Wardrobe Wednesday: Polyester + Braided Leather.

I felt like wearing something real bright today, probably because I'm going to see Fun. tomorrow and because today I booked our cabin in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for New Years! I don't even know which I'm more excited about. Fun. didn't come out of my CD player for, like, six months. But I've needed to get away from this town for a while. I try to get away for a weekend as often as I can, but I think the last time I got anywhere far was when Corey and I took our road trip to New York City almost a year ago. So it's about time.

Moving on...

Outfit Details:

Shirt - vintage

Skirt - Target

Belt - Target

Bracelet - don't know, hah.

Shoes - Journey's

Ughhh, so I'm a newb and use Photobucket to edit my dumb camera's poor picture taking skills, but whenever I post them on here, they don't show up as edited! It's like certain times of day that it doesn't work or something. So. Annoying. I don't get it. Wednesday's are definitely very frustrating for me when it comes to editing pictures. Hopefully I'll find a good substitute sometime soon.
   

Music Monday #7: Lust for Life

A friend showed me this video a couple years ago, and I was smitten. I've been listening to Girls ever since. They're weird and sad and poppy and catchy.
It's sorta like the best kind of nostalgia.

Holiday Crafts: Pet Christmas Stocking Tutorial

I'm going to be posting some holiday craft tutorials over the next few weeks that I'm really excited about! Today I'm sharing with you guys some stockings my mom and I made for the pets in my family. We have eight total (four dogs and four cats) so it was quite a lot of work. The supplies are inexpensive and this is a project for any skill level.

You will need:

Freezer paper (or some paper to trace on)

Red material of your choice

White felt

Christmas pattern fabric

Glitter glue

Hot glue gun

Silver stretchy cord

First, you're going to make a 12x6 rectangle on your tracing paper. Draw your stocking shape within the rectangle. I let my foot come out a little further than the 6 inches.

Next, you're going to use your tracing paper to cut out whatever shapes you want to go on your stocking. I chose a bone, mice, and fish.

Now you're going to take the stocking shape you have cut out and pin it to your red fabric. I doubled up the fabric before cutting, since the stocking is obviously going to need two sides, and we had eight to make and didn't feel like pinning the design 16 times.

Take your white felt and cut a rectangle that's 6 inches by about 3 or 4 inches. (Or however big you want the white top of the stocking to be.)

Now take your shapes you previously made and pin them to your patterned fabric to cut out.

Yay! We're, like, halfway there now. Take two pieces of your stocking fabric and put the white strip at the top, in between. Then sew around the edges, leaving the top of the stocking open and unsewn.

Now turn your stocking inside out. You'll be left with the white strip looking like this:

Hopefully your hot glue is heated up, because you'll need to glue that thing down. Try to only glue around the edges so you can't see it through the top of the fabric. 

Now you'll place your little shapes where ever you feel like and glue those down, too. I kinda failed at taking pictures until the end, but it's pretty self-explanatory so I think you get the idea.

Once gluing everything down, take some stretchy cord, or ribbon or whatev, and glue it around the border. Cut another separate piece to make a loop for the inside.

Now use your glitter glue to glue around the edges of your shapes. I think it makes it stand out more and also prevents fraying around the edges. Then write in your beloved pet's name.

Be sure to let your stockings dry overnight, or longer, before poking around at the glitter glue. That stuff really doesn't dry quickly enough. Now you can show your pets how crafty you are, and they will love and appreciate your efforts even more!

If you decide to make these stockings, I'd love to see how they turn out!

Music Monday #6: I am still filled with feeling.

I first saw this video years ago in a skateboarding video. Immediately I was Google-ing the lyrics to find out more about this band. I never found much, and still to this day I've only heard about 5 songs. The main dude is Brendan Fowler, an LA based musician and visual artist. Here's his WEBSITE that links to some of his work. I'm not really a fan. Anyway, this song rules. Hope you enjoy!

Wardrobe Wednesday: Clothing origin.

I know, not really a happy topic... but I wanted to talk about something important. Child labor is a serious problem, and not only child labor but poor working conditions and treatment of employees. I watch a lot of documentaries, and most recently I've not been able to stop thinking about The Corporation. Working in embroidery, we work with a lot of different name brand clothing such as Under Armour, Champion, Real Tree, Nike, and so on. Champion clothing was the last produced in the USA until 2002, but has since moved factories down to Mexico.

DO YOU KNOW WHERE

YOUR CLOTHES COME FROM?

I don't really want to throw around the term "sweatshop" so I will make it my point that IT MATTERS where your clothes come from. As little as 2% of clothing sold in America is made in America. There are very few companies that fully manufacture all of their garments. I'm not saying to quit buying anything you haven't done your research on, I'm just asking you to educate yourselves. To know where it's all coming from. As a consumer, all we can do is spread the knowledge and make the choice of buying handmade, fair trade, and eco-friendly products. Or you can take the easy way, and buy vintage clothing!

