Hello everyone! This one took months to complete, and I’m thrilled with how it turned out. I have to admit I actually made this one a while ago but I was going through a lot at the time so I never posted it. However, I’m happy to post it today. If you follow me on Youtube then you’ve seen some of my videos about making this cosplay. This required a lot of fur and especially of different types. I ended up purchasing it at Hobby Lobby. For one thing they were half the price of Joanne Fabrics (yes this was before they closed) but I could also wait until the fabric was on sale and so I ended up getting it for a great price. If you would like a step-by-step of how I made everything, I highly recommend you check out my YouTube channel. For now let’s take a look at how it turned out.
The hardest part of this cosplay was all of the spikes on the skirt. Each of them had to be 3D printed and painted individually. I also had my battle axe, which is not shown here. However, I did also crochet a big and a small dragon to really give it the how to train your dragon vibe. There is a wire in both of them, so that you can adjust the wings or wrap the smaller dragon around the wrist.
If you would like some help planning a cosplay, let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
Hello everyone! Something that I get asked about a lot is how can you make clothing cheap or on a budget. This is hard to find when you’re first starting out because a lot of the prices for fabric are crazy and it might feel like it is easier to just buy a ready-to-wear clothing on sale. So here are a couple of my favorite places to get fabric.
1.) Thrift Stores – You might be suprised by this one but there are so many diferent ways that you can go. Of course you can find pieces that you an alter to fit you and your style but primarily when I’m going to a thrift store with sewing in mind the very first place that I go is to the tablecloths and sheets. My tinkerbell cosplay was made out of a leaf lace tablecloth that I purchased for 4 dollars. My pinafore dress I bought a round table cloth and use the circle that I cut out of the center to make the bib. I also like using sheets for dresses because there are so much fabric there.
2.) In My Own Home – This might sound like a no brainer but I also use the fabric from my own home. As mentioned above I’m looking at old curtains that might have some rips in a couple of different places but generally can be reused or even bed sheets. One of my favorite summer dresses that I have ever made is out of bedsheets and I’m about to start another dress with this same idea. Either way it is more eco-friendly and budget-friendly if you can reprurpose items you already have to make some fun new things.
3.) Shopping Sales In Store – I’m going to be honest with you, unless it is something I must have in that moment, I NEVER pay for fabric full price. I will always wait for a coupon or a sale. One of my favorite places for sales is Hobby Lobby. The normal prices are pretty good but they have 40% off sales every other week. For the Asrid Cosplay that I am working on right now, I was able to buy a yard of faux fur fabric for $13.50 when it was identical to faux fur they had at Joann Fabrics for $50 a yard! I always shop around when it comes to fabric. I have even gotten some good quality fabric from walmart before.
4: Online – Of course you can always buy fabric online. My favorite place to buy fabric online is Fabric Wholesale Direct. The price is great for most types of fabric and for some of the major holidays they offer 10% off. Also, I love that they have flat rate shipping and after spending so much, shipping is for free. It does take about a week or a little more for it to arrive though so you have to plan way in advance. Amazon is another great place to order online, some of their fabric can be expensive though so I always like to check the local stores and Fabric Wholesale Direct to see what the going rate is for that type of fabric.
Do you have any other tips that are not listed here? Be sure to let me know in the comments section to help others. Have a great week and talk to you next time!
PS: Check out this new reel of a recent upcycling project from some old ripped sheets.
Hello Everyone I hope that you have enjoyed Mario Day this year and were able to take advantage of the great sales that Nintendo was having. I know I’m a couple of weeks late but I wanted to share with you this Toadette cosplay I made in January of this year. It was so much fun to make and it was a bit out of my comfort zone. For a while, I have really wanted to buy a hat that looked like a mushroom that was really popular last year or two years ago. Like with most things I was way behind the trend and by the time I knew about it, the fad had died down. My cottagecore vibes though could not stop thinking about making a mushroom hat so I decided to give it a try. What I love most about this project is I was able to use leftover packaging and things that were just going to be thrown away and given new life. Here is my Mario Day post featuring this super fun hat.
