Easy Peasy Pretty Pair

     Yay! I am finally doing a for real craft post! Inspired by this and this on A Beautiful Mess, I was so excited about this one. I dragged Taylor to the store the other day with visions of the loveliness that would soon reside over our bed, and I'm so happy with the finished product. It took me the entire afternoon, but I was also doing laundry and waiting on my birthday flowers to arrive, so I was taking longer than I could have. I totally think you should make one for yourself -if you're against the lovey-dovey stuff, then how about just you or an adorable pet?

Supplies: Five (or more/less) colors of scrapbook paper, one piece of white poster board, photo of choice (printed out of course), embroidery thread, ribbon, paper doilies, decent-sized frame, gold paint pen, needle, glue stick, scissors, and a measuring tape.

One: Print out your favorite photograph and take your scissors to it. Make sure it's an image that can be easily cut out, nothing with crazy backgrounds and confusing lines -it just makes the whole process easier. Cut allll the way around it (and in the middle if there are parts like mine between the arms, where the background of the photo shows through).

Two: Cut out your piece of poster board so it will fit into the frame.
Three: Snip out equilateral triangles from your scrapbook paper. Mine were 2.5in. on each side but you could do bigger or smaller depending on the frame size. I ended up with about seven of the colorful pieces and fourteen of the neutral and it was just enough. You could also add more colors, less colors, use paint swatches instead, the possibilities are kind of endless.
Four: Place those triangles in a pretty pattern on your poster board. Make sure you like the layout before you glue anything down and try to keep the triangles as close together and straight as possible. Glue, and then trim around the edges.

Five: Figure out where you want your doily and photo placed, and then glue those down as well. I liked mine with one doily as a sort of halo effect, but you could certainly add more. It could be cute to do two different images and then halo them both; get creative!

Six: Once everything is glued into place, thread your needle with a length about twice as long as the area you want to cover. So for mine, I doubled the length around the doily section that was showing and then used that much thread, and it worked perfectly. Another tip is to poke your holes where you want them, first, giving you a guideline to follow. Then go about your sewing. I just did a simple backstitch on mine but you could always get fancier.
Warning here: Be careful! The paper and the doily are way more fragile than fabric, so go slow and don't pull too tightly. I managed to feel really dumb and ripped part of my doily, oops! Luckily you can't really see it once it's framed, but you have been warned.

Seven: Embellishing time! Glue a pretty ribbon across the top and add some lyrics with a gold pen (mine are from "Birds of a Feather" by The Civil Wars!) Another mistake I made for you that you can avoid -don't write too close to the edges, as the frame will end up covering some of your words up.

Eight: Frame it and hang it on the wall! Bonus points if you cut out extra hearts to place around it. Triple bonus points if you make your bed for the sole purpose of photographing it! And if your puppy hides under the bed all day because you're busy crafting, then you win automatically.

      I really hope you enjoyed this because I've got a few more crafty things up my sleeve. Go forth and create, my beautiful readers! XO.

Just Like New

So this is the new blog layout...

I'm liking the simplicity and I think I'll really enjoy having more space to write and post photos, especially with my new-to-me fancy camera and soon-to-be-mine (8MP !!) iPhone camera. I'm really looking forward to having a really good camera, attached to my phone, that can be with me in my bag all the time. Miss iPhone and my Canon cannot wait to be brought on my New York trip with me.

This is all besides the point though, the point being that I like my new layout and header and want to share where I found them/how I made them.

The layout is called "Strawberry Shortcake" and comes from Pugly Pixels. This site is fabulous and has tons of cute free things along with their items for sale. Loads of downloads and tutorials to go with them, it's enough to make even me feel inspired about changing things up a bit. I love the velvet bows, and the How to Spot One of Those Darn Bloggers post is so good! Taylor is always getting on to me when we go out to eat. "Wait! Don't touch it! Let me take a picture first!" has been heard many a time at our table. Go look and enjoy!

The new header was made all by me, thanks to Picnik.com. I splurged a little (honestly, what I would normally spend on a cup of coffee) and paid for the Premium membership this month, and so far it's been worth it. It's nice to be able to access the entire site, especially some of the Holiday editing. The background  flowery stuff came from a picture of this dress:

Edited with Pixlr.

My face is SO goofy. I was trying to figure out my camera's timer settings and didn't realize it was taking a million pictures one after the other, so as I was fake smiling and posing I began to laugh as I leaned in to turn the camera off and this is what it caught. I ended up kind of liking the spontaneity of it though. Anyway.. the header image is of that dress and the font is Love Ya Like a Sister, a cute one that Picnik has.

Just wanted to let you all know a little bit about what when on behind the scenes here. I'm in Melbourne until Wednesday, when I leave for my grand ol' New York trip. I have my laptop with me now but may or may not take it up on the flight with me, so this may be the last post for a bit. Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Happy Kwanzaa! Happy Yule! Happy New Year! and any other major holiday I have forgotten!

XO.

