March Crafts

I haven't made too many crafts lately, but I have made a couple things that I like a lot that I thought I'd share today. I'll post links to the tutorials/inspiration for these projects along the way.

I am not a seamstress. My sister got the sewing gene. She's made a lot of t-shirt quilts, and when I found a shirt that I got in New Orleans 4 or 5 years ago that doesn't fit anymore, I asked her if she would make a pillow out of it. She's pretty busy with dance and school, so I just put it in her sewing room for her to get to whenever she felt like it. A couple weeks later I happened upon this "10-Minute No-Sew T-Shirt Tote Bag" tutorial on Pinterest. I immediately thought of my New Orleans shirt and went to get it from the sewing room. Usually when I'm on Pinterest I'll pin something that I want to do and say "Maybe I'll do that some day" or just keep the idea in the back of my mind. This time, however, I did it right after I read the tutorial! I was so excited! The tutorial is really clear and the bags are really cute. They're great beach bags or craft bags. I currently have my crochet project stored in one of them. It's the perfect size for my skeins of yarn.

 

I actually messed up on this one. If you read the tutorial, you'll see the part that says to draw a line to cut your fringe (which you use to tie the bottom of the bag together) up to. I ended up CUTTING ACROSS THE LINE and being forced to make my fringe shorter and the "New Orleans" part of the shirt pretty much unreadable. But I don't care all that much because at least I still have the shirt and it's great for holding all the other T-shirts that I plan on turning into bags! 

The "Duck! Cover! and Remain Calm" shirt is from the first competition play that I was a part of. It's always been a little bit too small because it was long-sleeved and I should have ordered a large instead of a medium just so the sleeves would be long enough (tall people problems). I hadn't worn it for a really long time and I was extremely hesitant to cut it up because I love my show shirts a lot, but it's now my favorite of all 4 of my T-shirt bags because it's made of the strongest material and has the most sentimental value. This is the one I have my crochet project in.
"I'm a ninja... You can't see me" wasn't too small, but I hadn't worn it in a long time. The last time I wore it was some time in my senior year of high school and I was self-conscious all day because I felt like I was dressed like a middle schooler. I think it's much cuter as a bag.
Both of these bags have bows tied to the handles. I don't think she does that in the tutorial, but I thought it was a cute touch. The pieces I used for the bows were cut out of the collars of the shirts.

My last T-shirt bag was a little more of an art project. My mom gave me a white T-shirt that Tessa was getting rid of and I ended up making it look super fancy.

The first picture is the design for the bag drawn on a canvas. I put the canvas under the shirt and traced what I could see clearly (I had to improvise a couple times) with a fabric marker. Then I colored it all in over the course of a few days (because it was kind of tedious). After it was all colored in, I cut the fringe and tied the bottom of the bag together. I might try to find some black ribbon to tie onto the handles. 

So that's a fun thing to try if you have some T-shirts sitting around that you don't want to give away. I wouldn't put any heavy books or electronics in them unless the material is really thick and sturdy, but, like I said, they're great for yarn projects or for carrying a change of clothes or other light things. 

This next project was just something I picked up at Walmart for $4. I got one of those wooden plaques and a wooden "L" to paint for my bedroom door. If you already have some acrylic paint and mod podge/ hot glue at home, it won't cost much to make. I hand-painted mine, but for those that don't have a steady hand or don't like painting, this tutorial might inspire you to try it out with some scrapbook paper. I was going to make mine that way, but I enjoy painting and wanted to attempt the whole "using cardboard triangles to paint a chevron pattern" thing. That tutorial did help me decide on my colors though. I loved the black and white background with the black on the edges, so I ended up doing this: 

I should have done more planning to avoid wasting all of the paint that I did, but it turned out nicely! I did not screw my letter onto the plaque like she does in the tutorial. I thought "Hey, I have all this mod podge, maybe that'll work," and it did! The ribbon is stuck on with a few staples and duct tape. The flower was a last-minute addition because my bedspread is blue and green (which is why I painted the letter blue) and I just happened to find it in a basket of hair accessories that I was giving to my sister. I ripped it off of the hair clip and just duct taped it onto the plaque because I didn't want to wait for any more glue to dry. I used this tutorial mostly as inspiration for the bow on the top. I just wanted something to cover the nail.

Close-up and far-away views of the plaque

I think that's all I've been up to lately in the world of crafting. Maybe I'll get some more projects finished or started in April (my birthday month yaaayyy!). I hope this post has inspired some of you to start a couple projects of your own!

