No commitment Halloween wreath plus an almost funny story

Now that it is 10 days before Halloween, you've probably seen enough wreaths to last you until next year.

But humor me, kay? Because I like mine.

I love the colors (purple is a GREAT Halloween color!) I love the polka dots, I love the arglye-ish wrap around ribbon thing I did. Love the spider web ribbon tied in bows. It's just cool.

But why is it called "no commitment?"

Because not one thing is cut, glued, or permanently altered in any kind of way.

See? That's all pinned down!

Let me tell you a story.

It's 11pm. Amie is blogging, David is playing some kind of MMORPG. Suddenly.

"THAT'S IT!!!!"

David sees his wife suddenly stand up, put her laptop down, and stomp over to her craft area. (Area, not room. sad face.) She starts pulling random things off shelves, digging through the mess under the air hockey table, and plops herself down on the floor with a big pile of stuff.

".........honey? What are you doing?"

"Making a wreath!!!"

"....why?"

"Because it's Halloween!!!"

"Whatever you want honey."

You see, all of our Halloween decorations are in a storage unit 20 miles away. And to find a chunk of time long enough to drive down, pick it all up, drive back, and put it all up is kind of impossible. So we decided to forgo getting all of it and just do without decorations.

I immediately regretted that decision. Halloween is my FAVE-O-RITE holiday. How can I NOT decorate? I tried to suppress the urge. I mean come on, we live in a basement. All our stuff is crammed into, onto, and under all our furniture. We don't have defined spaces, it's mostly just one big room. In short: it's really hard to decorate. No mantels, one window, no front door, no shelves that aren't completely full of crap. Ugh.

I failed at suppressing. I just snapped at late last week and grabbed a whole bunch of stuff. Two rolls of black tulle, a roll of orange polka dot ribbon, purple polka dot ribbon, spider web ribbon, and an old wooden wreath form. I was about to grab my glue gun when I thought "Wait....Amie you HAVE a Halloween wreath. You shouldn't make another one."

Yes, but I don't have it HERE. I compromised my challenging myself to make the wreath without cutting or gluing anything. So essentially I could just unwind everything, roll it back up, and use all the materials for something else.

And I succeeded! I tied the tulle around the wreath and wrapped away. I taped the ribbon down in the back and wrapped that around too, pinning it when I was done. Did the same for the purple ribbon. And I took all three yards of that spider web ribbing and tied over a dozen little bows from one continuous strip. Pinned those down too. BOO YA.

Essentially, I can take the whole thing apart and have perfectly usable materials again. But we both no that probably won't happen, mostly because I am very lazy I like it too much. Plus it was totally free, which is awesome.

Oh, that weird mess of orange ribbon at the top WAS the hang-y thing-y. But it didn't work so we wrapped it  up. Ignore it please.

Have you ever made a non commitment craft before? Share with me!

Shirred t shirt makeover

THANK YOU to everyone who has offered to guest post! Thanks to you, I'll be able to have my entire week filled with posts AND still get everything done I need to. Huzzah! Look for some amazing guest posts this week. Seriously, there are some wickedly talented ladies out there.

You might remember that I was in quite the funk just a little bit ago. I had lost my mojo and was so blah for few weeks. My friend {Crystal} helped get me out of it with a challenge to makeover a t shirt! This was such a fun challenge! I was so excited to coordinate with Crystal on this! It really helped spark my creativity, it helped me get my mojo back!

I love how it turned out! Flared waist, flared sleeves, shirring, pleats, color contrast, yay! I was inspired by the colors of fall, I can't wait for it to get a little cooler!

I also model part time. True story! Ok...not a true story. You wanna make one? You will need:

• T shirt a size or two larger than what you normally wear
• Scissors 
• Disappearing ink pen, mark be gone pen
• Rotary cutter/mat (not necessary, but will be helpful when cutting hems off!)
• Extra wide bias tape, four yards. I used a three yard pack and I was one inch short! (NOTE: ribbing would have probably been better here, but I didn't have any)
• Elastic thread
• Ball point needle for sewing with knits
• Sewing stuff: machine, matching thread, extra needles, all that stuff. 

And just as a note, I used 1/2" seams for this whole project unless otherwise noted.

Start with a t shirt a size or two larger than the size you wear to give you a little wiggle room and more fabric to work with.This is just a plain old brown t shirt from Jo-ann, got it on sale! (Still on sale, you can buy it {here})

Take that shirt that fits and turn it right side out. Shove the sleeves in and lay it directly centered on your t shirt. Using a fabric marking pen, trace around your shirt with a 5/8ish inch or so for seam allowance. I decided to flare out the bottom of the shirt, and make it a little more flowy.

