CuriousJayne

 Here’s me and Nate, ready to head over to the huge Halloween extravaganza hosted by erock. Nate was a little disappointed that only a handful of people recognized his rather obscure costume. Do you know who he is?

Jen looked fabulous as Mia Wallace and Miguel is always jesus-like, so Halloween is just another day for him:

Me with Miss Zeta Jones and Ragedy Ann:

See more halloween mayhem here.

We all know that you could deep fry a fetus and it would probably taste ok. And deep frying buttermilk dough tastes pretty good too.  Andrea bought me a deep fryer for my birthday, so I’ve experimented with a couple of dough recipes, but my favorite uses the premade buttermilk biscuit dough in a can.  There are recipes for this method online, but it’s actually super easy, I wouldn’t even bother. All you need is a can of buttermilk biscuits and a few inches of oil in your pan/deep fryer.  Heat to 350 and use tongs to place the pre-cut biscuits in the oil.  Flip them after a minute or so and then take them out when they are golden delicious. You can top them with powdered sugar, sugar, glazes or whatever you feel like. I used nutella and a sugar/cinnamon mix. If you’re feeling really fancy, you can even cut holes in the middle to make them real donuts and then you can fry the donut holes too.

 I bought this size 12 polyester muumuu at a thrift store for $2.99:

Reconstruction is lovely because you can skip lots of tedious steps. For this dress, I left the neckline and back zipper intact because I don’t care for making necklines and zippers. I also kept the pleats from the original, so I didn’t have to do any damn pleating, which is time consuming.

After much trimming and reassembling, I came up with this little 70’s hippie dress:

A close up of the dress:

So, I’ve got two reconstructed pieces down, but the other two articles I bought are a bit more challenging.

First, I have this alluring spandex top covered in large sequins.  If only I were a figure skater…

Next, I have a turtle neck.  But it’s not just any old turle neck, some crazy crafter got her (his?) glitter-splintered hands on it.

I’ve been stumped on these for a while now; any ideas are welcome.

I usually leave thrift stores disappointed and wondering “why the hell did I just buy this ironic shirt that says ‘greeks do it better’?” So, I decided to give in to the masses of hideous frocks and oversized, gaudy, patterened shirts that are so plentiful.  My first project involves this awful shirt with a weird drawstring feature that I can’t really understand:

Obviously, I hate the shirt, but I was strangley attracted to the pattern- it kind of reminds me of the carpet in a casino.  So after a little work, here’s what I came up with:

The dress in action:

I didn’t use a pattern or tutorial for this, but I came across some really great tutorials on whatthecraft.com for some interesting reconstruction projects that are worth checking out.  Many more dreadful-to-dainty projects coming soon.

This was my first attempt at stenciling on canvas.  It was a little difficult because I couldn’t really iron the freezer paper onto the canvas without the iron disturbing the acrylic background that I had painted but it worked ok anyways.  The picture I stencilled is of Nate and I on Halloween when we dressed up as Jack and Meg White.  That’s why we look so freaking cool.

I’ve been researching stenciling for a while now and I found some great tutorials at stencil revolution and craftster to help me.  I chose to use the freezer paper method because it is simple to do and it produces high quality images. 

Here is the photo I started with. Doesn’t Andy look cool?  Ignore Jen.

I

after some fancy photoshopping, here is the uncut stencil printed on freezer paper:

cut out stencil:

ironed onto my fabric:

I used a foam roller to apply a mix of 1/2 black acrylic paint and 1/2 textile medium:

Here’s what happens when you stencil on top of your roommate’s ironing board and you don’t put something underneath.  You get a permanent stencil right on the ironing board.  She’ll be so happy.

And the most satisfying part, removing the freezer paper to reveal the image:

Then you just whip up a bag, and you get the finished product:

So I officially love stenciling now.  This stencil only took about 1 hour to make and it cost me about 4 cents.  I already have a few more stencils made on the computer, so expect more stenciling to come. 

Also check out flickr’s freezer paper stencils group to see other people’s projects.

I made this bag as a Christmas gift for Nate last year. It’s one of the more labor intensive projects I’ve tackled, so I thought it deserved a post. The bag is huge because Nate needed a bag big enough for his enormous laptop. The design on the front is a replication of one of Jeff Mangum’s totally weird and awesome drawings.  I used a pearl white metallic acrylic fabric paint to make it.

The inside was the fun part. I just listened to Neutral Milk Hotel for like 8 hours while I stamped all of the lyrics on the lining. Here is the inside of the flap:

For the stamped lyrics, I just used regular white acrylic paint. The fabric paints were all too thin so the letters didn’t come out as strong.

Here’s the inside of the bag:

So, I got this idea a few days ago, during an impromptu dance party.  Jason was playing some killer air guitar to “I am a tree” by Guided by Voices and he did this great impression of a tree, so I thought, this must be immortalized in a tote bag.  I realize the reference is a strech, but it’s a GBV tote because I say it is.

 The tote itself is very simple, with a pocket on the inside. The fabric I used for the tree frays a lot, so it will look way cooler after a couple weeks of use.

I had this red ribbed sweater-ish material lying around, so I made a pencil skirt.  Like any good pencil skirt, it’s a bit snug around the knees, making it difficult to participate in everyday activities.  It’ll be perfect for one of those indie shows where everyone stands still and you just nod your head along with the music.

So, here’s my first blogged bag, or “blag”, as I like to call it.

This was my first time doing cutout handles, so I used an excellent tutorial from Craftster to help me out.  The flower is made with a long strip of polyester (blue with black polka dots) and its center is a sparkly vintage button.  The inside is lined with the same blue polka dotted material.

I think it turned out quite lovely.