With this cosplay, I decided to challenge myself to make this as budget-friendly as I could. If you can believe it, I only spent about $20 on this one. The majority of it went into the wig. The pink dress under the vest was one that I already had in my closet and the vest fabric I found at Walmart for $3+ a yard and I reused some gold ribbon I already had. If you would like to see some of the process of making this costume please be sure to check out my Instagram.
Hello! I wanted to take a moment and apologize for there not being a post last week. I was in pioneer school so it was a crazy but enjoyable experience. There was a lot of knowledge and encouragement that I got over the last week to keep going in my public ministry. This is more or less back to the usual grind this week though so I thought I would include a short post today about what I included in the gift for my fellow pioneers.
A couple of weeks ago I made a post of different suggestions to put in the boxes. I have used some of the ideas and thought you might like to see them. Since my school was almost an hour and a half away and I had 21 boxes to take I did use different boxes. I bought these ones from Amazon (you can find them here). They were of great quality and very sturdy. I loved that they were white and that they were easy to customize with vinyl if desired. Here is what was inside of the box.
I had a lot of different ideas but I wanted to go with something more simple. I started out by making mugs for everyone. There were two sides. The one side is the pictured above, the mugs also had the location on them but I have edited them out of the photo for privacy reasons. The back had this year’s text on them. I also bought a couple of packs of pens from the Dollar Tree because you can always use a good pen. For this one, I chose just a simple black pen that had a removable cap but you can also choose personalized ones or ones that are a little more fancy.
Next, I decided to do the lightbulbs. I bought them on Amazon which you can find here. I used the 100ml ones and they turned out perfect. I bought some Starburst jelly beans from Sams Club. It took a little over 2 plastic tubs to fill all 24 light bulbs. You can choose to add a cute note if you would like.
I finished off the box with the flight tickets. I highly recommend the seller that is in the previous post. The quality is great and I loved that there were four different colors. This was easily the star of the show and the thing that everyone loved. I’m excited to use these files again in the future.
That about wraps it up for today’s post. Thank you so much for joining me today. Talk to you next week!
Hello Everyone! I hope that everyone is having a fantastic day so far! I’m really excited to share this tutorial with you. A couple of weeks ago my mom entered her car at a car show. She asked me to make a couple of custom pieces for the car to dress it up. So this is the first tutorial in a mini-series that will show a step-by-step on how to make something things to dress up your car. This tutorial is going to be an easier one it is that of a simple seatbelt cover.
My mom had some covers from when she originally got the car but that was 4 years ago and they were really worn. Not to mention they didn’t go with the Princess theme. She had some specifications like she wanted them to be longer than her other ones. Once I measured them I cut the pieces out of the new fabric. The size that I used is 7″ x 11″ You want to cut out 2 pieces. One for the outside and one for the liner. This size is adjustable but worked well for her. The 11″ is the side with the length.
Once you pick your size and you cut out both fabrics, you want to put them right sides together. I would recommend pinning or clipping the two layers together. For this project, I used an anti-pill fleece for the lining and a pink furry fabric for the outside. If you are using cotton for the outside, I would recommend using a stabilizer and perhaps using some batting for added padding. Then you want to sew around the edges using a half an inch inseam. You want to leave a gap open on one of the shorter ends so that you can turn it right side out.
Next, you want to turn it right side out and then you want to top stitch along the outside. This will help to close the gap from turning it right side out. I just topstitched along the short edges as the other pieces will be topstitched in the next step. You’re almost done so now you just need to add the closure. In this case, velcro. You want to start by measuring how long of a piece you need. You want it to be a quarter of an inch shorter than the fabric on each end.
