Shirts!

    Last week I decided I would be creative and make a bleach pen shirt! I looked around on Pinterest for inspiration and instructions. This pin ended up being the most useful instruction-wise:

   Her shirt is so pretty! And she gives some really useful tips. Like that letting the bleach dry all the way gets you a white line, as opposed to washing the shirt with the bleach still wet, which leaves behind a little color. It seems like common sense, but I didn't think of that!

   So I bought myself a pretty blue shirt for $2.50 (they were on sale at work, so I got it extra cheap!) and went next door to Meijer and bought a bleach pen.
   I drew out my design on the shirt and let it dry. I had a lighter shirt, so I wanted completely white lines. Then I threw it in the wash and anxiously waited for it to finish.
   Then I pulled it out. Looked at it. And.... Nothing! The shirt looked exactly the same as it did before I bleached it! So, naturally, I tried it again. Surely it would work this time! I let it sit even longer, thinking that maybe this shirt just needed longer to absorb the bleach.
    This is the shirt after two tries:

   It still looked exactly the same as when I bought it (except maybe a bit more wrinkly).
   Determined to make a bleach pen shirt, I decided to try it again. Only this time, I bought a different shirt.
   And it was a completely different experience! Within minutes of putting the bleach on the shirt I started to see the color fading. So now I know not to buy Jerzee shirts for bleaching. Who knew they made bleach resistant shirts?!
   This is my third attempt:

    I didn't let it dry all the way; my lines were too thick for how absorbent this shirt was. The bottom design was about halfway dry when I put it in the wash, and the top design was barely on there - pretty much just long enough for me to draw the design.
   I had to draw it in three different segments. I drew the bottom design first. Then after washing/drying I drew the front half of the top design, washed, dried. Then the back half of the front. I had to split the top design into two parts because I couldn't spread the sleeve out like I wanted for the design I had in mind.

   Here are some tips of my own:

•  If you don't want spots on your shirt like mine has, let the bleach dry all the way.
•  To get thinner lines, hold the pen farther away from the shirt. You almost have to drag a short line of bleach behind you, if that makes sense.

   I still have some bleach left, so I'll probably make another shirt. At some point. Ha.

   Have a great week guys!

Embroidered Cards

   This is yet another off-subject post. I really do try to keep focused on nails, but I just can't help myself!
    My newest artistic endeavor is embroidering cards! I had these blank card-shaped bits of card stock lying around my room, and they were pretty lonely. I had been trying to think of how I wanted to decorate them and yesterday it hit me! I wanted to embroider them! But I had no idea how.... So after lots of research I finally figured it out! I found this awesome post about how to embroider cards (apparently you have to poke all of the holes before hand, which makes it super complicated if you want to do anything more than a regular stitch!). It was super helpful! I also found this amazing site that shows you step by step (with awesome, helpful pictures) how to do millions of different embroidery stitches! It's awesome!
   So far I've made three cards and am thinking up a fourth. I think I'm probably going to put them up on my Etsy to see if people like them. If they seem to do good, I'll make more and maybe open up a different shop for them so I don't have this random mish-mash of stuff in my current store. :)

   Here are some pictures!

 

  In other fun news (still not nails, sorry), I have a new (to me, anyway) old fairy tale book! Fairy tales are my weakness, and so are old books, so I absolutely can't resist an old book of fairy tales! Last week I bought an old book full of French fairy tales (it's written in English though, so I can read it!) from 1869. 1869! My oldest book yet for sure. Before this one my oldest was 1896 or so. And it's in pretty good condition. The front cover is barely held on by a bundle of threads on the inside, but other than that and one loose page the binding is great! It's amazing! 
   It's interesting though, because instead of the fairy tales being 5-15 pages like you usually see them, they're lots and lots of pages and have chapters! In my book there are only around 5 tales, but it's a decently thick book. I haven't started reading it yet (I'm waiting to finish my current book), but I can't wait! I'm so excited!

