SEW, SEW, SEW

Ouuuhhh! Karla Lagerfeld strikes again as my dad said! Guess what friends? I'm about to become a seamstress! Haha no! But I created this little skirt from a buttin-up yesterday and I'm thrilled to show it to y'all!

Okay it all started with my old swing mashine being old and pretty beaten up ... Ten years left their marks. So yesterday this 'little' paket from Amazon arrived and now: I'm the owner of a brandnew W6! No idea whether that's a very well-known brand - as I said I'm not gonna be a seamstress ever, so I not an expert at this. But so far it's doing well and I think it'll do the simple things I want it to. 

I'm not experienced at skirt-making at all, but actually with a working sewing mashine this was a quite doable project. I might write a little tutorial on this later. I added the wooden buttons, they just looked more classy than the plastic ones. I love that litle detail. The stripes are really cute and this skirt goes with so many things!

Because I've just fixed it a few days ago myself, I can show this on a DIY blog as well. I bought this necklace at 'Accesorize' (Is that how you spell it?) in Bournemouth about three years ago now. I found it the other day - well I did was fix the lock and bam! I got a new necklace! Had forgotten all about it!

Thanks for sharing my joy with the new girl in the house!
Lots of Love, Tabea ♥

5 WAYS TO SPICE UP YOUR JOURNAL PAGES

Hey you journal-loving people! Do you ever feel like your journal is a bit plain? I write on a daily basis and I reread my entries every so often. Lately i felt bored by how all the pages looked the same with the same handwriting over and over again. 

Sooo let's do something about it! I came up with five ways to spice up your daily journal. All these options are to be pre-made, so when you sit down at night you go right to writing and just add them whenever you feel like it.

Aren't these little arrows cute? I think they're pretty cool to highlight a passage in your writing or start an entry. As you can see I used paint swatches, so I'd have a gradient ( Ombré Arrows - we're so hipster around here...), cut and glued them together.  There are tons of ways to create these cuties: big to small triangles, light to darker shades... Get creative!

Looove these! No for real, I'm already dreading using them because I want to use them over and over! Might have to make more, woooh! I think the making is rather self-explanatory. Cut cardboard, write on a piece of white paper and glue that on there. I love the color it adds to a page though! So simple, so good!

Tags, tags, tags... I've wanted to buy a pack of these at the craft store forever. Well, how about homemaking them? They're literally a 3-minute project. Cut cardboard, glue a rectangle of paper / other cardboard on there, add the circle on the top and whole-punch it! You might also add some ribbon or lines to write on.

Did you realize there was something wrong until picture three? Haha, there are some things I ALWAYS do wrong at first try. Like mirror-writing. I got everything right ... except the 'a'. Gaaaw! Whatever, this is DIY at it's finest! 
Elsie started this series 'today is (insert adjective)' and I liked it so much, I though it'd be fun to label journal entries that way. The 'Today' an 'was' are seperated in case I just need a 'Today'. Maybe if I wanna say 'Today I won a million Dollars'. It could happen!

Okay so picture-wise this isn't number 5 'cause you've seen the exclamation-mark before. Actually you've seen it in another post before but I felt this needed to be an extra point. I think everyone should have one of these exclamation-mark stamps at hand. Sometimes you just need to make a bold statement. Also a question-mark or a dot would be fun, too, wouldn't it?

I talked about how most of these papercrafts can be used without other craft supplies at hand. Therefore I used a rather simple technique:

How smart is this, please? You can store them away as long as you want and when you crave a color-pop you remove the non-sticky part of the tape and bang: there's your sticker! 

This is what I imagine those tools to be used like. I'm so thrilled to use them overthe next weeks!
Hope you enjoyed today's post just as much as I did! I'm off now to decorate my page about this beautiful sunny day!

Lots of Love, Tabea ♥

FABRIC COVERED PHOTO ALBUM

She's back! Woohoo! The reason why I was gone is rather simple - a lightning bold struck into one of the local aerials which is responsible for our internet. I've never seen lighting that bright and I guess neither did the aerial. So we were cut off the world wide web for a few days - thank god for mobile internet, but a blog post just wasn't possible to upload! 

Well today I'm back and ready to share the progress i made with my photo album. 