Sew one side of the Velcro on the right side of the fabric creating a box close to the edge of the velcro to secure it. Once you’re done with that, turn it to the other side and sew it on the other side. So one strip should be on the left and one on the right. Clip the threads and then prepare for it to dress up your car. Here is a picture of the ones that I have completed.
There you have it! Thank you for joining me today and if you have any questions then please leave them in the comments. Talk to you next week!
Hello Everyone! So I’m really excited about this post today. So I was in a thrift store a couple of weeks and saw this beautiful tablecloth. It was green and had a beautiful lace style with some leaves throughout the design. The moment I saw it, I knew I needed to make a Tinkerbell cosplay. So I bought it and then purchased some satin fabric to go behind it since it was see-through. I sat on it for a couple of weeks trying to decide how I wanted to go about and make it. One weekend I decided I was going to just take the leap and attempt it.
I started out by using sewist.com to design the pattern. If you would like a full review on the website you can check out my other blog post here. I did take some creative licenses with the design. First I started off by adding some spaghetti straps. I didn’t want to add boning to the bodice and I wanted to make sure that it would be able to stay up. Secondly, I made the length of the dress longer. I wasn’t comfortable with the length of the original design so I made it knee-length in the hope that I would also be able to wear it for other occasions as well.
Once I had the pattern designed I purchased it, printed it out, and cut out the pieces. I was really excited about it and I started with the skirt pieces and cut the green lining. I wanted to make sure that they would fit before cutting out the tablecloth. Once I finished that I started cutting the pieces out of the tablecloth and sewed them together and serging the edges to get them neat and clean. Then I started working on the top. This was slightly more difficult but I found it easier to baste the lace pieces to the satin so that I can keep a nice crisp seam. I ironed after every step to make that a bit easier. For a closure on the back, I added a zipper for convenience. When it was all done I did the bottom hem. When I created the original design I used a straight hem on the bottom. This gave me the flexibility to decide how I wanted the bottom. I folded it in fourths and used a 3.5 in measurement to make the edges. A little photoshoot in my office and some photo pixie dust and voila, I present some of my favorite images. If you have any questions let me know down below!
Hello everyone! I hope that you have had a great month of May. Since this month is Mental Health month, I thought that I would take a moment and just talk about my Mental health journey and how sewing and other crafts have saved my life.
In 2014, I was at a big convention and had my first panic attack. Actually, I had several over that weekend. When I returned home from the event I went to the doctor because I was also experiencing vertigo and it was so bad that I could barely stand half the time. I was then diagnosed with anxiety and put on medication for it. I was doing better until I started to experience another mental health issue that likes to come with anxiety, namely depression. I have struggled with both for some 8 years. When I would have lows with my depression they were deep lows but society told me, I wasn’t allowed to show that I was struggling. Or at least that’s what my brain was telling was telling me. That there was something wrong with me and I needed to hide it from everyone else at all costs. The only problem is that after a while it starts to take its toll and I was only ending up more and more frustrated and turned into bouts of anger. I was feeling more like a mess than every before and everything I was trying wasn’t working. Worst of all, I was embarrassed to talk about it as growing up people just didnt talk about that kind of stuff.
Ever since I was a kid though, I loved crafting and making things but I hadn’t really found that one hobby/craft that spoke to me. When the pandemic hit, like happened with many, my mental health took a serious hit. I was used to keeping myself so busy that I didn’t have time to think and suddenly I was stuck inside and couldn’t go anywhere. For as long as could remember though I wanted to learn how to make clothing. I had a sewing machine already since in the past I had an obsession with making quilts. So I started with masks because they were small and I could make them quickly. With that, my confidence grew and I then made a tote bag for groceries that had pockets and lining. Then a headband. After these successes, I wanted to try making a pair of shorts. I found this fabulous video on YouTube about drafting your own pattern. My first attempt…well, I think it speaks for itself…
I’m not going to lie, all of my hopes were dashed in that moment. But fortunately, I’m stubborn so I recut the pieces out and watched the video again and again until I got it. That was almost 2 years ago and I’m still going strong. I have been able to create and design some breathtaking things because I never gave up. Along the way, it has really helped my mental health.
