Zelda Party and Costume Making

My son wanted a Zelda party so I got started on making a Link and Zelda costume.

First I made boot covers using my sons shoes as a guide.

I checked the fit on his sneaker then started on the faux suede fabric to make the boot. I bought stiff interfacing for the top of the boot. 

The bottom of the boot covers have just two seams front center and back center. Sew these up and press them.

Then sew the stiff interfacing on the top of the boots.

Once the interfacing is on, I serged center front and back seams and pressed them

Now attach them to the bottom of the boot with right sides together like this 🙂

It should look like this!! Now sew small piece of elastic across the bottom of the boot to hold it on the shoe.

The boots are now done!!

On to the leggings. I bought knits and made him some beige leggings.My friend had made a green tunic and hat which I borrowed from her for this costume. I made Sam’s sword and shield out of cardboard and painted it.

Here is his costume:

My daughter was Zelda. I borrowed a pink dress from my friend and just needed to make the tiara and belt with sash.

This was my inspiration.

I used the same stiff interfacing and measured her head circumference and waist. I then cut out strips of the stiff interfacing for these measurements and encased these in a gold fabric.

I cut out shapes for the tiara and glued gems on them

I did the same for her belt

I then drew the design for the sash and cut the shapes and used double-sided interfacing to iron on the material. The edges I used bias binding. I attached a few elastic loops on either side of the sash so I can hang it on the belt.

Here is Abby’s costume:

Ok so for the rest of the party I bought a  Nerf bow and arrow, sling shot and tomahawk. The boys played target practice in the back yard with these various target practice devices. The funniest part was I was the human target for the tomahawk throwing 🙂 I wore my sons helmet with a face shield just in case lol. I made a very extensive scavenger hunt for the boys that kept them busy for at least a half hour. They had an absolute blast trying to figure out the riddles. In the various places I picked for the riddles I hid “rupees” (gems from Michael’s craft store) who ever collected the most rupees won. 

For food I was going for a medieval theme and bought some tall candles from the dollar store, I couldn’t find smoked turkey legs so I made chicken drumsticks on the barbecue (my son’s favorite), pink lemonade was the”magic potion” like in the game, also made my own labels for the bottles of water “forest water”, homemade cookies “triforce and life force hearts”.  The kids helped me color Zelda pictures that I put up on the walls. 

Sam really wanted a ice-cream cake so that was easy peasy he loves Cold Stone Creamery. I played Zelda music and he opened up his gifts. The party bags I printed a rupee and taped it on the bags. Inside I had a small container of “pixie dust”, candy, and a ceramic ocarina (I found beautiful hand painted ocarinas on Amazon.com)

DIY Easy Bow Holder

If you’re like me and are tired of finding hair clips wedged between couch cushions or under your daughter’s bed, there’s an easy solution.

Enter the bow holder;  now hair clips will be off the floor and neatly hung up.  No more dust bunnies all over your daughter’s bows and hair clips and here’s the bonus…this holder serves as a cute decoration for your girl’s wall or closet door.  Functionality and beauty?  Sign me up!

 

Sewing Scooby rating:

3 Margaritas 

  Basic sewing skills are all you need for this project.  It’s fast, easy, and uncomplicated.  So if you can topstitch a straight line while having one of Nicole’s famous Whiskey Sours, go for it.  And if you haven’t tried one of her Whiskey Sours yet then 1.  shame on you, and 2.  check out her recipe in  Scooby Snacks.

THINGS YOU’LL NEED: 

          

 

• Large daisy or other fabric flower, stemless (can be found at arts & crafts stores or online–I get mine from a fellow etsy seller and it comes with a large 22mm rhinestone center…I love me some bling for projects like this)
• 32″ length of 1.5″-2″ wide ribbon (this is your main ribbon)
• 32″ length of .5″-1″ wide accent ribbon (will be centered on your main ribbon)
• 3.5″-4.5″ piece of your accent ribbon
• Sewing machine and coordinating thread
• Pins
• 1 pony ‘o (hair elastic)
• Hot glue gun with glue stick
• Scissors
• Ruler or cutting board
• Long lighter
• Iron and ironing board
• Spray starch (optional)
• Hammer and nail or thumb tack for hanging bow

1.  Center accent ribbon onto main ribbon and pin in place.

With or without scooby snacks, I don’t trust my ability to ‘eye ball’ measurements; I chose to use a “dissolve in water” pen to mark the center of the main ribbon.

