Would You Wear This (or Even Buy It)?

Thanks to everyone who sent me well wishes on my last What I Wore Wednesday post. Turns out what I thought was pink eye (and it possibly started as) turned out to be sinusitis and iritis, which meant nearly two weeks of misery, but I’m back. :)
This week I wanted to play with some of my accessories, many of which I made myself. I have contemplated making and selling these on Etsy. (I have a shop but nothing in it.) So let me know would YOU wear this? Or would you want to buy it if I were to sell them? Thanks!
Last Friday’s outfit, my favorite polka dot shirt and new flats. I made the necklace out of recycled plastic and my earrings are vintage buttons. Close-up of the necklace. I recycled plastic into “shrinky dinks” put writing on them, shrinking them, and then sealing it with Mod Podge. (Tutorial found here.) It’s hard to tell here but there is a cluster of charms-each one a family member’s name, then a black silhouette of a temple with Together Forever written underneath, and a little purple heart. I love this necklace and wear it quite often. (I’ll show you a pic of the earrings farther in the post.)
There’s the necklace again. :) This outfit is from Saturday morning. The hubs and I went on a morning date. (Thanks to Laura for watching the kiddos.) We ended up going to a The Nature Fest. I had heard about it last year, so we decided to check it out. Awesome. Next year we will take the kiddos for sure. This guy (err…gal) was part of one of the shows there. The picture does not do this African Vulture justice, she was HUGE and amazing!

Later that day we had to go to the wedding of a friend.  So, I had these great plans of making a sash to wear over my old standby of a black dress. After lots of hours and way too much fabric. I ended up with this 80’s prom looking thing.  On the way to the wedding, I took the toll way. The toll booth attendant asked me if I was going to a wedding or something. I said I was. She said, “Your dress looks nice. She actually picked out a pretty good dress.”  I guess she thought I was a bridesmaid or something, totally not the response I intended. So future bride’s, consider having your bridesmaids wear matching sashes instead of matching dresses. Just a thought. (I will totally rework this one before selling some or even wear it again.)

Sunday’s outfit. Thought I would try the tucked-in shirt/high-waisted pencil skirt combo, I’ve seen a lot of lately. What do you think? It’s kind of growing on me. I added  a ruffled denim sash/belt, a simple denim knot necklace, and some denim flower shoe clips for added color. The sash needs to be tweaked,  the necklace might be repurposed but I love these flower clips.  Love them! I made the pair in about 5 minutes and just clipped them on to my shoes. I was constantly looking down at these beauties all through church.
 
Monday’s outfit. Loving the finally cooler weather, I could actually wear jeans! Please cool morning’s don’t go away just yet, stick around a few more weeks (or more). I am so done with Texas heat. Anyway…. I added a pink and white flower clip to my necklace. Cute but it kept flopping around, so I eventually ditched the necklace for the day.
Tuesday was a busy crazy day. Let’s just say there was furniture moving, some crying, plenty of whining, an appointment we were late for, lot’s of laundry, some one falling from the top of the dog house, and twice the usual amount of children running through the house. By the end of the day, I realized I hadn’t taken a picture of my typical fitted tee and jeans combo, but I had snot, tears, peanut butter, and pizza sauce all over me. So I’ll spare you the picture, but know it happens to all of us.

For Wednesday’s outfit, I thought I’d play with my denim flower clips ( the same ones I clipped on my shoes).  I wrapped an old bangle in a spare piece of denim and clipped the flower to my wire necklace.  Close up.

Then changed it up and clipped it to my shirt.

Then my hair. I eventually clipped it to the elastic band on my ponytail. Perfect for a playdate-and-clean-up kind of day.

And a close-up of my favorite button earrings, vintage Osh-Kosh-B-Gosh denim colored buttons. I have more and will definitely post these in my Etsy shop (eventually).
And to finish it off the outfit, my favorite, a perfectly polished polka dotted pedicure. Try saying that 5 times fast! :)
So what do you think? Would you buy or even wear any of those accessories? If you’re interested in buying once I get my Etsy shop going, leave me your email and I’ll let you know once I have items posted. Thanks everyone!

Linking to:

Scrapbook Pages That Recycle

Scrapbook Pages That Recycle
I found this article in my email inbox and wanted to share. I'm all for recycling and some of these ideas are just pure genius!

A few of my favorites:

Using soda can pop tabs embellished with ribbon as "tabs" in a photo album. I am so going to find a way to use this. But first, to collect some tabs...

Using packaging plastic as embellishments on your page. Like the icicles and word "ice" on this page...

And the painted butterflies on this page.

Check out more great ideas here!

Zippers!

Adventures in Dressmaking has a new sponsor, Zipit, and she’s giving away free zippers. Check out the giveaway here or go to Zipit’s etsy page for great deals on zippers. I will definitely buy some when I have a need for zippers. Or maybe I’ll just buy an assorted pack and let myself be inspired. :)

Nicknames

As you may have noticed, I’ve been linking to a lot of other craft blog’s link parties.  So I’ve been thinking that I should come up with some nicknames for the family. I created this blog separate from the family blog to help protect our privacy (and identities) and using nicknames would also help that (rather than having to say my youngest son, my little girl, yada, yada, yada). A lot of bloggers do this for those reasons. One of my favorite bloggers refers to her sons as “Sawyer and Finn” (i.e. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn). I totally thought those were her sons’ real names, until she slipped with her daughter’s real name and I put two and two together. Now that’s a good cover… So here are our new nicknames for reference purposes on this blog.