It has given me a creative outlet when things are not going the way I had hoped. It gives me a way to express myself and show up as my authentic self. Not only that but I have also discovered a wonderful and supportive community. So I encourage you, no matter what kind of creative craft works for you, keep searching until you find that one that speaks to you and makes you happy. The road isn’t always going to be smooth but it is worth it in the end.
To finish it off, I’m going to add a glimpse of my newest creation. It’s still a work in progress but I’m so proud or how much I got done this weekend. Can you guess which character this is a cosplay for? Talk to you next week!
Hello! The warm weather is finally and you know what that means, it’s craft show time! I have a couple of craft shows that I am going to be doing throughout the summer. I figured I would share a little recap of what I brought in the hopes that it will give you some ideas in case you want to do some craft shows. I had quite a bit of inventory from last year since I made a ton and so I brought back some of the items that I have lefts.
For this show, it was inside and I had an 8-foot table for my display. This was the first time that I had ever done an inside event before and I wasn’t sure what to expect. So I got there and set up my table. I have to say I’m pretty proud of how it was set up, you can see how it looked below.
I’m not going to lie in terms of sales I was rather disappointed by this Fix. That said I was in a really small country town and there wasn’t really that much advertising and was just a small sign out front of the community center. That said, though, it showed me that I can transport, set up, and run a booth by myself. I was able to beta-test an idea that did work out well. Most importantly, it was a good beginner show for the season. It’s been 9 months since my last show and I was so nervous. Really what I lacked in traffic in the venue and sales, I learned that I needed to remember that there were a lot of positive things too. I’ll make a separate blog about that later but for now, I want to break down my setup to maybe give you some ideas if you are doing a craft fair this year.
Since I only had a limited space, I decided to only use one of my peg that I made last year and combine my lanyards and wristlet. These have a swivel clip that makes it great for keys or even ID cards/badges. I love these because it adds some height to elevate the look.
For the middle section, this was wear I put a variety of different items. I have some lower priced items in the front and then have some of my higher and middle priced items in the back. I have learned how important it is to have some higher priced items as it shows your items have good quality even if the larger ticket items don’t sell.
As you can see now, on the other side I’m adding more height with a tiered display for my scrunchies. I also like to add some bags for convenience for those who are planning on buying a lot. One of things I added new this year was grab bags. I’m not going to lie, I’m a sucker for a good grab bag. I had two different kinds one that was $5 and the other was $10 and this was actually my best-selling item. Needless to say I’m going to continue to make those this year. The bags came as a 3 pack from Dollar Tree, and I loved the pink color went well with my brand.
I hope this gave you some ideas. If you have any other suggestions on how you set up your craft show display, be sure to let me know in the comments. Have a great week!
Hello! Are you looking for ways to be more eco-friendly? Over the last couple of years I have started taking small steps into adjusting my day-to-day routine routine make it better for the earth. When I started this journey I was scared at first because I thought it was going to be really expensive, but it actually saves you money too. I started out with my laundry detergent by using Earth Breeze. In case you aren’t familiar, they are a company that sends you dehydrated laundry detergent. They completely dissolve in water and the package is biodegradable in just 3 months. 1 package lasts me a couple of months, and it’s only $12 for a package. After I got used to that I started using dissolving hand soap tablets. All of the packaging is biodegradable and I use the same glass soap dispenser that I’ve had for years. I’ve also switched my cleaning products to dissolving tablet cleaners as well and repurposed old clothing or fabric to make new pieces.
There is something that has always bothered me, though, and that is how many paper towels I use, especially when cleaning or cooking. It is a very embarrassing amount because I can’t stand to have certain textures on my hand. I’ve tried hand towels and cheap multi-use cleaning cloths but there was always something I didn’t like about them. This brings us to our post for today. I saw on Joann Fabric’s Instagram this year for earth day a guide for reusable “paper” towels. I knew right then that I had to make it. If you would like to find the instructions on Joann Fabric’s website click here.
