small blog about nice things
vegan, adventurer, lover of chai lattes and winona ryder
You can expect: book reviews, diy tutorials, photos, complaints about the world, and much more

Saturday 31 January 2015

DIY: Pennants (That Aren't Lame and School Related, More Like You Related)

Heeeeyyy there!

So I've been meaning to do a DIY post for a while now, but I'm somewhat of a procrastinator, which is why I sometimes end up posting my monday quote on a thursday. Whoops.

BUT I PULLED THROUGH THIS TIME!

So here it is, a lil DIY for a rainy day or when you just decide you need a pennant adorned on your wall, I gotchu.


DIY Pennant

1. Collect yo materials


                     

What You'll Need:

a) Scissors
b) Thread n' a sewing needle (or glue if you are a klutz and will blind yourself with a needle)
c) A large square piece of fabric (you can also substitute with felt, etc.) 
d) A stick (you can also use some kind of cute wood thing from Micheals or whatevah, I just didn't)
e) Some string to hang your pennant
f) Whatever lil accessories or fun things you want! Think glitter glue, googly eyes, lace trim, etc.
g) I am also providing a rough template of the shape I used for my pennant that you can print out, but you can always improvise! (It's a bit wonky from the scanner mais c'est la vie!)






2.  After you've cut out your shape, decorate your pennant people! It's the best part!


               

I decided to go with a cow patch I had cut out from another fabric because I'm vegan and all, and why not hang a cute animal I love on my wall? Plus the cow is glow in the dark, boo ya! But you can honestly do whatever you'd like. When I make a felt one, I am definitely going to cut a C out of the center and surround it with glitter and other weird things. Here I just sewed the cow right onto the pennant with white thread and tied two small knots on the back since they'll be facing the wall. If you're using felt or another material, feel free to glue things on etc.

Note: make sure you're not decorating too high, since there's a gap of fabric at the top meant to go around the wood on your pennant, and it won't be visible! 

If you're not adding anything tricky around the borders, just skip to part 3. Here I'll just show you what I did for the lace trim.

                     


First, I folded the trim to figure out the point where it needed to be cut. After I cut it, I flipped one of the lace trim sides over and then evened out the bottom of the pennant so it looked uniform. After fooling around with the placement of the lace for a while, I was finally happy with it and pinned it directly onto the pennant so it wouldn't shift around while I was moving the pennant and sewing. If you have a sewing machine (I do, but I won't be using it for this) you can feel free to use the straight stitch, but for me, because it's lace and the border is so small, I'm opting out to just use the needle.




3. Attaching your stick n' flag

Here, you can either do what I'll be doing, which is:

a) sewing my flag around the stick OR 
b) you can directly glue (hot glue gun, non of this elmers glue stick crap) your flag onto the stick


If you're gluing it on:

From the beginning I would suggest cutting the top half of the flag off if you're using my template.
Then once you've finished decorating, you would glue along the stick and place the flag directly onto it, so that your design is on the outside of the stick (so it isn't visible when your pennant is hanging up).

If you're sewing it on:

Ok so here, I'm folding the extra top material from my flag over the stick so it looks like this:






And am now going to pin and sew starting from the back of the pennant so that the stick is secure in the fabric.

4. Attaching the string

Ok so here we are pretty much just tying the string to both sides of the stick so that it can be hung up.





5. HANG THIS SHIT!!!

Hang your beautiful creation of awesomeness somewhere for you to bask in it's glory. Because hey, look at you go, being all crafty! If you don't want to put a little nail/thumbtack in your wall, you can slap some of that beautiful washi tape on there to hold it up, hang it on your doorknob or buy some of those small, easy stick and peel hangers that don't damage walls. And hey, short on birthday present ideas? WABAM! Whoa now, are you getting excited at this possibility or is it just me?!)




N' there you go- C


Sunday 4 January 2015

Life Post: The Dude

There is a dude. What I mean is, I kind of have a dude. What I don't mean is that there is a random stranger dude in my shower or anything with a knife. I probably wouldn't be writing this blog post if there were.

I am that girl who obsesses over guys and has all of these romantic fantasies, and then as soon as someone becomes interested in me, freaks out. Like, almost vomits, freaks out. Like, never being with anyone more than a few days, freaks out. Like, HOLYSHITICANTDOTHISANYMOREVERYTHINGTHEYDOANNOYSMEEVENTHOUGHIWASREALLYINTOTHEMYESTERDAY, freaks out. This is me. Hey, how ya doing. Pretty much, I'm generally bad at being with guys, to say the least. I will say, in my defence, I do not regret breaking up with/avoiding/turning down any of the guys that I did. Looking back, those were all very good decisions. Yet sometimes, I do hold myself back with my general timidness and tendency to go into cardiac arrest every time a hot guy gets within touching distance of me. It also doesn't help that the arts high school I go to is somewhat lacking in persons of the opposite sex. Like whatever, I'm not saying I need a daily dose of eye candy to make it through high school, but when I say there are no guys, I mean, really, there are NO GUYS. The five guys who aren't gay are taken. Of course. So really, it's no wonder my boy and dating expertise are lacking.

But anyways, enough of my guy history. I just thought I'd say that there is a guy. Who is into me. It has happened. And he's not weird, or creepy. He's not obsessed with video games. He dresses nice and has a dog.  He likes nature and meditation. He didn't stalk me at work, he didn't stalk me at school (both of those have happened and none of it made me feel in the dating mood). In fact, he's crazy respectful and hasn't done anything yet that is in the least way invading. IT HAS HAPPENED. I have met a guy who doesn't make me want to pass out from nerves every time I see him. The few times we have hung out, I've been cool as a cucumber and it's a very nice change of pace, I gotta say. The first time we "met" was at a party last year, where he saw me and thought I looked like Jim Morrison's girlfriend. He wanted to talk to me but at that point I was vomiting everywhere (yes yes yes I know gross, bad first impression) and I left before we could talk. But then here we are, a year later and he found me through a mutual friend by accident. And he still wanted to talk to me. EVEN AFTER WATCHING ME VOMIT, EVERYONE. He totally deserves some kind of award.

So yea. I guess we'll see how it goes. I can't promise, because I'm me and I freak out and I just don't wanna and ugh. I have a hard time caring for things (see my dead plants) and so when it comes to people sometimes I am just the cruddiest. But for some reason I think this time is different, or at least it could be different. So wish me luck, with this dude. Wish me luck with any dude, actually. I will take all I can get for the future.


Saturday 3 January 2015