The Art of Home Taking Off

It's been a while. I've started a new local sewing group, The Art of Home Sewing Guild, and we have been having tons of fun! We are an eco-friendly group inspired to make lovely items out of new and like new second-hand and remnant items (typically at least 50% upcycled/reused products). All of our products try to provide a green alternative for our homes to save our planet. Thus far the group has been doing quilting from of a variety of different fabrics I've collected that don't really work for doll clothes. Below are some pics of the quilts. It's a great way to use up fabric, but get something artsy and useful out of it.

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Discarded Books into Cards

After wandering through some second-hand stores lately, I've noticed there are a lot of discarded books in pretty poor condition and I wanted to give them a new life. My new repurposing project was to turn some of the illustrations in these books into new blank greeting cards. With the help of some other repurposed items, like fancy paper from other used greeting cards and envelopes, I took the old illustrations and added a little of my own flare to each card. I personally love the look of old meets new in these cards. This project is great for scrapbookers and a very affordable project for anyone. I recommend picking up some cheap young adult books at your local second-hand store for the illustrations. You might also start looking at paper you would normally just throw away in a whole new way. Ask yourself, can I use the paper in this [insert item here] for a greeting card?

It's cheaper than Hallmark and eco-friendly!

Some of the illustrations in the pictures above are from vintage books such as, "On Your Toes, Susie!" and "Shadow of a Bull."

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Dress Up Your Doll Outfits

Coming up in my Etsy shop very soon are some lovely knitted scarves for 1:6 scale dolls. In many of the pictures there are little charms attached to the scarves and I wanted to provide you with a secret to a nearly free way to dress up your doll outfits. Many of the charms I use are old stud earrings I used as a kid that I are cluttering up my jewelry box. I use the earring backing to hold it in place on the outfit. It's a great way to use that little earring that you lost the match for a long time ago. If you don't have any on hand, try second-hand stores to get some for pretty cheap. Try it out!

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Barbie Clothes, Christmas in July

Ever feel like you have a ton of Christmas junk that you probably won't keep using every year during the holiday season? A friend of mine likes to dress up her Barbies for Christmas and wanted me to make a dress for her. I thought repurposing some of my less loved Christmas stuff into doll clothes was just the ticket. I also recently heard from some folks at IFDC that people often look out for Christmas clothes for their dolls. Below are some pictures of a dress I cooked up out of those Christmas products. I hope it provides some inspiration for future doll fun! Some new designs based on Integrity dolls are soon to come!

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Fancy Watering Cans

On a typical day of creativity, I don't usually go for decorating watering cans, but these were a donation to a local art benefit that specifically wanted decorated watering cans. I tried to make them a little more unique than just painting flowers on them. Both projects are fairly cheap to do and I think they make a great artsy piece for your backyard. The gold watering can required fabric/puff paint and gold spray paint. The fabric paint (any color) was used to create an embossed pattern and when finished, I sprayed the gold spray paint over the entire can. The other can was decorated to look like a quilt. It required scrap fabric, acrylic paint, and decoupage. First, I cut out uniform sized squares of the fabric and glued them on the can (checker board style) with the decoupage. After they dried, I painted the remaining areas of the can with paint, let it dry, and put a final coat of decoupage over the entire surface. Voila! Fancy watering cans.

Noticed I haven't posted a whole lot of Momoko doll designs lately? I'm saving them up for debut at IFDC in Las Vegas in a couple weeks. Stay tuned for some great designs.

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