Fortunately, the fabrics were also on sale so it made it much easier and cheaper. I also have never used snaps before so I was kind of nervous but they were easy to use and I bought a set from Amazon. Since you can find the information on their website I’m not going to repeat it on here. The instructions are very simple. You can also use a serger to make it even easier. I put my snaps 1″ on each side of the corner.
Would I make these again? Absolutely! I absolutely love them! While I will still use paper towels for raw meat and cleaning disgusting places (toilet I’m looking at you) I will make more for everything else. They turned out so beautifully. I want to make ones just for cleaning and summer just for drying my face after I wash it. If you would like to see a video as I work on it please head over to my YouTube channel! Is this a project that you would be willing to try? Let me know in the comments!
Hello! Thanks for stopping by today. Last year, I posted a video on my YouTube channel on how to make a New World Translation Bible gift box. Lately, I have been receiving a lot of comments asking for some ideas on what to put in these gift boxes. While I have posted a video in the past of what I included the first time, I wanted to include some more ideas of what you can include. I was invited back to pioneer school this year and I thought this was a great opportunity to reevaluate and add some more ideas. For reference, you can find the DIY gift box here.
A quick run-down of the previous ideas: ~ Handmade Bookmark – great for the Bible or study publications ~ Pen – great for territory or letter writing ~ Pioneer Power Bar – great for a sweet treat to enjoy ~ Honey Jars w/ How Sweet It Is To Serve Jehovah With You tags
I have included 7 more items that would be great for putting in the gift boxes. For a video with pictures of these items, check out my new video HERE. Each one will have a link to an Etsy listing that you can get inspiration from or buy from these sellers or others. This is not sponsored by any of these sellers. These were just ideas that I thought were cute. If you have even more ideas then please be sure to comment below here or on my youtube channel.
1.) Best Life Ever Boarding Passes – I thought that these were really cute. The Etsy listing is for a digital file that you print on your own. Though they are more decorative, these can be used to encourage them when they are having a tough time or are facing discouragement.
2.) JW Sticky Note Pads – These are great for the ministry. It’s great for when you are not able to find a return visit home but you want to let them know that you’re thinking of them or if they weren’t home for the appointment. They will stick easily to the door or literature if you leave some.
3.) Contact Card Case – These are so great for the ministry or for cart work. It keeps the contact cards safe without them getting bent or ruined in a pocket or a bag. There are different styles to choose from so you can mix it up as needed.
4.) JW.ORG Pins – These are cute for wearing on a jacket or a suit coat. There are so many designs that you can choose from. Personally, I love sea turtles so this was one that I liked best.
5.) Keep Shining Good Jar – You know I had to include another goodie idea. I thought these were super cute and you can buy them 8 or 16 at a time. I think the whole idea of them looking like lightbulbs is genius and gives me nostalgia for the old pioneer books.
6.) Personalized Coasters – These are great for when they are at home and letter writing or telephone witnessing. Depending on what you are making them for, you can do just a single coaster or a set for their house. You can get ones that are already made or make them for yourself. You can also buy coasters at dollar tree and use a Cricut or Silhouette to cut out something with permanent vinyl as a fun DIY.
7.) JW Bible Earrings – For the last one this is for sisters that you know really well. These are super cute and are great for couples as it comes with an earring set and with a matching lapel. They are small and because they are made of polymer clay I would guess it was lightweight. This is the prices option on the list but looks really adorable.
BONUS: Eyeglass Cleaning Cloth: This one doesn’t have a link because there are many different options and so it’s all up to personal taste. These are great for those that wear glasses but also for sunglasses in the summer.
Thanks again for joining me today! Next week we will talk about some eco-friendly “unpaper towels”.
Cats MeWOW Designs 