 After laying it out, I found that I didn't have enough to make a double-sided scarf like I wanted to at first, but I had three colors, all of which I like, so I improvised.

I had the right length of purple, and half the length of green and patterned, both the right width-

As you can see...

 So I cut them all in half. Now, I had enough fabric to make a scarf length-wise, if I sewed the pieces together long ways, but how to make it work?

 the important thing with scarves (or, at least, this kind of scarf) is that the ends have to be the same width. Otherwise it won't work very well.

 So even them out. Even if it means you have to re-cut the pieces.

 Like I said, I sewed the green and patterned pieces together to make one piece, twice as long.

 I then started attaching the pieces together. Having two strips of purple, but only one of patterned and one of green, I decided to stripe it.

 Make sure you sew the pieces with right sides together, so it ends up looking like this between each strip. For the green piece, it had now 'right' side, but I had given it one when I sewed the pieces together- the seam needs to be on the outside.

 Again, check how it looks between each strip you sew on.

 This is what it looked like when the strips were all sewed together.

 Like I said, infinity scarves are tubular. So, to make a tube of the fabric, you sew the two ends together. Again, make sure right sides are together.

 At this point, you should have a tube of inside-out fabric. So, reverse it so that the outside shows.

No pics of that, since I think it's pretty easy to figure out.

 Not comes the trickiest part of the whole project- finishing the tube. This mostly comes down to practice, but essentially, you're sewing the tube closed- inside out.

To do this, you get the two ends of the scarf, put them right sides together, and sew. At first this will be easy, but you will be sewing yourself into a corner, figuratively speaking. Just keep sewing until you can't anymore, then take it out of the machine. The result will be an almost completely sewed tube, with a tiny (hopefully) opening that you then need to stitch closed somehow.

I've heard there are two ways to do this- hand stitch it, so it looks like it was all done from the inside, or just top stitch it. Because my holes are usually only an inch or two across, I always opt for top stitching it with the machine, and just keep that part behind my hair.

 As you can see, it's pretty easy to hide that part. And, honestly, I usually keep the seam behind my hair anyway, because it looks better that way.

 That's what I top stitched. Looks amazing, I know. Good thing no one will ever see it.

And there we go! An awesome, tricolor scarf.

Tic Tac First Aid Kit

At the time I was making this, mini first aid kits seemed to be all the rage on the internet. I never got around to making a post from my project, though, so I appear to have missed my chance to go viral with everyone else. Oh, well.

OK. So this starts with my genius idea: straws with stuff in them.

More specifically, straws with ointments and etc in them, like Hydrocortisone cream and Triamcinolone.

So, following the last two pics, I measured out a section of straw to fit the tic-tac container, then squeezed the end with a pair of pliers, then used a pair of pliers to melt the end, which is what you see here.

As you can see, the straw section fits in there.

In order to fill these things, I had to put a bit in, squish it to the end, and repeat. it took longer than you'd believe, and was kinda messy, too.

Regardless, this is what melting the other end looked like. Not as pretty, due to not being able to grab it as well when it was full.

As you can see, definitely not as pretty. But don't cut off those drips, or your thing will leak.

This is how it fits.

I also made a straw with mini pills in it. Remember to label or color coordinate your kits. I used a skinny Sharpie to label mine.

And there it's sitting, waiting for buddies.

So, I made it a bunch, then rounded out the kit with about 6 band-aids, 4 alcohol swabs and tubes of bacitracin, hydrocortisone and triamcinolone. All the basics.

Good luck!

Apothecary Jar

So, a while back I saw something somewhere that inspired this. Don't remember what or where, but essentially I really liked the idea of apothecary jars, especially with cute candies in them. This is a really simple project, but not one I would have thought of.

 You start with a jar that you like the size and shape of. I particularly like(d) this one because of the tall lid. I don't know why, but I'm partial to jars with those.

 I peeled off the label's outside. This isn't always that easy to do, don't know why, but mine happened to be really easy to peel the plastic-y outside off of.

 The paper pulp and sticky stuff came right off with some warm water and rubbing. For every jar I've been able to get the plastic part off of, this has been really easy. When the plastic doesn't come off, you'll have to soak the jar, scrape at it, and get kerosene or something similar to get off the remaining sticky stuff.

 Reattach the lid, and voila! you now have a beautiful jar ready to be filled. If you don't like the lid color, or have different colors from one jar to the next, spray paint the lids. I'm partial to Rustoleum's Oil Rubbed Bronze color, but whatever color you like will work.

I chose not to paint mine since I liked the color, but spray paint is pretty self explanatory.

Finally, you fill with your candy of choice! Ta-daa, you have a cute jar full of candy ready to be displayed on your desk, in your office, or anywhere else!

As a side note, if you want knob on the tops of your jars, you can glue drawer knobs to the tops and paint them. I chose not to, since I only have the one, but I might do that once/if I get a lot of jars (more than 2). 

Also, salsa jars aren't the only type you can use. Any glass jar with a screw-on lid will work. This could mean salsa, spaghetti sauce, or anything else.

Enjoy!

Leather Bracelet

 I have had a bunch of camps going on the last few weeks, and as a result I haven't been updating (I'm sure you couldn't tell..) In any case, here I am updating again. For one of my camps, I was a counselor, and I had to make something for about 13 of the girls going to it. I chose to make leather bracelets. This is what they turned out looking like!

So, not the best picture I've ever taken, but it illustrates pretty well what they looked like. Basically, a strip of leather tied with leather cord to fit around the wrist.

