T-Shirt Diaries and More

It was rainy here in Cleveland so I decided to get my craft on with my kids. We recently purchased a Vitamix and I am so in love. Well I decided that I would let the kids whip something up so we used the following recipe. Pour in vitamix in order listed: Two cups water Two tbsp vegetable oil Two cups white flour (I used wheat and it did not turn out at all) 1/2 cup salt 2 tsp. cream of tartar Natural food coloring Place all of the ingredients in your vitamix machine and blend for five minutes. The friction from the fabulous vitamix will basically cook the playdough. Once done you need to quickly divide it into four bowls. I used about twenty drops of food coloring for each one cup portion of the playdough. The easiest way to mush it is with a fork. The food coloring will dye to your skin if you try to knead it with your hands. You will want to let the playdough set up for about fifteen minutes before playing with it. When it is set up get ready for some cra

Well I have to say I am way behind on things. I wanted to begin posting tutorials, have at least twenty items for my shop, and had a killer design for my blog. What happened? Life. I have been so busy trying to figure things out that I haven't posted as often as I wish I could have. I have also been going crazy with this wordpress versus blogger ordeal. As you can see (I think) I have made my way back to blogger. I am so much happier and more confident that this is the blog that I want to show the world. I did make three dresses today, look into getting a limited production license from Lil Blue Boo and trying to get things to the point where I am proud to sell them. I had a few ahh moments with my serger lately. I am pretty excited about the things I have figured out, but you will have to just wait and see. Please oh please stay tuned. Warmly,

I am seriously in love with all things upcycled T-shirts so when I saw this blog post over at Ruffles and Stuff I know I had to share. Isn't this t-shirt apron to die for? I wish I came up with this idea, but alas the brilliant tutorial can be found here: Hopefully this whole poison ivy itching, Benedryl taking, extra sleepy mom os two kidlets self. Thanks,

I am back from the melodrama of figuring out the blog world and trying to get this website to show up. You know a whole bunch of things you probably don't care about. So onto crafty goodness. Today I am going to try a tutorial from one of my favorite bloggers: Samster Mommy . She did this fabulous tutorial on how to glitter your shoes. (See Below): I have been meaning to get my daughters shoes glittered and good to go for about two, maybe three months. I just haven't gotten around to it (I should be called Slacker Mommy). So tonight I am getting my craft on and I will post pictures of the fabulous glittered shoes tomorrow. If you want to try this out for yourself here is the tutorial .

Image via Wikipedia This blog seems to be more of an adventure in learning how to set up a blog then crafting. Tonight I transferred all of my wordpress posts to blogger. I tried to do it by exporting an .xml file then importing it into blogger. It was a totally genius George Costanza inspired idea. It didn't work. Okay next step was to simply cut and paste. Thank goodness that worked. So I am now in the process of changing the domain name. Well I don't know when my site is even going to come back up, if ever. I can not figure out what a Cname is, a DNS, or any other letter type thing. I am so very lost, over my head, and beyond my skill set. All the while I am thinking about the design of the site and how I am so not happy about it. The one thing I haven't been doing? Crafting. So I am going to give up for the night and go to bed. Of course I am supposed to be making something, but at this point I just want to sleep. Till Next Time,

Sidenote: I just could not figure Wordpress out so I am now rocking Blogger and loving it. Okay so I am totally trying to figure this whole Wordpress thing out. I need to buy Wordpress for Dummies, but I just haven't gotten around to it (Ironically I was even at Barnes and Noble today so really, I have no excuse at all). In order to pimp my blog I put together a little header. Here is the thing, I didn't really know what I what the heck I was doing, or how to do it. A while back I stumbled upon a series called Beautify Your Blog on a blog I stalk , I mean follow... I think that the header turned out okay. Funny thing is I have the attention span of an ant and didn't read everything before I went ahead and played with photobucket. I just got so excited that she was telling me how to get out of my standard, dime a dozen, blog look and add some pictures. I will be tweaking things in the coming weeks, but until then at least I have a semi original header. So if you

I know I am jumping on the LOL bandwagon a little late but I love me some Liberty of London for Target items. I had my hubby build me a storage unit for the kidlets toys and used these fabulous lidded Liberty of London boxes. They just flat out rock. I mean how can you not love something with this pattern... Black and white just make me smile. So basic, so clean, so beautiful. I just want more and I bought more (oops)... Okay I am done for now. It took me trips to about three different Target stores to snatch up the pieces that I wanted. I have to say it was all worth it. Related articles by Zemanta Liberty of London for Target peacock, um, skirt maybe? (notmartha.org) Liberty of London at Target (notmartha.org) Mark Your Calendars: Liberty of London for Target March 14th (apartmenttherapy.com) Obsessed with Liberty (chicandcharming.com)

