(Re) Chic

I love to try new things, so being inspired by some of my crafty Facebook groups I decided I wanted to monogram a purse. And then this amazing thing happened...I found one at Walmart for $5.  That's right $5!!! So I created my (current) monogram in a swirly font and cut it out, excited to have a personalized purse. Well, this is why we always do test subjects first.  Because I melted it. No really...I melted it.                          It just goes to show you that we're always learning!

So the Ugly Christmas Sweater thing has become a trend and I had found a design that someone had shared on this Silhouette group that I follow that I really wanted to use to try out some Heat Transfer Vinyl I had purchased online. Cue Megan-December Birthday-Best Friend-and Ugly Christmas Sweater/T-shirt Connoisseur So as a bonus add-in for the mug I made her for her birthday I decided to make her a t-shirt. First of all, I wish I could give a cookie to whoever uploaded this design on Facebook cause its hilarious and probably took way more patience than I will ever have to do something this cool. Silhouette Cut File .   Cause once the design was cut I had to pick out all the little in-between pieces of vinyl from the design (the technical term is "weeding") and I kinda wanted to shoot my eye out (yes that was a blatant Christmas movie reference) Tiny little pieces The other thing that was nice about this file was that I didn't have to worry about remembe...

So this is my first time ever making a "too order" item with vinyl.  While I was visiting her in Canton my bestie, Megan, mentioned that she needed a new coffee mug, and having not found one I was determined to make her one for her birthday gift.  However, since her birthday was the 1st week in December (yesterday actually) and I was seeing her over Thanksgiving...I wanted to make it early so she could actually get to use it ON her birthday.   So first there were the "requirements" what kind of mug, how big, color options, what its made of etc.  I had no idea finding a mug to someone's specific specifications was so difficult.  She wanted a to-go mug to take back and forth from the office but she wanted it to be plastic rather than the metal ones that are popular right now.  She preferred no handle but if it had a handle she wanted to make sure she could fit more than one finger in it (if she's thinking like me I'm always worried my chubby fingers wi...

As I may have mentioned previously I have wanted to put in more time with my Silhouette Cameo machine.  So I decided to try my hand at some vinyl on a mug I found at my local Dollar Tree.  Below you will see my Silhouette machine cutting my design.           My Silhouette at work So once the vinyl is cut I had the wonderful task of weeding, the term the crafting community uses for grabbing all the unwanted vinyl pieces from the design.  I bought a back of tweezers at the Dollar Tree to use just for this purchase, since the weeding tool Silhouette sells is about $13. And here are the results.    Weeding Complete And then all I did was pick it up with some transfer tape and moved it onto the mug.  Getting transferred However, I made the mistake of not cleaning the cup with alcohol before I put the vinyl on so it sort of slid around on the cups some making the smaller letters all wonky.  I also wasn't super pl...

So this has been something I'd been wanting to try ever since I saw all these tutorials on Pinterest about how to use freezer paper as a cheap and easy stencil.   Well the first problem was finding freezer paper, all I had was wax paper, which doesn't really work because the point is to iron the waxy part to the shirt...NOT get waxy build-up all over your iron...but the only thing they had at Wal-Mart was a HUGE roll of it...so I'm pretty prepared for awhile.   I used simple designs and cut them using my Silhouette onto the freezer paper (waxy side down onto cutting mat).   Yes, I know my mat is upside down, but a bad setting cut through the top half.  As you can see, it did a pretty good number on some of the letters, I was going to do another design, but it was so ripped up I couldn't even use it as a stencil.  So just be aware that you want a pretty big, forgivable design, no skinny cutesy fonts here.   Blurry picture of an ancient iron A...

I have been trying to think of things to do with my Silhouette Machine for quite awhile now, I had made t-shirts for Megan and I to go to the Price is Right but since then I have done NOTHING! Strangely enough during my family's unfortunate circumstances I was surprised to find this woman on a Silhouette Facebook group I follow have the same thing happen to her, and she posted this tile she had made with a beautiful sentiment on it.  She kindly provided me the Silhouette cut file and I was able to adjust it to fit what I thought would be best. About a month ago I had found a shadowbox at the thrift store that was exactly what I had been looking for, larger than the 12x12 but not huge.  I brought it to the counter and she informed me that there was a whole SET of shadowboxes for the (cheap!) price of $5.99.  $6 and 8 shadowboxes later, I was on my way home.  The largest of the set that had first caught my eye I used to put some photographs with a t-shirt from my l...