DIY Gold leaf headband

Happy Monday! I hope you've had a wonderful start to your week. Mondays can be a bummer, as we all know, so why not start this week off with making something pretty for yourself. This headband takes very little time and effort, but looks stunning. Plus, it's a great project to make use of those old artificial flowers you're not using anymore.

I've been seeing a lot of pretty gold leaf headbands on Pinterest these past few months, and I really wanted to make one for myself. I don't usually wear headbands because they're uncomfortable to wear with classes, so I didn't want to spend money on something I would rarely use. Which is why I used only materials I already had for this project.

You will need:

• artificial flower leaves
• Golden permanent marker or spray paint
• metal headband
• bobby pins
• strong adhesive (like super glue or E6000)

1. Start by cutting the leaves off the stem. Your final design depends on what type of leaves you use of course, so you could also use very small leaves on a stem, in which case ignore this step.

2. Use a permanent marker or spray paint to color all the leaves you plan to use.

3. Let the leaves dry. Once they're completely dry, you can start making the headband.

4. First, mark the center on the metal headband. I wanted the leaves to overlap a little in the center, so I glued the first leaf so that the tip was about 1cm over the center line. Use bobby pins to stop the leaf from moving. When you first place the leaf and the glue is still wet, the leaves have the tendency to stick up from one side or move off center, so bobby pin are perfect for avoiding that.

5. Continue glueing the leaves to the headband from the center towards the sides. After all the leaves have been glued and you're happy with your design, add more bobby pins and leave the headband to dry.

I'm pretty happy with the end result. I would have liked to use smaller leaves, but I wanted to use materials I already had, and those were the best option from that.

New blog design!

after

before (the first version)

If you visited my blog yesterday, you probably noticed something was off. I've been messing around with the blog design all day, so there have been some weird moments along the way.

I've been wanting to make over the blog for months now, but didn't seem to have the time or a clear enough of a plan. But, today, thanks to a little push from my fiance, I finally did it. I'm so glad I did! I hope you like it as much as I do.

Update! And then I changed it some more. What can I say... I guess diving head into a design without a clear picture of what it has to look like leads to many more little tweaks. But, the positive side of it is that I learned a lot about html and some new Photoshop skills along the way. Whoop!

Refashionista: Women's into men's long-sleeved t-shirt

Can you believe it's May already? It's getting hectic at school, which means it's going to get slow around the blog. But, before I bury myself into music history books, I've got some refashions and tutorials to share.

Today's refashion is one of the very few refashions I've done for men. It's not that I don't like sewing for men. I love men's fashion, sometimes even more than women's. The problem is finding the material for the refashions. As you probably all know, most men wear their clothing to rags, so thrifting refashionable men's wear in good condition is a rare occasion. Then, one day I had an idea. Why not use women's clothing as the basis for refashioned men's wear? It seemed like the perfect solution. So, I headed out to our local thrift stores, and found this XL women's long-sleeved tee, which translated into a well-fitting men's M. Yes, I do pat myself on the back for this one (lol).

As you can see, I changed quite a few things. The first things I needed to figure out was the neckline. The original neckline was way too wide for a man, so I had to make it narrower somehow. Since there was no excess fabric to work with, I opted for a deep brown jersey to compliment the original turquoise. To alter the neckline, I removed the existing neckband and cut the neckline into a round V-neck. The much wider neckband helped to make the neckline narrower and more men-appropriate.

The contrasting neckband needed some additions to create a cohesive look, so I added a small chest pocket, added some brown to the sleeve hems and also added elbow patches. Those suckers were difficult to sew on, as you can see from the photo below. Lets just say, that if you ever consider adding elbow patches to an already sewn sleeve, patience and basting are your best friends.

I'm totally smitten with the way this refashion turned out. I think Rein looks so handsome in it -turquoise is the perfect color for him. Maybe I'm a bit biased here, but I love this tee on him! I looking forward to transforming more women's wear into men's wear.