 
   I got so sidetracked raving about its awesome-ness, that I forgot to tell you guys the name! It's called (predictably) French Fairy Tales and was written by Madame la Comtesse de Segur. I absolutely loved her dedication! It reads:

To my Granddaughters,

Camille and Madeline de Malaret

My very dear children:

Here are the tales with which you were so well pleased, and that I promised you to have published.

In reading them, dear little ones, think of your old grandmother, who, to please you, has left her seclusion, and offered to public criticism the name of 

Comtesse de Segur 

   Isn't that great? She loved her grandbabies for sure! :)


   That's about it for now. And I might be getting a little sleepy...

   Have a wonderful night! (Or day, depending on where you are)  :)

I Now Have A Sister!!

   So as you might know, last week was all about getting ready for my brother's wedding. I talked about it a little in this post and the one before it. The wedding was Saturday and everything went really well! No major mishaps, and no crazy brides/moms/grooms/anyone. And now I have a sister! Finally! :)

here's a wonderfully grainy picture I stole from facebook of the newlyweds :)

   Anyways, I don't really have any new nail designs for you guys yet (I've still got what remains of my bridesmaids nail design on), but I do have some nail-related stuff to show you all. Just because I can, I thought I'd show you guys how I packaged the other bridesmaids' fake nails. I'm a little proud of the packaging. Just a little. :)
   I conveniently had two of the small boxes I use for my Etsy store at home, so I spruced them up a little.

 
   I wish I could do this for my Etsy orders, but I think the flowers would come off or get ruined or something. To make the flowers, I cut of a length of a paper streamer, rolled it, then glued it (I used regular old Elmer's glue). Then I kind of did the same thing to make the leaves, except I left a corner un-rolled. I used water colors to make it green, but I'm sure just a green streamer would work too (I only had white). Then I used my trusty old Elmer's glue to glue everything to the box!
   Then, as a nice touch (I do include this in my Etsy orders), I wrote on some paper!

 
   Usually my Etsy orders say something boring like 'Thanks for the order!' But now I might do something more like this instead.... I used some sort of fancy border/hole punch I bought at Micheal's and then wrote on them with my colorful inks! (I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I love calligraphy/illuminations and inks and older looking calligraphy pens!)
    Then, underneath it all are the nails. They don't always get to the final location looking this neat, but I do try to keep them in order! 

   And that's about it! I don't usually use red boxes, because on my Etsy orders I use a ribbon that is a pretty teal-ish color that looks awful with the red. But red was what Hobby Lobby had, so red was what I got! And it looks fine with white flowers, so that worked out great. :)

   Well, that's about it for now. I should have another nail design sometime this week. I'm going to the aquarium with my cousin, so I think I'm going to make some fishy nails! I've made some Finding Nemo nails for my Etsy store, so I might do those since I haven't painted that on my actual nails yet. Or I might do something different, we'll see!

   Have a lovely day/night guys!

Random Updates

   No new nail stuff yet. I've been busy creating graphic designs and reorganizing impossibly stuffed cabinets. I'll probably have a new nail post for you guys tomorrow or Thursday. Or maybe later...

   As you might already know, I absolutely love period clothing! If you've been on my Pinterest page, you know that I have about a billion boards dedicated to it! I just love to look at it, and if I was allowed, I'd love to feel the fabrics too! I think mostly what I like about them is that they are so elegant and detailed. They are just the coolest things to look at! I also like to sometimes wonder about who wore them and what they did...
   In light of that, I have a new project I'm going to start! I don't know if any of you guys have seen some of the amazing works of Isabelle de Borchgrave, but she is amazing! She makes life-sized period dresses out of paper! She is absolutely amazing! Here are some examples of her work:

   I'm thinking about making something like it except on a much smaller scale. It would probably fit on a Barbie or something.  I'm planning on making a dress from the late 1860s. I was hoping to make on from the 1880s, but I think the 80s will be a little too complicated for my first paper dress. This is kind of what I'll be basing my dress design off of:

   I literally have no idea what I'm doing with this project... I have never done anything like this before! So it might look decent or it might be absolutely terrible! We'll find out!
   I also have no idea when this project will be completed, but I'll keep you guys posted!