On Deliberate Practice: Roller Derby Transitions, Part 1- Off skates

Roller Derby is a fast-paced sport. Being able to maintain your spot in the pack, or catch back up quickly after being hit out or knocked down is incredibly important. Its just as important to be able to dodge those blocks, turn around quickly and head back in the right direction.

Sunnylands own Shod N Froyda
Photo Credit: Canonball

I personally am not very good at turning around. This affects not only my game play (I'm less likely to go for a hit that involves me turning around and skating backwards and its more difficult for me to recover when knocked out of bounds) but it limits what I can do during training. Since I'm taking the next two months off of derby (I'm starting up with school again and I have to pass my next to classes or lose my financial aid. boo.) I've decided to take advantage of my time and work on some of the basics. This will hopefully help when I start back up in November and have to re-take my minimum skills test (a WFTDA requirement and all around good idea).

Serial Thrillers Ludwig Von Slaytoven backwards blocking against a Rolling Valkyrie

Making Stuff....and a bunch of links

As of today, my "Magnetic Makeup Board: Tutorial" is my most-often-viewed blog post.

Cant say I blame you, it is pretty sweet. (also, a BIG Thank You! to Laura from Lauras Thoughts for featuring me).

What this tells me is, you like to see me make stuff. You also like to have me show you how to make stuff too. I can do that.

Some of the things on my to-do list are to finish my update of my roll top desk (ala Centsational Girl), refinish a dragon backed chair thats been sitting in my garage, and decorate for halloween.
I have been making as much stuff lately, but you have inspired me to not only make more stuff, but to post it on here more often.

That being said, keep checking back for more "stuff" posts. (also, if you REALLY like posts about stuff, you should go check out Karen at one of my favorite blogs, "The Art of Doing Stuff").

Tutorial: How to shorten a zipper

Last week while working on replacing a zipper on a skirt for a girl that I work with, I made a startling realization....

The zipper that I had bought for said skirt was too long. Like, 2 inches too long.

Now this may not be a startling realization to some, but for me, it was horrifying. My brain went into overdrive thinking about where I left the receipt and what store did I buy it from?

Some slightly more intelligent part of my brain recalled my grandma mentioning that she had shortened a zipper that she'd bought a few weeks ago. This being about 10pm that night, I decided it would be in poor taste to call my poor, sweet grandma asking about zippers so to Google I ran.

I found a couple of super easy tutorials on youtube and was able to piece together a suitable method:

First: Measure youre opening to see how long the zipper needs to be (remember, do not cut it at the end of your opening or it will be too short. I made mine about an inch below to give some wiggle room).
Please pardon my suck-y pictures...

Yeah, WAY too long (thats what she said.... sorry couldnt help myself)

Second: Take a straight needle and matching color thread and make a simple whip stitch (going in from one side of the zipper, over the zipper, and down the other side)

Up and over

Third: continue doing this over and over and over until you have a little mass of stitches. This is the new "stopper" for the zipper pull. I also put a dab of hot glue over the stitches for good measure.



My lovely new "stopper" (before the hot glue)



Slightly better picture. You can see the stitches.

Finally: Snip off the excess beneath the new "stopper" and sew into your garment!



All done!

Thats it! After working myself into a frenzy, it took me about 15 minutes from start to finish to fix. 

 

Sometimes the easiest methods are the best.

 

Love

GG

Tutorial: Decoupage a Lamp shade (and put old books to use!)

Have an old lamp that needs to be spiced up? Have some old books that have gotten to the point of being unreadable (if you're anything like me, you have several :/ )?

Than today is your lucky day! I had been gifted a lamp that, at first glance, was frankly hideous. It was a very shiny gold plate, oddly shaped and falling apart, but I saw the promise of a really neat, different reading lamp for my still-to-be-made reading corner in our bedroom.

Frankly, I am too darn cheap and picky to just go buy a new lamp shade. I almost never find one that I like and works with our "decor" (or lack thereof). So I decided with this little lamp shade to bust out my Mod Podge and go crazy.

I had visualized it early on as being covered by pages from a book, but seriously couldn't bring myself to tear apart a book that I had or to waste paper by printing out aged-looking text.