Spring Break 2015 Adventures

It's been way too long since I've made a blog post. Over a month. Goodness Lydia, get it together! Let's get right to the point of this post so I don't dwell on what a horrible blogger I am.
SPRING BREAK! Today is my last day of Spring Break, sadly, but I had a really great week! It started on Friday with seeing two plays at Bob Jones which were, of course, fantastic. To those who didn't hear me say it already, Advanced Drama put on the BEST performance of "Lies About High School 2" that I've ever seen. I guess 3rd time's the charm! While I was seeing the plays, my aunt and her dog Cassie arrived at our house.
On Monday, we went to Chuck-E-Cheese for a little while. I literally played 30-40 games of skee ball. I used all of my tokens on skee ball. There were no other games I wanted to play. Once I ran out of tokens, I cashed in all of my tickets at the little ticket cruncher thing. I ended up with about 160 tickets. When I went up to the prize counter I realized that I was completely uninterested in any of the prizes so I gave Tessa my ticket receipt to add to her tickets. I thought "I guess I'm officially too old for this stuff."
When we got home Tessa and I changed into more summery clothes because it was really nice and warm outside. Tessa just learned how to ride a bike the other day, so I walked around the neighborhood with her while she rode her new bike. Then James came over and we hung out at the park and then watched a few episodes of Parks and Recreation. Irony.
Tuesday was probably my favorite day of the whole week. That was the day we went on our big adventure to Nashville and the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, Opry Mills Mall, and the Grand Ole Opry House!

First we had lunch at the Aquarium restaurant in the mall! I was so excited to go there because I have a strange love for fish and aquariums and sting rays and the ocean. It makes me really excited. So of course I have plenty of pictures and videos.

I literally took all the pictures that day in Snapchat so that's why there's a text bar in some of them. Tessa has never been a fan of aquariums and she especially hates sting rays, so she wasn't very happy when she'd look towards the tank and see a sting ray face against the glass.

The restaurant looked really cool and had a great atmosphere. As for the food, I wasn't very impressed with how they cooked their shrimp. If you know me, you know that I usually LOVE shrimp. Whenever I go to a new restaurant and don't know what to order, my go-to is shrimp. So, of course, being at this new restaurant, I ordered shrimp. But it was weird. I wasn't crazy about it. But I was still very happy to be there because of the sting rays and the other cool fish and the eel and the weird-looking Shovelnose Guitarfish (they look like a mixture between a sting ray and a shark).

After we ate, we did a little bit of shopping and then went to the Dave and Buster's arcade. I was kind of worried that I wouldn't enjoy it because of how little I enjoyed Chuck-E-Cheese the day before, but it was the coolest arcade ever. My favorite part was the GIANT MARIO KART!!! You literally sit in a chair and put your foot on the pedal and steer the wheel and it feels like you're actually driving a cart! The pedal was kind of strange at first because my driving instincts were telling me not to press it down all the way, but that's how you get your cart to go full-speed. I didn't take many pictures in the arcade because I was just having too much fun, but I got a couple:

I took a ton of 10-second videos that I compiled into a YouTube video if you're interested in seeing the rest of that adventure. Anyway, I ended up just getting a couple of things of candy from the prize room, but I really didn't care because it was more about the games than the prizes. 

After the arcade and some more shopping, we spent a little bit of time around the Grand Ole Opry House.

Tessa was getting some dance energy out of her system. She usually doesn't cooperate for my selfies but the one we took outside of the Grand Ole Opry House is probably one of my favorites. I got a guitar pick and a little harmonica from the gift shop.

Then we moved on to the hotel. I absolutely LOVE the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. So, of course, I took tons of pictures and videos (which are compiled here).

I was really excited that we got to go on the boat ride. It was very relaxing to me and our tour guide was a cute old lady with a calming voice which you'll hear if you watch the video. The selfie with the water fountain was taken on the boat. Again, there are more videos than pictures. Blue hydrangeas are my favorite flowers, so I took pictures of every blue hydrangea plant I found. Those are my two favorites. I'm so in love with these flowers that I literally gasped when I saw them. The goldfish pond was just really cute.

After we spent our time in the hotel, we went back to the mall and got dinner in the food court. Then we did even MORE shopping! We found a Disney Store where I got a beautiful Belle mug (because I'm obsessed with mugs and Beauty and the Beast is my fave). Then we went to the Vera Bradley store where they were having a 50% off sale! I got a wallet and a matching phone case as early birthday presents. 

So that's basically the extent of that adventure! The next day was pretty chill. At some point in the week my aunt took Tessa and I to the mall. We went to Belk and got scarves like we always do when my aunt visits, then we went to Icing where Tessa got some nail polish and such. After we shopped we went to Maggie Moos and had ice cream. 

Yesterday we went to Chili's for dinner. I had never been there and I felt kind of lost when I saw that they didn't have shrimp. I ended up ordering chicken enchilada soup and it was delicious. I love almost anything with cheese and it turned out to be a super cheesy soup. I'm definitely a fan of Chili's now. 

Tessa played a couple games on the little touchscreen thing. Also, that's one of my new scarves. Ignore the old lady in the background. 

There you go! That's basically my spring break in a nutshell. The Nashville adventure was honestly the most important part and it would have been cool if we could have stayed at the hotel for a night or something, but it was an awesome day anyway. I hope you all enjoy the videos. I felt like this post just wouldn't be complete without them. 

My next post will be about my most recent creative endeavors, including T-shirt bags and a painted wooden plaque that I made for my bedroom door.