2.  Bring the pinned ribbons to the sewing machine.  You don’t even need to get comfortable here, as you’ll be sewing for about 3 seconds.  Topstitch 2 lines onto the ribbon using a scant seam allowance.  I simply try to hug the edge of the accent trim.

3.  At both ends of the ribbon,  fold edges over about 1/4 ” and press with iron.  You now have no raw edges exposed on the front of your ribbon.

4. Back at the sewing machine once again…sew these two ribbon ends with a straight or zig zag stitch.

5. With ribbon WRONG side up, place ribbon through the pony ‘o.  Fold ribbon over to encase pony ‘o and sew in place.

 

6. Now,  “Annie, Get Your Glue Gun.”  (Pardon my musical theater reference.  I couldn’t resist).  Warm up your hot glue gun and glue the ribbon RIGHT SIDE DOWN  on back of flower, also RIGHT SIDE DOWN. 

**IMPORTANT:  make sure you glue the pony ‘o end of ribbon ABOVE the plastic “leaves” of your flower.  Otherwise, your bow holder won’t lie flush against your wall or closet door and that’s just plain annoying.

Here’s a horrendously out-of-focus pic of the back of your flower…the “leaves” are green and have the plastic stem start in the center of them.

7.  Get your lighter.  Heat seal the ends of your small piece of accent ribbon so the ends don’t fray.  To do this, run the lighter lightly by, but NOT on, your ribbon.  When heat sealed, the ribbon ends will feel a little hard and almost carmelized without being burned or singed.  If you’ve had three scooby snacks by now, you may find this step a little challenging.

8.  Hot glue your short accent ribbon to main ribbon, having ends meet in the back (on the wrong side of the ribbon).  You now have a nice accent trim for the bottom of your bow holder.

Use your hot glue gun to run a strip of glue along ribbon…

…now quickly but carefully place your short piece of ribbon along glue line and attach at back with glue, too.

9. Hey!   Unplug your hot glue gun so you don’t find a messy glob of glue on your table!

10. Hang that sucker and adorn with all the hair clips you found behind the fridge while cleaning.

WOOHOO, YOU’RE DONE!  KUDOS TO YOU!

 

To see more pics of Bow Holders, visit my etsy store, Born To Wear Bows, at https://www.etsy.com/shop/BornToWearBows?ref=si_shop

Shut the Front Door

August 1st 2013

Nicole Wrote:

We stopped at San Luis Obispo to eat and sleep.

Well let me tell you this town has some very old fashion charm. It is one of the oldest towns in California. This craft and fabric store is HUMONGOUS !!!!! I had to wipe the drool off my chin many times!! Lol ok my gosh we should do a girls trip over a weekend to come here its awesome!!

I’m going back to the store tomorrow to buy stuff!! I’m psyched!!

I will take more pictures of the store tomorrow !!

PS: This is not the only fabric store in this little town.  Shut the front door right?!!

Love ya
Nicole

Jen Responded:

Shut the front door is right!! AH! We must make a girl’s trip there indeed, and I might have to drive up there, break into the store, and fall asleep on that big delicious pile of heaven. Unbelievable.  I hope you’re both having an awesome, relaxing time. Do email pictures  tomorrow of the treasures you get….can you see how green I am over your phone?!

Nicole Wrote:

Ok every Thursday in this cute town they have a farmers market,  all sorts of goodies!!

We went into a restaurant and around 9:30 when we were leaving there were  a TON of crazy bicyclists hooting and hollering down the road half-naked or dressed all crazy not sure what the hell is going on but after a few drinks I’m digging the vibe of this town!

Lol Peter wants to move here FYI ! I told him no way I have great friends and I  don’t want to move.