My saving grace came in the form of a much loved, much read book that I was re-re-re-re-re-re (get the point?) reading. The covers had fallen off. I was starting to lose pages. The spine was bent and broken and it looked like it'd been through a hurricane. When my wonderful fiance saw me desperately trying to read it, he stated that it may be time to replace it. After deflecting my "what are you NUTS?" look, he said that it wouldn't be worth giving to goodwill, they'd probably just trash it anyway.

Than a light bulb went off in the dark recesses of my brain!

I would use my much loved book as decoupage for my awesome new (to me) lamp!! And heres how I did it!



Please excuse all of the crap on my little table

Start with an old lampshade. As you can see, this one was on its last legs (well, not literally as lamp shades don't have legs, but you get the idea). I wiped it down with a damp-ish rag and took the metal center part out as it was falling out anyway (hot glue to the rescue! I re-attached it later) 



Honestly, it broke my heart to do this to a book. For the greater crafty good...

Next, take an old book and tear out some random pages. This book has a bit of bloodshed so I

made sure to glance over what I was sticking on there beforehand.

Now for the tools. I used glossy Mod Podge and a cheap paintbrush from Home Depot.

Liberally apply your Mod Podge and slap on a couple of pages. I worked section by section because Mod Podge tends to dry very quickly. I wanted mine to look a little random so I turned the pages in different directions. This is all personal preference. You are more than welcome to line them up very nice and neat if you'd like.

After I'd stuck all my pages on the way I wanted, I trimmed the excess of the top and bottom and gave them one more coat with the Mod Podge. Than I hot-glued on some fabric on the

top and bottom edges just to make it look a little more uniform and neat.

The green fabric was actually an old pair of corduroy pants that didn't fit me anymore. Hows that for upcycling!

And here is the finished product! The lamp my honey fixed and then spray painted an off-white/almost tan color that matches perfectly with our bedroom.

I love the little scrolled looking thingy on the top...

The fabric on the top of the lampshade came out a little wonky, but I really didnt feel like taking the whole thing apart (again) to fix it. Besides it gives it character.

I hope you all enjoy Canada day for those up north and the Fourth of July for those in America. Everyone else, come back monday for Manic Mondays Music and have a great weekend!



~~Love~~

~~GG~~

Tutorial: Magnetic Makeup Board

 I found this awesome little pic/tutorial on pinterest for a magnetic board for makeup. Needless to say I was smitten and had to make my own!

All of my makeup was living in a little makeup bag and was constantly being shoved around under our bathroom cabinets.
After digging around a little, I found an old frame that I didn't want to throw out but hadn't found a use for yet. After a coat of white semigloss it was ready for the next step. (You'll have to pardon the lack of "in the process" pictures. I was so excited I totally forgot to take them!)

We picked up a piece of thin sheet metal from our local Home Depot and Mike measured and cut it to size for me (we don't have any special metal cutting tools, I think he just used some tin snips).

Once the metal was cut to size, I liberally applied some mod podge to it and covered it in some heavy paper i'd gotten a while back at the art supply store (this was apparently the project for making use of stuff I had lying around). I used gloss mod podge for this because I wanted it to be a little shiney (btw, mod podge is my new favorite thing), and after it dried I coated it all in a clear top coat (the tutorial mentioned that mod podge can make the surface a little sticky, and it did. The top coat gave it a smoother feel and weighed the paper down a bit so there weren't any bubbles.).

I put the metal in the frame and put the backing back on, just like normal.

Than I hot glued some round magnets to the backs of my make up, and tossed on some small magnetic boxes id picked up at ikea, and was done. The whole project took about 3 hours and cost about $30 (the most expensive thing was the sheet metal at around $20).



Fab little birdie paper

The finished product! And my lovely purple walls :D

From the side. Note the lovely little boxes from Ikea. I think I may mod podge those too lol

I am super happy about being able to reuse things that I wasnt sure what to do with but didnt have the heart to throw away, make something fun to hang on the wall in our newly painted bathroom, and find a functional place for my makeup!

Hope you were able to make it over the hump this week!!

