Bad to Rad! - DIY clothing alterations and upcycling

Recently, I've been wanting to be a little more fashionable since I'm usually a big bum and wear scrubs most of the time at school!

I've always been a fan of upcycling, so I figure I'd try it out for myself.  I went to my local Goodwill and picked up a few pieces of clothing to mess around with.  Of course they're not the most beautiful (and probably are along the lines of being old lady-ish), but I had a vision for each of them!

The pink lace cardigan/jacket had an ugly stretchy synthetic fabric shirt attached to it.  I just simply removed the attached shirt by cutting it out and tying up loose ends to create a cute lace cardigan!  I've seen these around in the store for a LOT of money, but this only cost me $5!  What a steal!  I'm currently considering replacing the buttons with some vintage buttons my mom has, but we'll see.

As for this pair of capris , they were fine by themselves, but I really wanted a pair of pastel colored pants for a bird shirt that I had previous bought!  I simply bought a bottle of Tulip liquid dye (grapefruit color) and dyed the pants over the stove!  I followed the directions on the bottle and it turned out WAY better than I expected!

Lastly, I got this grandma shirt that has all of these pleats and this weird fold over flap thing.   I really liked the mint green color with the polka dots, so I had to take this one!  This one isn't as straightforward as the other two and requires a lot more deconstruction and resewing.  I'm not done with this one, but I'll post it when I'm finished!

Giga Pudding - DIY giant flan

I gotta admit that I'm a HUGE fan of flan, so when I saw the Giga Pudding commercial I wanted to try it for myself!

(If you've never heard of "Giga Pudding", watch the video below!)

We don't have the official Giga Pudding kit here and I didn't want to spend big bucks on buying a kit online, so I tried making it by myself (aka winging it)!

The kit itself comes with a bucket, giant spoon, and flan mix.

What I used instead were:

• A sand bucket (which was easy to find since it's the summer time!)
• 2 boxes of flan mix (or more depending on how much you want to make)
• Spray oil
• Optional - Sand shovel

 

For this project, I used 2 boxes of Goya Spanish-styled flan since my bucket fit about 8 cups and I didn't want to make too much.

I sprayed the inside of the bucket with oil to make it easier for the flan to come out when the time came to flip it over.

Basically, I followed the recipe written on the box.  The boxes came with the caramel topping, so I put that on the bottom of the bucket.  This particular type is made on the stove, so I followed the directions and poured it into the bucket afterwards.  At first, I was worried about the bucket melting since the flan mixture was so hot, but luckily the plastic was thick enough and nothing happened.  Just keep the plastic thickness in mind when buying your bucket (just to be safe)!

I covered the bucket and put it in the fridge until it's firm.  My mom let me know that it was ready at around 6 hours of being in the fridge, but we waited until lunch the next day to eat it.

Taking it out of the bucket was probably the most nerve-wracking part.  I've seen plenty of real Giga Pudding fails, so I was prepared for failure.

To take the pudding out , I placed a plate on the top of the bucket, and flipped both the plate and the bucket over.

It took some time/wiggling/smacking to get the pudding out, but it finally came out! :)

We even took a video of it, so watch the unveiling below!

Overall, great experience, fun, and great for parties, get-togethers, or just because!  If you try it, let me know how it goes!

Dying to dye! - DIY ombre clothing

My wonderful friend Grace called me on Monday wondering if I wanted to have a craft day with her! Of course it was an offer I could not refuse. ;-) 

Since I left the choice up to her about what she would like to do, she suggested doing some ombre stuff.   I picked up some royal blue Rit powered dye and Grace (who is showing our test t-shirt) brought some clothes for us to mess around with.

We found LOTS of ombre dying tutorials on pinterest, but we kinda decided to wing it and combined a bunch of tutorials together. 

First we prepared the Rit dye according to the off the stove instructions minus 1 gallon of water.  We also had a bucket filled with ice and water. Please excuse the ghetto-ness of using a stick as a stirring rod. As I said, we were winging it.

Before dying, we got the clothes wet with water, which apparently is supposed to help the dye climb up the clothes and create a softer gradient.  

Then we dipped the bottom of the clothes into the dye bath and allowed some of the dye to climb up the garment a bit above the bath surface.

The dyed clothes were then dipped into the cold water bath a little above where the dye stopped for a bit.

Again, the clothes are dipped in the dye bath higher than where the dye had stopped previously.  After allowing the dye to climb, place it in the cold water bath again as before.

Basically we repeated this process over and over again until we were happy with the results.  As Grace pointed out to me, the ombre effect is really due to the TIME that the garment remains in the dye, so keep this in mind if you try this.

 

In the end, we were pretty happy with the results and tried it with other clothes!!!

 

But be warned - you might want to do this with gloves or else you'll end up like this!

Hole-y Moley! - Patching holey jeans

Sorry for the very late update!

School has been pretty busy with midterms and various projects, so time has been tight!  Also, I was drawing a blank on what to do for my next project that wouldn't be too time consuming and would be able to be done within my apartment since the pollen this year has been HORRIFIC.  My noses keeps running and my eyes have been itching and watering like crazy. :(

When a friend suggested that I sew something, the light went off!  One of my favorite pairs of skinny jeans had developed a hole in the left knee much to my dismay, so I thought it would be a great chance to fix it!

 

The idea came from Designmom.com's 4 Secrets to a Well-Mended Wardrobe via pinterest.

I did do a few things differently since I didn't have fusion paper and didn't want to spend and arm & a leg on getting some.  I'm a clearance shopper, so while digging through Joann's clearance items, I stumbled upon some Heat Set Glue for 97 cents!  What a deal! :)

 

As in the original post, I also purchased a fat quarter and some matching embroidery thread.

 

Before cutting the fat quarter, I soaked in boiling water for 5 minutes (as per my mom's instructions) to prevent it from shrinking AFTER putting on my jeans and washing it for the first time.  I let it dry overnight and ironed it flat.  My mom also suggested that if you wanted to dry it much quicker, just iron it while it's still wet.

I previously measured how big I wanted my patch, and used those measurements to cut out my patch with a rotary cutters.

On the jeans, I cut off the excess strings and fluff, and turned the pants inside out.

I pinned one side of the patch to the pants to make sure it stayed where I wanted it to.  I then added a thin layer of glue to all edges of the patch and ironed  the patch according to the glue's instructions.

 

 

I then added some little hand embroidered stars for a little extra decoration and some extra security.

I wore these the next day and they were FANTASTIC.  Everything stayed together and the hole didn't get bigger at all.

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And a preview for the next few projects - RESIN JEWELRY EXPERIMENTS!  I'll be done with school for the summer and hopefully the pollen will die down by then, so I can head outside and get the proper ventilation for these projects. :)

Also - my mom said I could do some of these jewelry kits she got from Taiwan, so look out for those!