Cut it out! Fold it in half before cutting to ensure that both sides are even. (It's much more flared I just couldn't get it all in the picture)

Pin and sew up the sides (right sides together!) using a zig zag stitch so the fabric can still stretch. Don't sew through the arm holes, unless you want to go for the straight jacket type look.

Next, sleeves. I used the original sleeve because I wanted it to flare out slightly too. To make it fit, I ruffled it a bit. To do this, run the sleeve through the sewing machine using the longest straight stitch possible and 1/4" seam allowance, leaving long threads. Then, gently pull the bobbin thread, and it'll start to gather! Ruffle it up until the sleeve is the same size as the arm hole.

Pin the sleeve on, right sides together, and sew. I like to double stitch my sleeves, since they tend to get pulled on a lot. Sleeves: good! Collar: not so much. Had to get rid of that t shirty collar.

Collar, meet scissors! I cut right under the original ribbing.

I added binding around the collar, to help it lay more flat. It may look funny in the back...that's because I was literally 1 inch short of binding! I however, am too stubborn to let it fly, so I created one tiny little pleat in the back to make up that extra inch.

See? One little pleat. Nothing fancy, but it did the job! And added a little bit extra interest. Ignore the terrible binding job. My getting way too long hair will hide it.

I also added binding to the bottom! I am lazy and I didn't feel like hemming one single thing. :D

When I thought I was done, I realized that something was missing. I thought about it a little, and then decided to add a bit of shirring right under the bust!

I had never successfully executed shirring, so this was rather exciting! I followed {this} awesome tutorial to get it right. I loved it, I can't wait to use this technique again!

Professional model. I tell ya. 

If this was confusing at all check out {this} t shirt redo I did last winter. It covers everything much more thoroughly. I was a little lazy and didn't go over it as much in depth this time around since it's very similar. 

Linking up {here}

Tradings Posts- Fall wreathes

I know, I'm a bit late on this one! It all happened during my bloggy break. You should read {Caroline's post} because she took wayyy more pictures than I did! Actually...now that I'm rereading her post it will totally put my post to shame, so just save yourself some time and hop on over to see all of it. And I only took pictures of the finished product. Fail Amie.

I blame pertussis. Stupid whooping cough.

Anyway! After a long summer hiatus we finally were able to get together to make some wreathes! I honestly can't remember the last time I made a wreath...I'm not really a wreath person. It might be because I don't have a front door on account of living in a basement but that's beside the point.

This is Caroline's. Isn't it GORGEOUS? She used a fabulous braiding technique and threw that beautiful purple in with her fall colors. I helped her turn a lot of those fabric tubes inside out, so I will hereby claim this wreath to be 20% mine. ;)

This one is mine, a yarn wrapped wreath! This took so. much. yarn. Oh my goodness, Caroline and I were twisting and gluing and twisting and gluing and twisting and gluing until our fingers ached! I do like the result though, its so textural and I love all the colors together!

The best part? It's made out of a $1.50 pipe insulator from Home Depot. Yup! Even though I knew we were making wreathes, I somehow blanked on bringing my wreath form. I remembered the yarn and the felt, but not the wreath! So Caroline took me to Home Depot and we picked up the pipe insulator. Add some duct tape, some batting, and a whole lotta yarn, and BAM! A fall wreath!

Have you made any wreathes lately? Leave me a link!

Things in the future, and things from the past!

I have quite a few posts I am working on! I have two crafty tutorials already finished and in the process of writing, a food tutorial, a trading posts, and THREE tutorials in the works! It's quite a lot of writing, so in the meantime, I thought it would be good to revisit some of my old fall/Halloween posts! The blog has grown quite a bit since last fall, so most of you have probably never even seen them!

It's like CHRISTMAS!! Except I hate Christmas until Black Friday. I know, total Scrooge, but you CANNOT get me to do anything Christmasy AT ALL until after Thanksgiving. No music, no decorations, no presents, no NOTHING.

Anyway, back to fall.

{Picture Pumpkin Block}

{Paint Chip Pumpkins}

{Changing Leaves Wall Art}

{Felt Trick of Treat Bag}

{Trick or Treat Bucket}

{Fall Leaf Napkin Ring}

{Fall Inspired Apron}

And don't forger last year's Halloween costumes! Quite the endeavor, but it was a blast!

{Halloween Costumes}

It was weird to go back and read all of those! I sound so different...yet the same. Does that make sense? Anyway, hope you enjoy this recap! Hopefully this fall I'll add a lot more posts!