So this is how my embroidery project turned out - I love it! The colors are nice and bright and really scream: Summer's here! Looking at the back part of it you can see that I didn't suture the left-over thread. I'm not entirely sure whether this is the best way to do it, but I wanted to avoid any bumps the knots might have caused.

Now we're coming to the main part: How to cover an album with fabric...

You start by mixing equal parts of glue and water and spread that mixture over the front or back of the photo album. Try to get especially the borders and corner and don't use to much of it - you don't want to get your fabric all soaked, do you?

The next step was nicer to show on the middle part where the binding is. You've already put the glue in place and now you'll just flap the fabric over and gently smoothen it out with your hand. Do this until the entire outer part of the album is covered with fabric and watch out for any creases close to the binding part. Glide over them with your fingers so the fabric really sticks to the book in all places - otherwise you'll get ugly air bubbles underneath it.

Okay good job so far! Now we're coming to the tricky part. You cut off all four corners of your fabric so it'll be easier to fold later. You also make a straight cut where the round binding part starts. 

Self-explanatory, isn't it? Haha this photo just screamed for handwriting! It's simple. Put glue onto the edges of the book and fold the fabric over. You might have to fight a bit with the corners depending on how much fabric you have to fold over. My advise: Put glue on those bad boys until they stay in place! You are the boss here!

Lastly...

Covering the binding... This might get a bit violent. I'm kidding! It's all good and easy! Two steps: 1) Put glue onto the fabric flap 2) Bend the book boards to the back and the whole between the cover and the binding thingy wil expand. Now push the fabric flap in there! See the scissors I placed so nicely in the background? I USED THEM FOR THIS! Don't know why I sream when I say this but yeah .. I'll advice you to use anything long and flat like a ruler.

Well I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial - I'm really sorry I don't have more pictures of the album itself ... the light and I were just not having it today.

To make you curious (muhaha!) - here's another picture of me working on the last decorative part of the album. So hope to see you again for more DIY album action!

By the way did you spot my creative way of spelling summer? SUMMME. I'm a pro, I know...

Lots of Love, Tabea ♥

HOMEMADE ALBUM COVER - PART I

Remember my Summer To Do List? One of the points on there was to create a summer journal... Well the 'journal' turned into more of an album. I have never filled an actual photo album myself the traditionell way - like in the old days, when my mom had to go and have someone develop her film rolls. I thought it would be fun to try it though and also I feel I'm gonna have a blast looking at this during the cold winter months. 

Because I always thought that store-bought albums look either boring or plain out cheap, I wanted to give my album a make-over. While working I realized this is sort of a longer process - upps, overestimated my fast-embroidery-skills! 

So today, I'll share my first steps to a homemade photo album cover. Enjoy!

Using tailor's chalk I marked the size of  my album on a piece of fabric that could fit around it comfortably. Well, I actually had to use two pieces of fabric, because one would not have been enough - it's fine, gotta work with what you got! Secondly, I put a white sheet of paper on my album and marked out the space I wanted to fill my embroidered type later.

I wrote and sketched out the words for the front on the paper, turned it over and traced along the outlines so I'd have a reversed picture. I taped it to my album with the reversed side up - still in the place where I'd originally wanted it. 

I covered the sheet with my fabric - right side down. Now I have the side of fabric facing me that'll later be unseen, as well as my reversed type underneath it. I traced the letters one more time through the fabric with pink tailor's chalk. Finally I could get to fun part - working with my embroidery hoop. Don't you think embroidery hoops are the most fun thing ever? They're wood and feel smooth and round ... Pretty snazzy ...

Well getting to the point - grab your thread and get stitching!

One by one the letters will appear as you follow your traced outline. I've mentioned the word 'embroidery' like two thousand time in this post already - so just more time: Embroidery is awesome and such a relaxing task! 

Be thrilled for my process on this project!

Lots of Love, Tabea ♥

DREAM JOURNAL

Whaaaad'up? Uh yeah, I'm finally fit again and ready to get my craft going! Lately I've been having weird dreams .. well my dreams are always weird. But lately I had several weird dreams in a short period of time. Is that a sign? Apocalypse?! Let's hope not ...