This is me…

  You know me as “Crafty Kricket” or Marissa. Of course I won’t refer to myself that way. That would just  be weird. BTW, this picture was taken by my 4 yr. old, pretty good, eh? So why we’re on the topic, let me explain “Crafty Kricket.” It is kind of a homage to my good parents. My mom is a crafty person and thus taught us, at a very young age, to be crafty (as in the artsy kind) and resourceful. My dad jokingly wanted to name me “cricket” with a “K” when I was born. Of course, my mom wouldn’t allow it, but that’s just my dad’s humor. Which, according to my husband, I have inherited and taught my children.  :)

This guy…

will be known as “My hubbie” or “the hubs” because, well, he’s my husband. I think that one would be kind of obvious. :)

This little guy…

We will now refer to as “Monkey.” He is my crazy one. He likes to climb, make mischief, and just keep me busy in general. Yes, he even loves bananas. I mean L-O-V-E, LOVES bananas. No banana is safe in our home. And of course, he’s a goofball. This picture was totally posed, just like almost every picture I try to take.

This little girl…

 

We’ll call her “Bee.” I went back and forth on this one for a while but she seems to like “Bee” so we’ll go with that. She is a cute bubbly little girl. She is always busy doing something and doing it quickly. You have to be quick if you want to take her picture. But watch out, if you make her angry, she will attack you. Seriously…

And last but not least we have this guy…

The jury is still out on his nickname. He is the oldest and a great big brother to his siblings. He loves Legos and drawing, and he’s good at both. I’m talking REALLY good. Plus, he’s smart.  I was thinking we could call him “Art,” or maybe “Bud,” that’s his nickname at home. But neither of those really go well with “Monkey” and “Bee.” So, I think we’ll go with “Bean.” Bean? you ask…well, he’s growing like a bean pole. (Seriously, this kid never stops eating). Plus, he reminds me a little of Mr.. Bean. You know that goofy oddball kind of humor. (Plus, Bean, Monkey, and Bee sounds cool together.) I don’t know what do you think? Any ideas?

So that’s it. Our crazy, funny, crafty family. Man, I love ‘em. :)

What I Wore Wednesday #1

Have you seen these floating around blogland lately? Basically everyone documents what they wear all week and then share in a link party. As of lately, I have had a hard time motivating myself to do anything productive. It’s nice when all the moms just wear their PJ’s and work out clothes to the bus stop in the morning. :) So, I thought I’d try this and see if it motivated me to get stuff done (and actually dressed before lunchtime)! Sure enough it worked. I got twice as much done this week as I did the week before. Unfortunately, I got pink eye (or some variation of an eye infection), so I only have pictures for four days. I’ll save you the horribleness that is my eye right now.

Thursday (9/2)

Top: Cato

Tank: Old Navy

Necklace: Bought at a stand at Four Corners (Colorado side I think) 8 years ago

Earrings: Made by me

Shorts: Thrifted and hemmed into shorts by me

Shoes: Walmart (with white fabric rosette added by me)

Friday (9/3)

Shirt: Aeropostale

Tank: Target

Skirt: Old Navy (thrifted)

Earrings: Charming Charlie

Bracelet: Bought at a craft fair in Brazil (3 years ago)

Sandals: Target

Saturday (9/4) I forgot to take a picture, so this is one the hubs took of me while we were at a jazz concert in the park. (BTW, soooo much fun!)

Shirt: Old Navy

Tank: Target

Shorts: Thrifted

Earrings: Charming Charlie

Sunglasses: Wal-mart

I wore the same sandals as the outfit before.

Sunday (9/5) See my left squinty eye? Yeah, that’s me in denial that something is wrong with my eye. But when hubbie sees you in the hallway after church and blurts out, “What’s wrong with your eye?!” It’s time to face facts….

Wrap Dress: Bought in Brazil (3 years ago)

Tank: Old Navy

Cardigan: Thrifted

Earrings: Charming Charlie

Shoes: Target

So that’s it for this week. I’ve pretty much just stayed in my glasses, a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops the last few days. Hopefully, my eye will be better soon, so that I can try this again.

Linked to:

Bulletin Board Redo

I saw these old pictures and figured it was past time to post about this….So, I had this ugly bulletin board that I wanted to hang (for function purposes) in our main living area. I wanted to use it to post notes and the kids’ artwork. Unfortunately, it was very plain and uninspiring. 

{Before}

So when our Wal-mart was clearing out their fabric section (still sad about that), I grabbed some cute home decor fabric at 1/2 off. 

1) I painted the frame with some brown latex paint that I had for another project.

2) I’ve seen many of these redo's using some kind of picture frame and then you add the cork. If I had done it that way I would have wrapped the fabric around the back of the cork before putting it in the frame, BUT my cork was already eternally bonded to the frame. So…I cut my fabric to fit the size of the corkboard. Then I sprayed the cork with spray adhesive (side note: make sure you tape off the frame and cover ALL of your surrounding area or it will be messy). Then I laid the fabric on the cork, smoothing it out as I went.

3)My edges were pretty rough looking, so I hot glued ribbon along the inside edge of the frame to cover the edge of the fabric. It also helped give it some contrast since my frame and my fabric were both brown.

4) I let it sit overnight to  make sure the spray adhesive was set. Then, I hung it on my wall. It sits right below my “family” wall hanging (which you can kind of see in the picture).

{After}

It was so cute, I almost couldn’t bring my self to start tacking stuff up on it. But alas, it’s function was needed. Now it holds drawings and reminders, lunch calendars and appointment cards, and you can barely see how beautiful it is (I’ll save you from the pity of that picture). Every now and then I clear away some of the clutter on it to see the cuteness again. I made this almost a year ago and it’s still in great shape so I think it’s safe to say that the redo worked. :)

Linked to:

Cute dresser redo from "Das Sushi"

This cute little armoire was a redo of a falling apart dresser. So cute it makes me wish that Aubrey were a little older so I could make one with our crummy dresser. Check it out here--> das Sushi: Cheeseball's New Armoire