Friendship is the Sweetest Gift

If you were to look at my wrist, you would never fail to see every single color carefully knotted into friendship bracelets. I try to wear at least one of each pattern - chevron, stripes, Chinese staircase, waves&loops, etc. - because they are all so beautiful. Each reminds me of the friend that made them, and people always comment on how I always wear them and sometimes ask for me to make one for them as well.

After making hundreds of bracelets in the same patterns over and over again, I was quite excited to have come across instructions for a completely different kind of friendship bracelet in this woven friendship bracelet tutorial. It is really easy to make but ends up looking a lot thinner and rounder than any other friendship bracelet I have seen. It actually looks pretty similar to the Chinese staircase design but can be a lot more colorful, as it uses up to 7 colors!

I made my bracelet about twice as long as usual so that I could wrap it around my wrist twice and give my variety of bracelets a little bit of a different look.

the setup - I recycled a small circle of cardboard and used 7 colors of embroidery floss

the completed bracelet, wrapped around twice

the bracelet laid out

Here are some links to tutorials for other bracelets I am wearing (in order from easiest to more difficult, but they are all not that difficult once you get the hang of it), though I only used the one for the waves&loops design. My neighbor taught me how to make the striped and chevron patterns about 10 years ago, and I still love to make them!

Chinese Staircase 

Striped

Chevron

Waves & Loops

Also, I taught myself how to do a double-chevron and made it long enough to wear as a headband! Beware, it took about a week to make (probably around 50 hours), but I think it was well worth it. I also added some gold beads for a little shimmery detail, and I braided the ends so that it ties on easily and prettily. (By the way, I counted the knots for some reason while making it, and it has 5401!)

the completed headband

gold bead (round and tubular) detail

I hope you enjoy looking at these and making some for yourself and for your friends!

Happy Leap Year!

 

<3 Mandy

Shirt Design

Today, I went to my friend's house to design and paint shirts for our school's animal club/ green team. She cut out animal-shaped stencils, and we also used store-bought animal print and letter stencils. I made a recycling symbol and star. We used spray paint to paint our shirts, but each bottle only lasted for two shirts at most. I really liked using the sparkly paint, though, and it lasted a lot longer!

The shirts took about an hour to do for each side, plus drying time, so in five hours the seven of us completed 3 double-sided shirts and one side of 9 others. We are planning on setting aside time on another day to finish the rest of the 30 shirts!

Here are some of our shirts drying (with the front-side shown) - I made the one on the top left corner (zebra print) and the one on the center right (ECO in red-white gradient on zebra print)

our work station

our painted hands (clockwise from top: KT, B, A, D)
I washed my hands 4 times (even with sugar scrub) and the paint did not budge! Nail polish remover did the trick.

Since we didn't finish all the shirts last time (February 20), we continued our project on March 3. This shirt has a quote from Dr. Seuss's The Lorax. We laid out these stencils after seeing the movie on opening day, March 2.

Have you ever designed or painted a shirt? I also love doing tie-dye!

<3 Mandy

Love Lace

I have been absolutely infatuated with lace lately. I love love love it. For the long President's Day weekend, I have four days off (lucky me!) and wanted to make some crafts with my extra time. While searching around the house for something to do, I came across some crochet hooks. A couple of weeks ago I found a crochet doily that I had made in 3rd grade, and when I found the crochet hooks, I knew exactly what I wanted to make for my next project.

So have you tied it all together yet?

Yes, that's right, I am crocheting flower doilies!

15 doilies at 15 minutes each

♥♥♥

 DIY Lace Earrings

While looking up various projects that use lace, I found instructions for these DIY Lace Earrings. Since I didn't have any lace and also wanted to make my own, I made my own DIY project inspired by Honestly WTF and Dolce and Gabbana's Spring '11 Collection (yes I know it's a bit old, especially in the fashion world, but I still love lace! (in case you haven't noticed)).

For this project I made two flower doilies of the same size, soaked them in a 1:1 mixture of Elmer's glue and water in order to harden them, let them dry (I let them air dry for about 24 hours but got impatient when they still weren't dry, so I used a hairdryer to finish them off), and attached earring hooks! Aren't they pretty? I am obsessed with making them.

 

Soaking doilies in glue-water mixture

crochet doilies

 

earrings after attaching hooks

♥♥♥

DIY Lace Bracelet

I also made doilies of a smaller size and different design, which I sewed together to make a bracelet. After sewing them, I soaked them in the glue-water mixture and let them dry before attaching a lobster clasp.

♥♥♥

These doilies only take about 15 minutes each to crochet, so I have been making tons of these while "watching" TV and movies. After making so many of them, I got a lot faster at crocheting, too! I am planning on possibly dyeing some doilies - I think a gradient would look nice, perhaps in pastel colors? Let me know what you think, and please comment below!

Also, I have been having so much fun making doilies that I have thought up another project, but it's going to take a loooong time to make. Keep this in mind and expect to see another lace post in another few months... any ideas on what it might be?

Thanks for your input, and have fun making your own DIYs!

<3 Mandy

A Little Adventure

My father and I went on a quick little bike ride today. While it was really windy and cold, the ride was refreshing. I didn't bring a camera along but took a couple shots from my phone before my fingers froze. Here are some pictures from our little adventure.

<3 Mandy

Chocolate Heaven

Here is another belated Valentine's Day post.

My dad was thoughtful enough on Valentine's to surprise my mom and me by bringing home orchids for each of us, as well as a mocha cake! We went out to dinner to celebrate but were too stuffed to eat the cake, so lately I have been devouring it while sitting at our kitchen table and admiring the lovely flowers.

Here are some photos of the delicious cake!

(Luckily I thought of taking the photos before there was none left ;) )

chocolate-covered coffee beans

a slice for me, a slice for you

Wish you could enjoy this yummy cake with me!

<3 Mandy

Valentine's Day DIY

I found some of my pink felt last weekend and was inspired to make something, and since Valentine's was coming up I thought I would dress up! So here are some pictures of the process, from plain grey shirt to heart-ified.  There are heart elbow pads with quilted stitching, and the collar has flower petal shapes arranged into a heart with gold beads.

Anyways, Happy (Belated) Valentine's day!

Note: I did not yet have this blog on Valentine's Day but made this shirt for the 14th of February.

I began with this plain, grey, collared, 3/4 sleeve shirt:

I cut up (about 15) little petal-shaped pieces of felt about the size of my thumbnail and began sewing them onto my collar

I laid them out into this pattern at first, but when I took a step back, I realized it just looked like a pink blob on my collar...

So while playing around with the organization of the cut-outs, I came up with this heart:

After sewing the heart on my collar, I cut out hearts for elbow-patches and safety-pinned them onto my shirt. (You could make a shirt with just the elbow patches or just the collar patch if you wanted to, but I added both to even out the distribution of color on my shirt)

I then sewed on the heart-shaped elbow patches using a quilting technique (to prevent lumpiness after washing the shirt) and added gold seed beads to the collar heart

Collar heart with bead detailing around the stitches

 

And there you have it! A lovely Valentine's shirt, even for those of you who aren't in love with pink. The little pink hearts are just enough to show your holiday spirit without overdoing it.

xoxo Mandy (your Valentine)

A Fresh Start

Hello, and welcome to my blog! I have never really written in diaries or enjoyed journal-writing much, but my sister suggested that I record my projects in a blog, and I am actually really excited to begin writing one! I plan on posting anything from DIYs to favorite foods to current obsessions - basically anything I find interesting. So get ready to learn more about me and my favorite things to do in my free time!

<3 Mandy