I said I wanted to get five dresses this week and I got two done. I found this awesome T-shirt at goodwill. I know I needed to make a dress for my daughter with it. I love how it turned out, but I still need to work on the collar. I think it is a little to small. So without further ado here is Punk Monkey. Punky Monkey  Learning to Serge I still want to get the Etsy store up and running by May 1st. I am working to get the dresses down so they are good to go for the general public. The good news for my daughter is she gets a lot of new dresses, and a ton of compliments. Do you run an Etsy shop? How did you get going? Talk to me oh loyal reader (yeah that is right I know I probably don't have any readers yet, but hopefully at least one person has found me by this point).

Image by Katayun via Flickr I have a huge stack of T-shirts that I need to get through. It is time for some serious stash busting and product creating. I have a bit of a T-shirt hoarding problem and go crazy at Goodwill sometimes. While I do have them because I plan to start an ETSY shop with items made from recycled/upcycled T-Shirts, but I need to start going through them for the ETSY shop and not because it looks cute on my kidlets. So this weeks goal is to make five items from my stash to sell. Can I do it? Will the kidlets let me? Will my stash get smaller and I will actually set up this Etsy store I keep talking about. I guess time will tell. Tonight will have to be my big sewing night because I will be in meetings on Wednesday and leaving for a conference on Friday night. So guys you will have to hold me responsible for making five things to sell using upcycled t-shirts to put on Etsy. I think I can, I think I can... All that and I am heading over to the library to pic

I really do make things and not just write about planning on making things. Here is the Opening Day dress I made for C1. It's the Cleveland Indians home opener today, and while I don't have much hope that they will have anything but a sub par season (sorry fans) I did want to make something for C1 to celebrate her Clevelandness (is that a word?). I based the dress off the ever popular " Sienna " dress by Lil Blue Boo . I will most likely buy a Limited production license so that I can sell these at my etsy shop (when I have enough items to open the shop). They are just so darn fun to make, C1 loves wearing them, and I love that I get to upcycle t-shirts. So what do you think? Should I sell something like this in my etsy shop along with a few other crafty t-shirt upcycles. Your thoughts make me happy. Related articles by Zemanta The Sienna Dress (emilyinthedesert.blogspot.com)

Image by hddod via Flickr One thing you should know about me is I am a thrifty momma. I love saving my family money and finding creative ways to do so. That is part of the reason I got into upcycling old t-shirts to begin with. Although I try to use old t-shirts for everything I can I do occasionally buy new fabric (I haven't figured out a way to upholster a chair with t-shirts yet...I will keep you posted on that one). So where do I shop, pretty much everywhere there is a sale. Speaking of sales I just want to let you know Save 15% site wide on any purchase of $50 or more at Fabric.com, use code DOD409! Offer Expires 4/12 ">Fabric.com is having a 15% off sale for the next few days. They have some really yummy Amy Butler fabrics that I totally need to get my hands on. If you are interested in checking it out here is the link: Save 15% site wide on any purchase of $50 or more at Fabric.com, use code DOD409! Offer Expires 4/12

I am back to rocking blogger, so over my unsucessful venture into wordpress. This is the first time I am using Wordpress and it is way different then Blogger, but I think it has a lot more functionality. So your will have to bear with me as I find the layout that works for me, create a banner, set up my ESTY shop, and raise two very active kidlets. I am kind of looking at this whole thing as an adventure and a way to quit my day job and just be a blogger. Until now I have been working as a freelance writer on various project. It is not that I don't love writing, I mean blogging is writing, right? I just want to express my creative side and walk away from the sometimes monotonous assignments. So this is my plan, well somewhat of a plan. I will be working on the nuts and bolts of what this blog will look like, share it with you all, if you have managed to somehow find me. I hope to have this completed by May 1st. Starting May 1st I will launch my ETSY site and start promoti

Check out my new site at www.thetshirtdiaries.com . I am starting this blog over and having a little more fun trying to figure out the whole world of wordpress. I will be opening an etsy shop on that site very soon. I just have to get sewing.