Purple Monkey

Busy times here in Sweeneyville! Finally got moved into the new place over the weekend. Now begins the massive unpacking efforts.

I do have a purse to share from a few weeks ago. This was a special request for a friend of a friend. Get this: She likes purple, monkeys and skulls! This is a girl after my own heart.

It's hard to see in the picture, but the purple in the monkey is a fun glittery fabric. The same fabric was used for the lining. I learned the hard way to iron the wrong side of the fabric or the glitter would come off. I used a skull and crossbones button for the tab closure. This was a fun one to make!

Now, I should go unpack the kitchen. Or I could keep watching Heroes. Eh, we'll see. :-)

A Tale of Two Sofas

I've been decorating the living room in my head!

In the coming weeks, we'll be finalizing our move to the Chicago area. We're trying to sell or give away as much as possible to make the last move easier, which puts us in the market for... a new sofa! Initially, I thought I wanted a sectional. One sofa doesn't give both of us enough room to lay down and, let's face it, we're sofa layers. As I was shopping, I had a hard time finding a sectional that I liked and in the right color (my heart is set on gray). Then I found this beauty!

I love the shape and it's an awesome deal. No, it's not a sectional, but I love it! The solution is that we'll have to get two of them, of course. The color shown is Oyster, but it also comes in this amazing gray textured fabric. It reminds me of boucle.

I'm very excited! Just need to figure out how we're paying for it.

One project I'll definitely be undertaking for the living room is this fantastic wreath made of torn book pages.

Love, love, love it! Thanks to Living With Lindsay for the idea and tutorial. She made this for about $2 with items from Dollar Tree. It has a wonderful vintage vibe and would be awesome if you used a book that has sentimental value. If you could bring yourself to do it, that is.

Shop-side, I won a bid on Etsy's Alchemy, so I've been working on a custom purse. I'll post some pics when that's done. Should be cute!

Threadbangers!

How am I just now discovering this site?! Threadbangers is chocked full of fantastic fashion and decor DIY projects, with a focus on reusing and recycling. They have tons of video tutorials.

Below is an instructional video on how to fuse plastic bags to make a laptop bag. What a fantastic idea! I'm not an avid recycler by any means, but I do hate being wasteful and this is like getting free fabric! I can't wait to try it out and see what I can make.

Grape Soda is Awesome

So, I've been a bit of a slackard. I haven't had much energy for anything that doesn't involve hulu. I guess I needed a break from sewing, but I seem to have the bug again. W00t! My goal is to burn through all my stockpiled fabric while the desire to sew lasts.

I finished the purse for my friend Kobi, which you can see above. I absolutely love this fabric and may use it as inspiration for redecorating the living room/dining room. But we'll wait a bit to see if any bites come through on the job front.

For those who don't know me personally, I used to work for a certain big box electronics retailer that closed recently. Being that retail floor planning is pretty specialized, the only leads I've had are many states away, so I'm trying to limit how much we do to the house. In fact, as I look around at the things in our house, I ask myself, "Do I want that enough to move it?"

Anyway, besides Kobi's purse, I finished the dinosaur purse and found out the requester actually wanted two dinosaur purses, so yay! There's the red dinosaur to the right and his green brother. How do I know they're boys? I just do.

For anyone who may be interested, I'm thinking I'll do a dinosaur applique tutorial soon. This coming week will be very busy, so it may be the following week.

I just started a cherries purse out of what is supposed to be a girl's sundress and I like how it's looking. You'll see that with the next update, hopefully, along with the beginnings of my new line of super scary purses! (You'll be so fweaked out.)

-Mel P