Pac-Man and Blinky costumes

I was invited to a costume party a little while ago. The theme of the party of 8 bit adventure, and to fully participate in all of the awesomeness, guests were asked to dress as their favourite video game character. Since I was going with a friend of mine, we decided it would be cute to dress as Pac-Man and Blinky - one of the ghosts. 

And so my DIY cogs started turning. I did some Googling, and found this image. 

So cute, right? 

The price for the dresses you see above is $32. I thought that I could do better. The tutorial below shows you how to make two similar dresses for approximately $8 each. The process for making both of these costumes was relatively simple, and believe me, if I could do it, anyone can do it. 
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Tutorial:

1. Find a dress that fits you well and lay it on your jersey fabric. Kill two birds with one stone by folding the fabric in half so you only have to trace and cut once. This is my favourite way to make simple dresses such as these two because it means not needing to create a pattern. 
2. Trace around the dress. I turn the dress inside out, and then give another quarter to half inch seam allowance. If the seam allowance is too much at the end, it can always be trimmed. 
3. Pin, pin, pin! Put pins through both sides of the fabric to ensure they stay together when you sew them together. 
4. Sew. I used a half inch seam allowance, which was fine. When it comes to jersey fabric, I use a special needle. The needle I use is not as sharp, which allows it to pass through the fibres instead of cutting them. Also, use a zigzag stitch when sewing jersey, as it stretches with the fabric. A straight stitch will break. 
5. The one step I forgot to take a picture of was when I rounded the bottom of the dress. I wanted to include a picture of Lite Steam-A-Seam2, which is something that I discovered just recently. It's fusible webbing for adding trim, lace, or even hemming delicate fabrics. What I love about jersey is that it doesn't have to be hemmed. It doesn't fray, and rolls at the end. However, when I rounded the bottom of the dress, this quality did not come in handy. In order to give the bottom some weight, I added fusible webbing, and ironed the hem. 
6. Cut out the eyes and mouth out of black fabric scraps. 
7. Sew the eyes and mouth onto the front of the fabric. In hindsight, I probably should have sewn them on before I sewed the front and the back of the dress together. However, I wanted to make sure the dress fit before I continued, so that's why I sewed them on last. The challenge with that is making sure to only sew through the front of the dress, and not the back as well. 
8. You now have a cute Pac-Man dress! 

Below are some pictures documenting the steps I took to make the Blinky costume. It was basically the same as the Pac-Man dress, so I won't repeat the descriptions of the steps again. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask! 

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In total, I think each dress took me about an hour, which isn't bad at all. Minus the fact that Blinky's eyes are a bit googly, I think they turned out great! And the party was a blast!

Aren't we cute? 

Blinky

Pac-Man. Or Pac-Woman? 

Blinky chases Pac-Man constantly, and is known to have a temper!

Getting revenge!

Birthday card with mini bunting

I love making my own birthday cards. I can't remember the last time I bought a birthday card, or any card for that matter, to give someone. Whether it's designing one on the computer, or using scissors and glue, I like to give my cards that special, personal touch. 

My boyfriend's birthday was this week, and I wanted to make him a cute birthday card. I also wanted it to be a bit unique since this is the third birthday card I have given him. A little Google image search led me to a picture from a blog called How About Orange. 

The tutorial is super simple, and the card was quite easy to make, and only took me about 45 minutes to make (I was a bit slow because I was watching TV and cutting little triangles out of construction paper). 

All you need is:

1. Coloured construction paper
2. Thread, or very thin string
3. Card stock for the actual card (I used a recipe card because that's all I had)
4. A glue stick (I actually used Mod Podge because my glue stick had dried out)

Kind of cute, isn't it?

How to get perfect ringlets with naturally curly hair

I love my curly hair. But it hasn't always been this way. When I was younger I had a really hard time with it because I simply did not know what to do with the birds nest on my head. I did the crunchy curls thing with too much gel (worst hairstyle ever), and sometimes I would just slick it back into a tight ponytail.

As I got older, I started trying every curl crème, styling gel, mousse and spray out there. If you could find it at a Shoppers Drug Mart, you could find it in my bathroom cabinet. A few years ago, I finally came across the perfect combination of products: argan oil and mousse designed for curly hair. Then air dry. That's it! Basically I've found that although having curly hair appears to be complicated, it is actually so easy to manage with the right products.

On days where I feel like being a little bit fancy, I will twirl small sections of hair around my finger while they are wet after I have put product in.

Some tips:

1. Make sure your hair is quite wet when you do this, but not dripping
2. Separate your hair into at least two sections: bottom and top
3. Twirl the hair away from your face
4. Save your bangs for last
5. If you really need to, you can use a diffuser. I prefer to let air dry
6. As your hair dries, you may notice some of the sections get a little bit crunchy. Simply scrunch your hair with your hands to get rid of the crunch

Ooh shiny!

Don't you just want to sproing them?

Hopefully that explanation was clear. Ringlets look great down, but also make for gorgeous updos.

Fun tassely t-shirt scarf

I'm just going to come out and say it. I love t-shirt crafts. Especially scarves made out of t-shirts. They're cheap, fun, and usually fairly easy. 

I saw an awesome roundup of t-shirt scarf tutorials recently on My Blessed Life. I decided to make number seven - the fringe scarf. Since summer is finally here in Vancouver (it's about time, right?), I thought that this scarf would be light enough to pair with a cute shirt and jean shorts or a skirt. 

The tutorial itself comes from Lakeland Local. But I've taken pictures so you can see exactly how I did it. 

a. Grab any ol' XL t-shirt. I chose white. Cut it just under the armpits. I used a rotary cutter for all of my cutting in this project, but you can totally use scissors if you prefer. 

b. Save the scraps!! You never know when you will need scrap fabric for another project. 

c. Cut small strips about halfway up the tube of fabric. Not too small though, or you risk them breaking. 

d. Now for the fun part! Pull on each strip until it rolls up on itself. Jersey fabric is great for this. 

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That's all there is to it! Now put it over your head and rock your new scarf! As you can see in the pictures I took, I added my own little twist and knotted all of the jersey strings. I think if I made another one, I'd add beads to it as well.