Mod Podge Shoes!!

I made Mod Podge beauties yesterday! 

I have seen so many Mod Podge projects across the blogland, that I wanted to make mine soon enough. We do not have Mod Podge in India, so I had to suffice with what I had. (For Indian readers- I used fevibond + fabric glue + feviqwick for instant and lasting bond...Sigh!)

I bought these sandals/ shoes at a thrifty price in Thailand, and back then they looked very cool. However, soon they were old-looking (at least to me!). But would I throw them? No way!!

I am a shoe-freak! I get bored with shoes just too quickly, and needed to alter these. So I set out to make myself a new pair of shoes from a pair of old denims which didn't fit me anymore (Sob!)

Cut diagonal strips from jeans and cover the front part of the shoe. Let the extra cloth be there for a while. Apply Mod Podge to the front section, and a thin line along the inside edge where you will tuck in the fabric.

Now snip the extra portion of the jeans strip until the edge, fold and tuck beneath the surface in an EXTRA neat way.

Go on with this process of placing a jeans strip diagonally, snipping extra edges and tucking in neatly.

There you go, you have a new shoe, minus the worn look!

But oh, something is still missing here..fabric flowers, of course!!

For the flowers, cut 5-6 five-petal flowers of varying sizes from a coordinating fabric (Mine was another old printed jeans). I also cut a small four-petal flower, and a few single petals from the same fabric as the shoe.

Lay the flowers one over the other. The bigger ones go at the bottom, the smallest one on the top. Thread a needle and pass through the flowers. Now thread the single petals and arrange them to get a uniform round shape.

Let the small flower with four petals be alone. Now glue these to the shoe. Ta Da!

I love these so, SO much! Yep, I'm a girlie girl!!

They'll go great with my heavy wired pearl bangles, bought in Thailand again, but new enough!!

 Anyways, I could go on forever with this, for the cute look alone...even if fingers kind of singed due to all that strong glue!!


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Cute Valentine's Card

Cards are always special for any occasion, and this V-Day was no different. I'm by no means a scrap booking expert, but I do like the personal feel derived from a hand-made card. So, I set out to make this 

So cute! Okay, scrapbookers, if you think differently - avert your eyes!! But then, I somehow love the overall effect! Read on if you want to make this!

I know what you noticed first - the satin flowers of course! I made them from a great tutorial for fabric roses on Everyday Chaos. She makes excellent stuff, check the fabric rose tutorial here, and do come back! My roses came in very differently though, they look little like cinnamon rolls (Yum! maybe because of the small size I guess)!!

I painted a white cardstock paper in silvery hues, and then gathered my satin roses. I also cut a few heart shapes from a striped cloth, and one big heart from a polka dot cloth. With the help of a round edged scissor, I also cut a slightly bigger half heart from the page of an old rotten book. Here they are:

Now with the card! Stick the polka-dot heart overlapping the paper half-heart onto the card stock this way

Now draw outline of a smaller heart onto it with glue, like this

Glue the fabric roses under the outlined area, taking care to maintain a heart-like shape. For best results, glue flowers along the outline first and then squeeze in some flowers in between the spaces. Here is what it looks like

I glued the striped hearts at random all around. Then I went over the board and cut some circles out of the old   novel pages and stuck them randomly as well. Outline the heart shapes with a darker colored sharpie like pink or red. Here it was, finally!

 You can decorate hundreds of V-Day crafts this way. I like the heart in the center so much that I'm goinf to cover hubby's gift box the same way, too!

I'm thinking of more ideas with hearts and flowers! Has your mind started to whirr too?

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Valentine's Hearts - Stamp 'em up!

Hi Y'all! I thought I wouldn't make any V-day crafts with hearts and all..but then I thought "What's a Valentine's craft without hearts anyway!" and proceeded to make a stamping craft that need not be packed inside crates after the V-day celebrations..you can simply keep it for display, as its not very V-day specific.

Ain't it so very warming and heart melting?

Well, its very easy to make and in fact a good project for kids..I've been married for a only a year now and have no kids, so I proceeded to have all the stamping fun by myself.

I first covered a canvas with a white cotton fabric. You can choose one of your choice. Stretch it over the canvas and glue on the back. For the best results in stamping, do not iron the fabric before stretching it.

Here is what you will need for making the stamps (Confused?? Well, of course I'm going to make my own stamps here; they're way cuter!!)

I chose four acrylic colors to go with, so I drew four slightly different heart shapes on the foam strip. Cut the shapes. Cut four styrofoam blocks about an inch thick, and glue your heart shapes onto these blocks. Let them dry. They will look like this

Draw free form branches onto your canvas with brown paint. You can see I was a li'l lousy at it and made the paint blot and spot too, but no problem, as the problem areas can be covered later on.

Now for the stampin' fun! Dab some color uniformly over a heart with a paint brush like this

 Stamp on at the branch ends, and have fun! Use different colors and shapes, and let some hearts overlap, as that is what gives it a perfect look. Mine looked like this after a while

Too bare for my tastes! So I went on doing it further. Its hard to pull to a stop, but I finally stopped when it looked like this

Its fun and you can let it hang on even after V-day, adorning a lone wall!
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A unique Valentine Vase!

This is my first V-day related post, as I spent lot of time thinking of a unique idea for expressing my love to the hubby for this V-day, for it marked our third year together. I wanted something unusual and not very mushy, so came up with the idea of making a Valentine special vase from a glass bottle, and an old novel or book.  

Here is what I made

I wanted to use less of red and classic heart shape to make it a little different from other V-day Crafts..but couldn't quite keep off the red color. If you want to make something like this, all you need is a glass bottle, few pages off an old book(mine was a stupid novel), some red paint, and silver colored branches to glam it up! You can use any plain branches too, though..I colored them because my hands cannot be still when I see paints!!

It starts this way: Paint a glass bottle (or any vase, for that matter!) red. Keep it aside for drying.

Now for the flowers! I love books and though it was painful for me to tear pages from it, it was a good way to use an old stupid novel which I'd have thrown otherwise! Take an old book with yellowed pages, and rip a few pages from it. Draw flowers of desired shape and size (I made a 4-hearts shaped one and another shape at random) on the page on the top. Hold the pages together and cut according to the shape on the top page. This way, you can cut more flowers at once.

See, they are pretty! And bring in the classic look so well!

Now stick these flowers onto the painted vase with glue. These flowers would be very delicate so be careful while handling! I stuck them when the paint was still wet, so I saved glue, but the flowers absorbed some of the red paint too.

Here's the vase

Now for the decoration. I painted some branches metallic silver, and glued small paper flowers to them at random.

Easy Peasy! There, its a unique V-day craft that is out of the blue, and quite different. On the Valentine's I'll inscribe messages like 'love' and 'Be Mine' on the flowers and hang them again. 

Its almost screaming out 'Be Mine',  hope hubby likes it!
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