The other day I dreamed that I there was a Grizzly bear by my house and my dad chased it away with some weird rolling pin, another day my friend's car was stolen from outside my house and he was just freaking out, screaming at a truck that had suddenly appeared. And yesterday night, I dreamed that I got to know one of my friend's moms who I'd never met before - and she was mean! Like 'what are you looking at me?' - mean! Why are my dreams so terrible??

Because I love to remember my dreams (no matter how horrible they were), I sometimes write them down. So today I'll show you how to create a dream journal. It'll be the size of about 3x5inches.

You'll need acrylic paint (any color), cardboard, paper (I like to use old paper that I would not use as notebook paper anymore) , brush, needle, embroidery thread, marker, pin

This time, I put the steps right onto the pictures - for all the 'visual'-types out there! I'm with you!

Lastly glue both cardboard pieces onto the booklet. Done!

This is sooo cute! Can't wait to fill it with the things my nightly imagination comes up with!

For everyone interested in more 'dream-journal'-inspiration - here's my old one. I think the cover is pretty rad. It's Tavi Gevinson glued to the face of Jonny Depp. I made this one in a late-night session - Probably thought this was hilariously funny at the time. Okay, I still love it.  Also some of the pages I created in it - just plain lines would have been boooring!

Okay, have a great night / day (depending on when read this) everyone and remember to write down all the funny things that happen while you're awake or asleep. Rereading them later is a treasure!

Lots of Love, Tabea ♥

QUOTE WALL ART

Hey Sweetiepies! Summertime finaly arrived around here now. Temperatures in the 70s and sunshine non-stop!  Wohoo! So today, because the sun was shining so nicely into my room I thought I'd share some of my inspirational wall art with you. 

I've talked about my obssesion with Pinterest as well as my love for poetry. These posters and prints are basically the cross between those two, short quotes in an artsy packaging. The get the certificate 'super-duper-totally-rad'! I oftentimes catch myself browsing Pinterest's quote section way too long. It's an instant motivation / inspiration cocktail! I don't pin very much of it, because I almost always get overwhelmed and just glide into that stage where you stare at the screen and after a while all the little pictures start dancing. Usually that happens late at night. Other people buy loads of stuff at 3am - I pin words of wisdom. It's all good. 

The poster / painting above though is completely handmade by me though and yepp, I'm kinda proud of it. 

I like to say that I have the happiest nightstand in town. And the most crafty one - I painted both paintings, made the little flower box and obviously my journal. I'm into colors and pink clouds, if you didn't know.

To the poster: I made this because at the time I felt like I needed a bit more of a positive vibe in my daily life. Choosing your attitude is the most important decision you have to make on a daily basis. Choosing and writing those words, I hoped that one day I myself and others could see me this way. Also I like that there is no 'no' or 'don't' on there - I strongly belief in the power of 'yes' (YES MAN FANS UNITE!). It's a little reminder for me now. When I wake up, I can choose to be a person just like this. Positive, thankful, light-hearted and all the other good things. 

Talking about sayings I also wanted to show you another wall art thingy... this time Pinterest hit - big time.

I tried to come up with a cheap way to display some art in my room, without spending like 10 bucks on a single picture frame. I saw this washi tape technique on Pinterest and immediately loved it. It's super simple and can easily be changed up whenever I feel like it. I gathered a few of my favorite quotes and art pins and went for it. It was a one-afternoon project and really fun. The 'I love you deerly' - one is just too charming, isn't it? Yes I love deer, yes I miss seeing them on my way home, yes Minnesota is awesome for deer fans like me! The one with the girl is slightly creepy, but I thinks that's why I like it. Oh and my mom told me it sorta looks like me. Thanks mom, kinda creepy, kinda beautiful - excatly what I'm going for! Haha! 

My favorite is the MORE one. So cool! Ultimate summer advise, isn't it? 

Getting stuck on Pinterest at 3am is probably not the best way to spent your night, but sometimes there's really some great wisdom out there. 

I already took on the advise and went for MORE ...

More sunsets! Uuuh! Pink clouds are for real - summer IS the best! By the way this picture was taken from my friend's car and even though we'd only been in there for like 5 minutes, it felt like a roadtrip!

Get Inspired! 
Lots of Love, Tabea ♥