~~Love~~
~~GG~~

Tutorial: Crochet Vintage Cascade Cowl

Hello all!

I have gotten some emails and requests for a little tutorial on how to make my lovely vintage-y style cowl. Again, this is a LionBrand pattern that I followed, but I'll show how to do the basic stitches.

As I said in my other post, if you can double crochet (treble for the UK ladies) then you can handle this pattern.

I'm assuming that most are at least slightly experienced in crochet, so I'm not going to do a beginning-to-end step-by-step tutorial. This is just to show the two basic stitches that make up this pattern, the double crochet (dc), and double crocheting two stitches together (dc2tog).

Tutorial: A Helmet for Logan

My best friend of 22 years (or my "bestest of all best friends" as we call each other) has a beautiful little boy who turned 1 last week. I knew that I wanted to make him a little something special (to go along with the mountains of toys I knew he was going to get!).

His father is from Iceland, and we joke about him being a Viking, so I decided that I was going to make little Logan a Viking helmet, right down to the horns!

I decided to make it out of felt, because its not only very soft, but holds its shape well and is pretty easy to sew. I started with a sheet of steel gray, a sheet of white, and a sheet of a mottled brown that looked a little like wood.

I rounded the edges of the gray, making the straight edge approx. 10 inches wide (which makes a total of 20" for the hat. I measured this on my 2 yr olds head, so its a bit big, but he'll grow into it).

Tutorial: Crochet Baby Blanket

Finally!! i've been working on this blanket literally for months, but i've finally finished it up and delivered it!

Lovely little baby blanket in white and "Her blue jeans" bernat verrigated

This was made for alittle lady named Anna Victoria, so I stitched her initials in the corner. This was my first real time trying to stitch on crochet, and while i think it could look a little better,

I think it turned out pretty well, and her mommy LOVED it!!

It was a really easy pattern that I pretty much just made up lol!

For my crochet ladies who might be interested:

sc 150 chains, chain 3 to turn

hdc 150 back down the row, 3 sc to turn, change colors

dc 150 down the row, 3 sc to turn, change colors

and thats it! just keep changing colors and stitches as you go until its the size you want.

~~Love~~

~~GG~~

Tutorial: Wearing your baby, a DIY Baby Sling

I finally made my sling! I've had the fabric sitting around since I found out I was pregnant with my youngest, and now that hes 2, I figured it was time to make it (while he was still small enough to use it! lol)

For me personally, it not only lets me be more hands free, but it helps my back, posture and my oh-so-tired arms when I have to carry around my little Zach (AKA the Pit).

Now granted, my little guy is now a big 2 yr old, but there are those occasions when we're walking around a lot and dont have the stroller, these things are an absolute life saver.

Tutorial: DIY Light Box

Yesterday, my darling fiancé and I took on a little DIY project. He paints miniatures (his "little men" as I call them) for a game called Warhammer (check out his blog!: http://mikedthreeb.blogspot.com/ ), but he needed a light box to be able to photograph them (find out about light boxes here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_box and here http://www.studiolighting.net/homemade-light-box-for-product-photography/ ). So he whipped together a quick frame (just some 1/2 inch dowel rods, nailed together to make 3 sides. Bottom measurement is approx. 18", height was 13"), and I attached some light, white muslin to the sides, and one full piece for the bottom, back and top (just quickly straight stitched on my singer, nothing super complicated, honestly).

Tutorial: Learned something new!- Blind Hem

I got to spend some time Sunday with my mentor/sewing inspiration/all around coolest lady ever, my grandma. I had brought my bag of sewing projects (things I was fixing/altering for my "paying" customers lol) so I could get her advice on a certain pair of pants that were giving me some trouble. So she jumps on her (no lie) 50 year old singer sewing machine that still works like a dream, and proceeds to show me something called a blind hem. I'd seen the stitch on my machine before and had no clue what it did or what it was for (on the machine, it looks something like this: __/\__/\__). Once she showed me how to use it, it was a little bit of an "oh crap" moment for me. I'd seen her do stitches like that on my pants before, but never knew how she'd done it (I thought it was some sort of grandma magic).