Woman's DIY Muscle Shirt

Is it just me, or are woman's muscle shirts trending? While cruising Michael's, I snagged this awesome Wonder Woman t-shirt decal for a great clearance price. I knew I wanted a muscle shirt, but I didn't want to just cut the sleeves off a tee and call it a day. I found this tutorial for creating a tank top from an old t-shirt. This tutorial is perfect, you get the comfiness of a t-shirt and the top is sleeveless and slightly fitted like a tank. Best of all...NO SEWING!

DIY Photo Blocks

Everyone, especially grandparents, LOVE photo gifts all year long! I've seen where you can order these online but if you've got a little time to spare, you can make these photo blocks yourself!

Have you ever walked around the craft store and were struck with inspiration? You get home and go online only to find someone else already came up with this? Yeah, so apparently I didn't invent these DIY photo blocks. What the heck, I'll share it anyway. It's a good reminder to get those photos out of your camera, phone and computers!

You need:

Wood Block(Michael's $4.69, don't forget to look for coupons!)

Photos

Mod Podge

Scissors or paper trimmer

Foam brush

These blocks are about 3 ½ squares so 4x6 photos will need to be trimmed. Take the time to make sure photos are cut evenly. The fastest way I found was to make a square template. I cut my photos slightly smaller than the square. Before I stuck on photos, I painted the corners of the cube black. Since there will be no photo on the bottom I painted that black as well.

Using a foam brush, I applied a thin layer of Mod Podge to one side of block. Carefully position the photo onto the block and press down. Repeat for all sides and allow to dry. You'll probably have to wait for a couple sides to dry before you can do the other sides. You don't want the Mod Podge to smudge or photos to move before they are dry. 

Use a white pen or paint to write a message or the year on the bottom of the block. After the first layer of Mod Podge dries, do another layer of Mod Podge on top of the photos on all sides. Allow block to dry thoroughly before handling.

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Embellished Onesies

I have a new baby niece! While going through my daughter's baby clothes, I found four plain white Onesies. Since summer is on the way and she lives in the south, these definitely would be worn alone instead of used for layering. I immediately went in search of ways to style them up!

The first, and probably my favorite, is this heart doily design. I first dyed fabric with Rit dye. The free doily pattern comes from Red Heart. I crocheted it with a 1.65 hook. After pressing with an iron, I pinned onto the Onesie and used my sewing machine with a zigzag stitch to secure.

You can't decorate Onesies without doing at least one with necklaces! There are a billion tutorials online. I chose to mark the cloth with chalk first to make sure it would be even. Next I used my trusty dimensional fabric paint(puffy paint) to make the "beads". I crocheted a small flower with cotton yarn, added a button and hand sewed on.

For this one, I channeled Sex In The City's Carrie Bradshaw and made a gold name necklace! Again I dyed fabric with Rit dye. I drew the name on a piece of paper using dark ink and I put the paper inside the shirt. To make sure I could see the design through the fabric, I made a makeshift light box with a small glass end table and a desk lamp flipped upside down. Very carefully I used glitter dimensional fabric paint to trace the name design.

One more Onesie to go and you know how much I love Matryoshka dolls! I found a free printable from Design Is Yay and printed onto t-shirt transfer paper. After ironing on, I used dimensional fabric paint to add a design around the transfer.

I've had so much fun with this project! It's probably a good thing I only found 4 Onesies because I think I could have kept going!

Can you tell I love puffy paint? A few tips to remember are when using...1.)take your time! 2.)make sure there are no air bubbles 3.)allow to dry completely before you think about touching it!

Like DIY baby gifts?

Diaper cake tutorial

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Matryoshka Tote Bag

Time for another Matryoshka project! This one was inspired by a beautiful Matryoshka embroidery pattern from Fifi & Florence I saw on Pinterest. At this time, I'm not interested in attempting to duplicate the intricate embroidery BUT, I have this plain, boring, old canvas tote bag and some puffy paint!

This project is pretty self explanatory but I do have a couple tips:

• Go slow with the paint and try to make sure there aren't any air bubbles inside
• To transfer my hand drawn image, I heavily traced lines with pencil then inserted a hard cover book into bag. Place drawing pencil side down and used a coin to rub and press down on paper. It doesn't come out very dark, but I was just looking for a guideline to follow anyway.

The possibilities are endless for designs. I spotted a coloring book with some great images I might try next! Do you love Matryoshka? Check out my other projects here

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Matryoshka Wood Burning

My new Matryoshka project!

I've been working on this on and off for a while and finally sat down and actually finished it! I have tons of scrap wood in the garage and I have been thinking about trying a wood burning design for a while. Since I'm going crazy with Matryoshka dolls right now...why not!

First thing's first, decide on a design...
There are so many options for these dolls, it was really hard to pick how I wanted this to look. In the end, the simplest design to burn won. I'm not a wood burning master, so I figured why make it harder than it's already going to be.

Transfer your design...
After I decided on the design I cut it out and then traced with pencil on the back. I flipped it over and traced again, transferring the pencil mark to the wood.

Before I started to burn the wood, I used the wood burner tip(not turned on) to score my pencil marks. Since my wood was so bumpy, this made it easier to stay in the lines and gave me less opportunity to mess up when the wood burner was on.

Burn the design...

Turn on your wood burner and go for it! I've used mine a few times for other projects, but if you haven't used a one before, practice on some scrap wood first. This way you can get a feel for how fast to move and the pressure to use.

My original plan was to just burn the design and stain the wood, but then I wondered what would happen if I put some watercolor on there. It gave it color without covering the wood grain, which I love.

Seal with polyurethane...

When I was done I added one coat of matte polyurethane to protect the watercolor. I'm thinking I'm going to add a hook on the back so I can put this up on the wall. 

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Crochet Rocks For Unique Teacher Gift

I found another excuse to crochet some rocks! I did this the first time for wedding favors and thought it could also work for an inexpensive end of year gift to our favorite teachers.

You can find patterns for doilies all over the internet, and after you've done a few it's pretty easy to make it up as you go. A lot of people have asked how I actually get the doily on to the rock. I literally crochet it on. When the doily is the size you want it, start making loops of chains connected to the previous row with single crochets. position it on to the rock and continue with chains and single crochets, reducing the number of chains to make it tighter.

My personalized tags 
I created an image on Picmonkey then inserted the image into a word document. First arrange three of the images in the first row. After it's spaced how you want, just select the entire first row, copy, press enter to skip down to the next row and paste. Repeat this until you have the number of tags you need, print on card stock and cut out.

 The pattern for this rock can be found at PIE: Pieces I Enjoy

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