DIY: Bleach Dyed Sweat Shirt

If anyone can figure out why oh why

I waited all these years to try bleach dying please let me know! 

I am kinda obsessed with single color 

tie dye which is what inspired this project.

Yet I have never tie dyed anything.

I have had this black sweat shirt for many many years.

It's always been one of my favorites,

but in recent times it's just started to look a little beat.

It needed something.

A pick me up if you will.

So a good bleach tie dye became it's fate.

I found this great DIY on 

Say Yes To Hoboken,

but as many of the things I see on Pinterest,

it didn't really work out for me.

I followed her directions to a T and the only results 

were one or two bleached out marks.

So I became frustrated with the project,

the hubs and I laughed at my waste of a 

perfectly good shirt, and I decided to take this project to the max.

At this point there was no coming back for this top, 

so my fears of "ruining" it went out the window.

I rinsed and rinsed the residual bleach from my first attempt.

I then re-twisted and rubber banded the top while it was still wet.

Part of my hesitation with tie dye or bleach dye in the past 

has been a lack of control, but I shook that off and just 

told myself that this wasn't an exact science.

After the sweat shirt was twisted and banded I

fully submerged the tangled mess into a bowl of straight bleach.

In the previous DIY steps that I had tried to follow

I was told that it would take 12+ hrs to see any change in color.

Well with my way it was almost instant.

With in about an hour I had the top out of the bowl.

I have to be honest with you,

at this point I was pretty sure that the next step for this 

beloved sweat shirt was the trash can.

The entire top appeared to be, well, tan.

I began to cut off the rubber bands on at a time,

as the shirt unraveled beautiful pinks, blacks, and creams were revealed.

Once I got the entire sweat shirt opened up I rinsed it until no more color 

bleed into the water.

I was so pumped up about how this top

turned out that I actually raided my closet for more things to

bleach dye.

Have you experimented with bleach dying?

I would love to see your projects! 

Share your secrets and results! 

DIY: hall clock face lift

after sitting on the sofa staring at our completely boring hall clock for so long i decided that i had had enough. i can't complain too much about the clock as it was a gift from my mother-in-law.  disclaimer: she has impeccable taste....this clock however was in her living room so that my father-in-law could read it.  it drove her crazy that there was no time telling device in our house, as we always just used our phones or watches to tell the time, so she brought this one down to our house to hang in the hall where it could be seen from the living room.

so back to the face lift - no pun intended there...well maybe a little pun. hehe

here is what you will need:
1 unassuming wall clock
1 12x12 piece of chalk board paper or other scrapbook paper
a few tools
chalk
paint (if you so desiree)

step 1:

simply take the clock apart. now i say simply, but the hubs did all the handy work for this project...so i can't say for sure how "simple" it was. my only advice though is to keep all the small working parts together, organized, and in some sort of order as to which they were removed.

step 2:

trace to face of the clock onto your 12x12 paper.

step 3:

cut out the traced image.

step 4:

i decided to paint the hands of the clock a chalky white. for two major reasons. one....i wasn't going to be able to see the black hands against the black chalkboard paper. and two....i wanted to keep with the theme and make the hands look chalky too.

step 5:

the hubs came up with the brilliant idea of making the old face into a template to make sure that we put the numbers in the exact right places....brilliant that man of mine is!

step 6:

mark the numbers onto the face of the clock.

step 7:

we decided after the fact to add tick marks on the rest of the clock, and then reassembled it. as we were putting it back together we also decided to ditch the second hand.

and viola...there you have it...our new and improved hall clock!

i am not sure why it took us a year to get around to doing this, maybe it was the house hold clock overhaul that took place a few weeks ago....the boy started complaining about all the antique clocks hanging in the house that didn't tell the time....specifically the vintage mickey mouse clock that hangs in his room.

wardrobe re-fashion

this re-fashioning was one of my favorite/hardest things i've made. between the directions for creating my own chevron fabric to the directions for installing an invisible zipper (which i have not done in about 15 years) there was a lot of confusion. there were many moments where i would just find myself staring at all the cut up fabric thinking "was this a good idea? should i have just destroyed one of my favorite skirts? is this even possible?" but the pencil skirt turned out exactly how i wanted it too... thanks to the help of my new favorite book... the little green dress. i highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about pattern making. i might cry when i have to bring it back to the library! so here is it the before & after. hope you like it.

before

after

oh, and i totally realized that i got so caught up in making this skirt that i forgot sunday's 10 things i couldn't live without. my bad. it will be back next sunday.