 These are harder than you would think initially, or at least they were for me. First problem: procuring leather. I managed to hit upon a jackpot: Michael's apparently sells leather scraps for about $7-8 for a pound of it. This is considerably cheaper than any other way you can buy it, and the leather I got was also higher quality than any of the other stuff they were selling.

The only problem? Higher quality means thicker. Which, in turn, means harder to work with sewing-wise. Didn't faze me, though, since I wasn't sewing.

 Along with the leather I got a few leather working tools. in hindsight, I may not have needed them all. I'll explain. This tool was imperative. You NEED a set of punches to make bracelets like mine. These come at about $6 at Micheal's.

 This tool, on the other hand, is for engraving. Probably I'm just not super experienced with it, but I feel like I could have gotten the same kinds of results with a pencil and some other stuff I have at home. Not super easily nor as comfortably, but if you don't have $12 to spend on this, you could probably make do.

 Another thing you absolutely DO need is a good work area. You'll be cutting a lot, so you want something you don't mind slicing up, such as this piece of scrap wood. The ruler is 1.5" wide, which is how wide I wanted my bracelets. Trust me, you'll want something more than just a traced line on your leather to cut against.

 First rule to working with leather: Keep it wet. Not sopping, but keep a damp rag around, and make sure it stays the darker shade of wet leather.

 Place your straight-edge down...

 Get a razor blade/exact-o knife to cut with...

And cut that stuff. Don't expect the leather to cut through completely the first time- that's why you have a straight-edge, to make sure your overlapping cuts don't cut into the actual bracelet part. You're going to want to just make a ton of long, shallow cuts until the leather is cut through.

 It should pull away something like this when you pull at it, and shouldn't resist. If it does, keep cutting. Don't rip it.

 Here's my piece cut as far down as I needed for one bracelet. As you can see, I started letting it dry out. Bad idea. Keep it damp.

  I kept cutting the leather until I had a big long piece.

I re-dampened it, then measured 6" (the length of each of my bracelets). This isn't usually longer to go around the whole wrist, but it's enough to go about 2/3 around, then leave room for a square knot.

 I marked this on both sides

I then re-dampened the leather between those two marks

 Put the straight edge between them, and again cut.

 And here is a fully cut piece of 6x1.5" leather.

 At this point, I chose which punch I wanted to use. Because I got the cord from the same scrap bag, the cord was rather thicker than most, so I used the second to biggest punch.

 It attaches to look like this.

 You position it, then pound.

This process is not fast. It also takes a lot of effort. It's easier if the leather is wet (again, I did this 26 times, twice for each of 13 bracelets. The first one I made harder for myself than necessary). If I had thought of it, I would have shown you the hole made in the board. The punch will go through that stuff into your board, which will leave a nice little circle cut into your work surface. Even if it doesn't, it always indents it. Like I said before, you want to use scrap wood to protect whatever it is you're working on.

 This is what it looks like with both holes. You can kind of see the one divot I made in my board with those two holes.

 At this point, I re-dampened it, traced one of the girl's names into the leather with the small end of the tool (could have use a pencil), then pushed harder with the spoon end to make the wider end (could use a narrow piece/end of silverware) to make the deeper imprints that are more obvious.

 As you can see, the deeper ones are more obvious, though all of it can be seen while it's damp.

 As you can see from the color of the edges which are drying, though, these imprints aren't super visible, nor are they going to be.

 So, I deepened them. I repeated the pointy end/spoon end over and over, getting deeper each time.

 This is what it ended up looking like, once it dried. It looked fine, but I wanted the name to pop a bit more than it was doing, so I decided to burn it.

 After I burned it, you can see the name popped out quite a bit better. I now considered this one done.

In order to burn the leather, I made sure it was pretty dry, then used a soldering iron. This wasn't super precise, and was hard to use due to the long heating part. However, it was cheaper for me than going out and getting a 'wood burner,' which is what people recommend using, because I already had a soldering iron.

The important thing to remember is not to try to rush this. Take your time. Wait for the iron to heat up, wait for the leather to burn. Practice a bit before launching into your actual bracelet.

 It won't look super great initially, if you're like me. Remember what I said about practice on a scrap piece? Well, I didn't do that.

 It didn't look terrible, it just didn't look great.

 This is the miracle sure-all, though, if you have untreated leather. It's called Mink Oil, and you should really have a tub of it for any leather product you have, whether it be gloves, shoes or jewelry.

This stuff (by it's own ad) 'waterproofs, softens and conditions all smooth leathers and vinyl'. What it really does is softens it, makes it water resistant, not water proof, and makes it last longer.

Oh, and it makes it darker.

 Essentially, it turns it just barely lighter than the color it was when it was wet.

 With my leather, which wasn't conditioned at all, I made sure to get all 6 sides of the leather. With shoes and such you really only care about the outside/smooth side, but since these girls were going to be wearing these on their wrists (which includes washing hands with them on), I figured more couldn't hurt.

 This is what it looked like right after I finished mink oiling it. Note: this is before the leather has had time to cure, and before the oil has had time to soak in. The tub said to wipe off the excess after 5 minutes, but I just added more after 5 minutes, since it was the first time they were being treated.

 Again with a 'right after' pic.

 Here is the pile of them right after. Some of them have been done for a while, but some of them were just done.

And this is what they looked like the next morning. As you can see, after that initial color change, they pretty much stay the same color. I would suggest shaping them as they dry, since mine seemed to want to curl the other direction, but to each his or her own.

Voila! Your very own, super customizable, leather bracelets.

(PS: do you see those holes in the board? yeah, those are from punching holes. Be careful)