re-working adult gloves for kids' halloween costumes

For the gloves for my kiddo's Fix-It Felix costume, I came up with several options.

Felix's gloves are solid tan in color, probably meant to mimic this pair, made of pig skin. I didn't order them because (a) they're too big; (b) locally, I found a pair but they cost $21; and (c) my aunt used to have a pet pig. He was really smart.

I searched for alternatives, and eventually found a pair of plain-colored cotton canvas work gloves at the thrift store for 99 cents. Dyed (with a combo of Dylon's Sunflower and Terra Cotta colors), they came out pretty close to the color I wanted. Still too large, but at least close to the right color.

But then I happened upon a pair of flannel work gloves that were even closer in color, except for the cuff.  They were also softer and more pliable, so I went for it. Note: this photo was taken after the fingers had already been shortened, as explained in the next step.

To shorten the fingers of adult-sized gloves: first turn them inside-out, then try them on the person meant to wear them. Mark where the fingers will end on the new-and-improved version (leaving a little room for the seam allowance) then stitch, cut off the excess fabric, and turn right-side out.

Next, remove the non-matching cuff by pulling out the stitches with a seam ripper.

Zig-zag the raw edge, then give it a very narrow hem.

Finish the glove with a band of 1/4-inch elastic stitched in place about an inch from the new hem.

And you're finished! Below is a photo of the finished gloves on my fully-costumed kiddo, holding Felix's gold hammer. (You can also see a bit of the tool belt, which I'll be talking about in the final Fix-It Felix blog post tomorrow.)

This will work on any gloves made of woven cloth. You may even have good success on gloves made of knit fabric, if you zig-zag the ends of the fingers to prevent them from unraveling. Leather, though, might be trickier, depending on the thickness and stiffness of the leather.

Tomorrow will be the last in this series, featuring the tool belt, pants, and boots, so come on back if you're trying to finish up a Fix-It Felix costume of your own by the time the weekend is over!

Need to find the other costume tutorials fast? Click here for the shirt and name patch, here for the magical golden hammer, and here for the cap and double-f patch.

Thanks for reading!

c is for chasmosaurus

After last week's craft fail, it was nice to have a couple of craft successes. This is one!

This chasmosaurus shirt is part of our gift for an upcoming birthday party this weekend (second part to be featured here, soon!). Our little friend is a big-time dinosaur enthusiast.

Those of you without a Silhouette cutter will be happy to know that this was made without one. I used freezer paper and an X-Acto blade, after first designing the image in Adobe Illustrator. Free dinosaur graphics are everywhere on the internet, though, so it's possible to do this project with other dinosaurs, without Illustrator. Chasmosaurus fans can use this design for your own personal projects (not for sale!).

You can print directly on the freezer paper. Cut it to fit your printer and make sure you'll be printing on the textured "paper" side, not the slick plastic side.

To save ink, I turned the opacity down to 30% so that it would print a light gray instead of black. You could also just print the image in outline, but I like to have a filled-in figure for whatever reason.

After it's printed, cut it out with an extra-sharp X-acto blade on a self-healing mat or a surface you don't care too much about (like an old magazine or a drawing board). The sharpness of the blade is especially important for those tiny letters.

Then iron it on your shirt and paint using a short-bristled brush! As I've mentioned before, the beauty here is that kids can help with the painting part. My kiddo helped paint this for his friend, so the gift is really from his own two hands.

Here are some of my previous freezer paper stencil projects, in case you'd like some more ideas or a bit more step-by-step.

(1) flour sack towels

(2) viking t-shirt

(3) toddler art pretzel shirt

Thanks for reading!

p.s. you can make these images larger just by clicking on them . . . but you probably already knew that, clever you.

the third industrial pendant

One of the first art lessons I still remember is the one in which we were introduced to the fact that in nature, things often occur in odd numbers (plant leafs, flower petals, etc.). It was an introduction to the Rule of Odds, which is used often in art and design to keep your brain interested and engaged, and you can find it in art from ancient Japan through the Renaissance all the way up through current day.

At the end of a previous lighting post, I mentioned that the idea for a certain spot in our house was to eventually have three hanging pendants for balance. That's the Rule of Odds at play in our living room.

Light number 1 was a five-cent frosted pendant.

Light number 2 was a metal cage light made with salvaged parts. (I've switched out the light kit since the original tutorial to accommodate a standard-sized Edison-style lightbulb.)

And this, the third, is was originally a plastic cage light, like this one, purchased used for 50 cents at Bring (but I've seen them similarly priced at the Habitat ReStore).

I hung it from a coat hanger in the yard and sprayed with gentle layers of primer, aluminum finish, and flat black spray paint to give it the look of aged metal.

Here are all three together at last:

I have them all hung by hooks from the ceiling. 

My original hope was to hard wire them all together, but since I lack the practical expertise for that, the cords run bundled down the edge of the window frame and are turned on and off via a power strip. I hope to get the curtains rehung to hide them a little better soon.

I've seen a few lighting solutions lately that involve swooping black cable and exposed bulbs and while I love the look in a loft space (like the one Brooks designed on DesignStar), it's not practical with 8-foot ceilings. I'd likely accidentally hang myself.