PS: We met an Italian soprano that sang for the pope in 11 different languages!!

Lol seriously I’m not making this stuff up!! Crazy night.

Love Nicole

Jen Responded:

It sounds like an alternate or parallel universe! No way are you allowed to move, but hmmmm….if you did, I’d go too. Peter and Ingmar could go crazy nuts on their bikes and we would be wading through sewing projects with butt loads of awesome fabrics. Sign me up!

Here are the fabrics I bought at the fabric store:

This print is adorable and I love the mustard yellow color of the tape fabric, it  brings out that same color in the sewing machines. I am in desperate need of a cover for my sewing machine and serger. This is what I am going to make 🙂

I love to cook!! Isn’t this the cutest apron. My second favorite thing about this apron are the polka dots! I LOVE POLKA DOTS!! I am going to line this apron with the red polka dot material.

These panels are  so pretty I love vintage things. The dress forms are adorable. As soon as I saw this I knew I was going to use them for something other than sewing. I bought some stretched canvas’ and I am going to do a multi media wall hanging, I will add texture, and other fabrics.  I think it will be super cool.

Here is the matching  culinary  print for the apron. I bought tea towels and will put the strip of cook books on the end of the tea towels for an accent to match my placemats which I am going to back with POLKA DOTS of course.

 I love batiks and I have a “quilt as you go” plan for these beauties.

LPS Party Planning

My 8-year-old loves “the littlest pet shops” toys.

She asked for a party with this theme in mind. After researching some ideas on the internet with some of my own ideas this is what I came up with.  The girls had a blast crafting, decorating pet” themed” cookies, and adopting their own pet to take home. I will walk you through my thoughts and ideas with the pics.

This is my crazy birthday girl the morning I was preparing for the party

So this is some of the decorations . I was running out of time to decorate so the kids got really creative with the streamers, they helped color some LPS pics I printed off the internet and I placed them all around the house, we had great helium balloons I bought off the internet.

I set the table up with all the snacks in pet bowls, I had fish crackers, swedish fish (cats eat fish) I had gummy worms (birds eat worms), apple chips (horses eat apples), animal crackers, veggies and dip (rabbits eat carrots) etc you get the picture.

I had three games… one was pin the tag on the cat, the other one was pass the bone(didn’t get pics of this for some reason) I made a bone out of material stuffed it with rice and did the “pass the hot potato game” with the bone I made.  The funniest is the kitty litter game and NO….these are not turds they are hand crafted Tootsie rolls to look like cat turds in my make shift Kitty Litter box. I then covered these containers with uncooked oatmeal and the name of the game is to clean the kitty litter in 30 seconds. Who ever had the most kitty surprises was the winner!! Gross and funny at the same time.

  

I then had all these stations that were all pet themes. This was glitter tattoo’s the girls loved picking their color and tattoo.

 

When the kids arrived they got a box for their pet they were going to adopt. They got to decorate the box with markers and stickers. Inside the box was a card that told them what pet they were going to adopt and how happy and excited they were to meet them. They were asked to name their special pet.

Once they decided on a name they made their pets collars and little handkerchiefs that I then embroidered the pet’s name on with my embroidery machine.

I also made cookies that were all pet themed shapes and they decorated them with frosting and got to take  them home.

At the end of the party they adopted their pet. Sam gave out the LPS toy pet along with a Webkinz they adopted.

At the end of the party Abby blew out her candles on the ice cream cake and opened her presents.

   

The girls had a super blast it was a fantastic party. All of us adult girls had our own scooby snacks, great fun was had by all!!

Make Your Own Pattern

I am so excited about this book!!

No pattern? No problem!! This book teaches you to take detailed measurements that allow you to map out your own patterns. I took measurements of my 11-year-old son so I can make him a pattern for a t-shirt.  Here is my pattern! 🙂

So this is a start I am going to use him as a mannequin and pin it on him to see if the fit seems right or if I need to make some adjustments.  Don’t forget to add your seam allowances.

Alright so this is Sam’s t-shirt from that pattern!!