Passion to Refashion

As part of my goal to purge every room in my house by next month, I recently took on my closet which was stuffed full of stuff that I wasn't wearing because it was too big or I just wasn't that into it.  I filled two huge Rubbermaid containers with clothes that are fine except for one or two tweaks.  For example, this navy pencil skirt was a pair of wide-leg shorts until I cut them open.  Straight seams down the front and pack and I have a skirt with pockets!

I bought two of these very light-weight cotton shirts in January 2010.  The other got a basic redo - taken in, sleeves shortened - but this was a little more in depth.  I wanted a shirt that was more casual, so I picked the stitches out of the collar to remove it. Then I took in the sides by a few inches and the arms by about an inch and cut the bottom hem straight across to give a more finished edge without having to tuck it in (bonus!).

I still wanted a shorter sleeve but I decided to add a little bit of interest by cutting off the shirt cuffs and rolling up the sleeves.  I went ahead and tacked them in place to make sure everything was secure and used the cuffs to create tabs.  They are just decorative, but I still really like this detail.

In addition to gaining tons of closet space, I organized my jewelry with this simple frame and chickenwire jewelry hanger.  My mom and I found these two frames at the Habitat Restore (look for one in your town - great prices on all sorts of construction and home goods and the proceeds benefit Habitat for Humanity!).  I painted them this bright blue and had a custom mirror cut for just $7 (please ignore the smudges).  I love the splash of color on my beige walls in my dark bedroom and I am wearing necklaces I had forgotten I even had.  I love getting organized.

Fiesta Flower Wreath

San Antonio has an annual week-long festival called Fiesta! (I'm pretty sure the exclamation point is required) with all sorts of events.  Last year I ran the Mission 10K and this year I'm hoping to make it to the blues festival.  Fiesta wreaths are a popular decoration around town for the month or more leading up to Fiesta.  They tend towards the brightly colored and kitschy, always with streaming ribbons.

My version, inspired by Earth Day last weekend and my inherent cheapness, is made from entirely recycled or previously acquired materials.  I had an idea that it would be fun to make paper flowers and found this simple tutorial from Striving to Be More.  I decided to use ads torn from magazines headed for the recycling bin instead of the scrapbook paper called for in that tutorial.  Martha Stewart Living has great, colorful adds, Runner's World ads are - unsurprisingly - mostly close-ups of people running.  I went for colorful, but maybe sweat works with your decor.

I tried to minimize text on the strips I cut, but you don't really notice once you get to the final flower.  The tutorial is easy to follow, so I won't add much here except to say that if you use magazines, you'll want to cut the strips to twice the width you want (I used 2", 3", and 4") and then fold them in half "hot-dog ways" to increase the paper's strength.  (Did other people grow up with "hot-dog" and "hamburger" folds or are you all totally confused right now?)  You can probably figure out the remaining steps from the photo above.

This is a great project to use up buttons you may have lying around.  Ugly mauve and beige buttons look quite nice against cheerful flowers.  The backing for my wreath is cut from the lid of a pizza box and I laid out the flowers as I made them to make sure the color balance worked.  Then I just hot-glued everything into place.  All told, I made 37 flowers.  At around 7 minutes per flower (I timed myself), this was not the quickest project, but an easy one to spread over multiple nights.  If you aren't up for hours of paper folding, just one would make an adorable bow stand-in on a present.  Feliz Fiesta!