Okay, now you know what you need to know to diy three pendant lighting fixtures on a teeny tiny budget. Of course, if you have a bit more money you want to spend, you can buy industrial metal light cages:

1 Satco 90-1310 Lamp Cage

2 Metal Lamp Guard - Black

3 Vintage Drop Light

4 Industrial Wire Bulb Cage

And if the price isn't much of an issue:

5 Wire Cage Industrial Pendant

6 Vintage Industrial Cage Light

7 Metal Cage

8 Wire Cage Light

9 Early 20th Century Cage Lights

But in my house, I'm likely to spend the $1000 per fixture on that last link towards the mortgage or something else really practical, and hang up the diy version instead. How about you?

Thanks for reading!

pinterest challenge: backyard arbor

At last, it's time to show you a little more about this teaser photo I showed at the end of my last post:

Of the many pins on my Curb Appeal Pinterest board, most are variations on the pergola/arbor/garden arch theme. I've been collecting ideas for nearly two years now. 

In front of my house, I have two random metal garden arches (in different styles) that came to me on sale from a couple of different places. In the backyard, the "arch" in front of the studio building (which is now mostly sided! Hooray!) looked like this:

Urgh. The green metal arch (can you even see it?) is a leftover craft store "wedding arch" from our wedding ten years ago. It was clearly not meant for heavy labor.

I had it pretty neatly disguised for awhile with twigs and branches woven in. A windstorm collapsed the whole thing last year. 

I then had it supported by the side supports of a pergola that had also collapsed in the windstorm . . . total eyesore. That part had been removed by the time I thought to take this photo, along with a lot of the sticks and weeds.

Yes, I'm embarrassed that things got to this neglected, overgrown state. That's life in a fixer-upper, folks. Some things get fixed-up faster than others.

Which explains all of those arbor pins on my pin board, and my burning desire to take care of the issue.

This project was uploaded to Instructables by someone calling himself/herself SpecialK, who deserves the credit for this photo. And it's the project I decided I could take on, by myself, before my husband came home from work one day last week.

So, that didn't exactly work out. I did have it about 90% built by the time the mister rolled up that evening (just needed cross bars and lattice on top and sides), but in my eagerness to get to building, I built it out of place. This presents some challenges I hadn't properly anticipated, like, say, assembling the thing with only one adult present, and moving it, and keeping things square and level. But let's set that aside, and assume that you'll do things the EASIER way: holes first, arbor built in place.

I finished it up the next afternoon (with some help from my kiddo and his toy drill) and started measuring for and digging the holes for the legs.

After the mister helped me finish digging with the post hole digger (approximately 15 inches deep), I put some pea gravel in the bottom of each hole (approximately 3 inches worth) and we finagled the arch into place, working until it was in-line with the roofline of the studio.

The bottoms of the legs are coated with spray-on rubber sealant about 18-inches along the bottom and sides. They are made of Douglas Fir, which needs a little insect and rot resistance. The gravel is for drainage as well as anchoring. I filled around the legs with some more pea gravel, and finally some larger river rocks near the top to disguise the sealant and to keep dirt away.

 

I also trimmed back the rose and grape vines a ton, which hurt to do. The rose will grow back quickly, but that grape vine takes awhile, and it really only started producing mass amounts of grapes last year. Fingers crossed that it snaps back. 

The next step was to paint. I had some oil-based primer left from ye olden days (maybe we used it on the pickets in the front yard?). Had I used all cedar or all pressure-treated wood, I would have kept it wood-colored, but I used a variety of woods and thought a little paint protection would go a long way.

The original project parameters call for pressure treated wood and store-bought lattice, and estimate the cost at about $100. I have three of these to build (this is the first) so I wanted to bring in my practice arch at closer to $50.

Here in Oregon, 8-foot 4x4 Douglas Fir posts are about $7 apiece. I used a mix of recycled shipping timbers (79 cents) and utility grade 1x2s ($1.50 for an 8-foot length) for the side supports, horizontal lattice,  and crosspieces on the top. The long skinny pieces on the side lattice are 6-foot long cedar garden stakes I already had on-hand.

The front and back pieces at the top are made from 1x6x6 clear grade cedar fence boards for $3 each.

I came in under my $50 target thanks to the river rocks, screws, and paint I already had on hand, as well as using utility grade lumber and a few on-hand and recycled bits. I'm sure that (free) pallet wood could stand in for most of the pieces here, too, so it's entirely possible to build one for even less (in fact, over on my Curb Appeal Pinterest board, there's a link to a plan for a pallet wood arch that's kid-sized).

I'll have more for you later, as the path gets re-done and the garden beds get rebuilt (I'm thinking cement retaining wall blocks this time around), so check back later in the summer!

In the meantime, thanks for reading the latest in my series of posts for the Young House Love / Bower Power Pinterest Challenge! Head on over and link up if you've finished a project inspired by Pinterest, too.

Linking up to:

Young House Love

Bower Power

Sparkle Meets Pop

Red Bird Blue