Outfit Details:

Ring - Flower ring by Mata Traders

Brooch - Fleet Fox by Dear Winsome on Etsy

Scarf - Tye-dyed scarf by Mata Traders

Top - Ripple Tide Top by ModCloth

Jeans - Spring in Every Season by ModCloth

Leather Boots - GINA by Johansen

Sadly, this outfit took me FOREVER to combine considering everything came from a reputable source. We can make a difference by making simple or dramatic changes by what you purchase. I hope you all take something from this and feel free to comment or ask me any questions you might have!

Music Monday #5: I've been down, I've been out.

I mentioned before that my hours at work got cut, and now I'm officially off on Mondays. This is pretty cool because now I have one full day a week to focus on everything. I just now signed up on StoreEnvy and I've got a lot of work to get done in the next two weeks!

My music tastes ranges from one end to the other, but I really do love me some alt-country. I've been listen to a lot of Chuck Ragan and Joe Pug lately. It seems like a lot of the singers from bands I like have solo stuff, and they apparently collaborate together and I didn't even know it! Ben Nichols of Lucero, Chuck Ragan of Hot Water Music, Tom Gabel of Against Me!, Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio, and lastly Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem. This isn't all of them, but their solo stuff is so. good. Brian Fallon is my latest discovery so today I'm posting a Gaslight Anthem cover he did.

Happy Monday!

   

Maw-Maw and Pa-Paw.

For a Halloween party, I got Corey to dress up as an old person with me. I was surprised at how little convincing it took, but the night of the party it seemed like the more beer he drank, the more work it took to convince him. So I made a special hat that he couldn't deny! :)

I have no idea why my granny face was a no-tooth smile and half closed eyes. I guess I felt old while making that face, but in pictures it looks pretty silly.

Some costumes included a flapper, sheriff, day of the dead skeleton, (lazy!) bunny, pink lady from Greece, Mexican, surgeon, redneck, and of course Pa-Paw.

I've been friends with the two girls in the pictures above for a very long time. It's really an awesome thing to make it through hell and back, from elementary school to college, and still be able to call yourselves friends. The other day I was sorting through a lot of old junk and I had kept two notes, one from each of them, that meant a lot to me. We all ended up hanging out later that night and it was funny to let them read what they wrote so many years ago!

Here's the full elder attire:

As you can probably tell by my constant "granny face", I stayed in character most of the night. Everyone looved our outfits and everywhere we went people/strangers were saying, "Grandma, take a picture with me!" These pictures make me laugh so hard, Corey just looks so funny and creepy as a grandpa!

My hours got cut today at work, which isn't really a good thing but I am excited to focus a little more on building and launching! There are a lot of things to be excited about, sometimes the hard part is actually remembering how lucky I am. I'm so grateful for everything in my life. But it's a little too soon for sappy Thanksgiving related posts, so we'll save that for some other day!

  

Wardrobe Wednesday: Yes we did.

I've learned my lessons about talking with friends, family, or really anyone that you respect about politics or religion. In the end, you'll disagree on something. Or everything. I mean seriously, humans can be pretty disappointing. That's why I'd rather be a cat... But anyway. No political talk here, just an outfit post with the words YES on it, and that may or may not be the face of our president.

This outfit is all black, which makes sense because I love black, and also because I was very anxious/on the verge of a panic attack all day yesterday, when I took these. I even drank a glass before going to the polls yesterday!

Outfit details:

jacket - borrowed from a friend

shirt - thrifted

skirt - Target

tights - Delia's

boots - Forever 21

I didn't do a very great job with getting details on this outfit because it was freezing outside yesterday. I can't take pictures anywhere inside because there is virtually no natural light in this house. Ahh, natural light is, like, number one on my list for the next house I live in! That and my own personal craft room, 'cause I'm sure getting tired of making huge messes in the room that I sleep in. Clutter brings bad dreams!

Tomorrow I'll finally be posting some pictures from my Halloween weekend and from when I saw some friends last Saturday. I really would like to make it a priority to spend more time with friends. I've always been pretty bad at keeping in touch but I'm really trying to work on that.

Hope you all have a great day! <3

Music Monday #4: Back down south.

Today at work, the lady who works in the embroidery room with me asked me to share a booth with her at a craft fair coming up. How exciting!! She has taught me pretty much everything I know about embroidery, and she's crafty in her own ways, too. She bakes cakes as a second job and sells homemade wreaths, too. I haven't seen any yet, but she'll be selling them at the craft fair. This is really just the push I needed to start actually getting things done. I've got a little less than a month to decide which online store I want to use, get it running, make business cards (I'm making them all by hand), and actually have an inventory.

Tomorrow I'll show you guys some pictures of some stuff I've been working on, and also some pictures from Halloween and this past weekend. My boyfriend and I dressed up as grandma and grandpa, it was hilarious! I know I said I would be posting a tutorial last weekend but I've really been slacking and it's no good. :(

It is Music Monday, so I'll leave you with this Kings of Leon video. It's one of my favorite songs by them and reminds me of what (little) I DO like about living in the south. I find it hard to like a song after watching the music video, but I think the video is really well put together.