Shopaholics Anonymous

I've finally gotten my refund money from the University and have been so terribly good at not spending it on frivolous things. So good in fact, that I was feeling weird for not spending any money- the boyfriend and I went to the mall and I did not buy a single thing. Not a thing. We were there for three hours! The money is supposed to last me for awhile, but before I had gotten it I told myself I'd take a little out and spend a tiny bit on myself, that way I wouldn't go spending crazy the first time I went out into civilization. Finally, after a couple weeks of complaining that I hadn't bought anything, I took my 50$ budget and decided to head to Target on a night when the boyfriend was at rugby practice. Here is the story of that lovely shopping trip:

Sometimes I pose on top of ottomans in our extra room with the windows. At night. When the lighting sucks. With my phone which doesn't take super great pictures. Kind of a fail.

7:30 PM: Drive to Target, hoping they're open until at least 9 PM. Find a decent parking spot. Walk into the store and look at the dollar section. Don't even pick up one item. Sad face.
8:00 PM: Wander through the clothing, finding a couple things I like but nothing worth buying. Try on a super cute pair of boots, decide they're not really what I'm looking for.
8:15 PM: Find the Halloween section. Rejoice! Decide I don't actually want to decorate until October. See candy corn. Walk ALL the way to the other side of the store to find a smaller bag, find out they don't have any smaller bags, procede to walk ALL the way back to get the massive "Value" sized bag. Smell it a lot, because candy corn smell is amazing.

Bow headband and Candy Corn!

8:30 PM: About to leave with just my candy corn and decide to walk to the toys. Think about how I can't play Words With Friends because I don't have a fancy iPhone. Lightbulb Moment when I realize I could just buy Scrabble and force the boyfriend to play with me. Pick up Scrabble off the shelf and almost jump up and down. Conjure up a plan to make it a surprise from Cupid, complete with a cute note!

"Love, Cupid" Taylor thought it was interesting that Cupid and I have really similar handwriting. I said I thought we must have gone to Elementary school together. 

I won 283-263! Super proud of some of those words.

8:45 PM: Walk back to the front of the store, detouring through the accessories section, trying to buy at least one thing that will be really useful and slightly frivolous. Find a headband with a giant bow and plaid. Decide that I need an outfit to go with it. Wander the clothes again.

Headband! Wearing it kind of sideways so that the bow is on top.

9:15 PM: Finally decide on a black skirt and a blue shirt (over a plain black dress, jeans, stripey shirt, etc.) and get excited over wearing it to class on Friday. (Friday's are my favorite class days and always end up being date lunches for me and Taylor Frank, so I like to dress up.) Head back to the dollar section, find some cute hair ties. Pay and head home, where I proceed to try everything on and take some of these cute pictures.

YUM!

10:30 PM the next night: Make my cutie patootie boyfriend take pictures of my outfit. He told me that if I put them up on my blog I had to site him or else it would be plagiarism HA!. So here you go sweet pea: Pictures of my outfit were taken by Taylor.

P.S. My bum looks amazing in this skirt. Trust me, I checked myself out a TON.

Hope you enjoyed my picture heavy, somewhat silly post tonight. Boyfriend is out with the rugby boys  (Deadbirds won again!) so I'm here writing, homeworking, and watching crappy TV. We're headed out of town tomorrow to meet two parts of my sorority family for lunch (EEK so excited!), so I'm staying in drinking orange juice so I'm ready to drive. Back to being lazy now- XO, Skye.

Sparkly Saturday!

With my equally fancy Mamma.

   Alright, so it's techhhhnically not Saturday anymore, but I still felt like sharing; Our Saturday was a lovely array of fanciness. I finally took a day off of work and everything else. I awoke at noon and rolled out of bed and down the stairs. I spent the "morning" organizing my closet. It may not sound like the most relaxing thing ever, but it totally was for me. Walking into a neat, clean room is so relaxing. I feel like I'm so on top of it all now. (I'll have to add some fabulous photos!) And what better way to feel nice and relaxed than getting a shower with super yummy bath stuff from, where else? Lush.
   Apres, I talked to my Beau for a while and then Mamma cooked our dinner:

 

Tres delicieuse! Eggs Benedict is my very favorite breakfast, but even better as dinner!

   We began to watch Julie&Julia and Mamma began to make Vanilla Bean cupcakes. And those little sweet cakes? Absolutely delectable! I put extra pink sprinkles on mine, because I'm fancy. I went upstairs and made my bed, then crawled in and got comfy.

   And today? I did a LOT of work. I took off yesterday, but that meant I worked 10 to 6 today instead. I watched the Superbowl while painting my toenails (walking contradiction, anyone?) and Who Dat!? the Saints won! Dudes, you don't even understand how white I sound when I say that!!

   So let me show you a couple cute things that are totally Sparkly Saturday/Sunday worthy:

Tarina Taratino "Electric Koolade" necklace! It's so colorful! It's so hippie chic! It's AMAZING!

   And then I was looking around the web and found this super cute song, so I had to share the lyrics. I'd share the song itself, but I honestly err.. didn't really like it. It was cute, but I thought the lyrics were more worthy of a better song? If that makes sense? Anyway, here goes. The song is called "Boats and Birds" by Gregory and the Hawk:

"If you'll be my star
I'll be your sky
You can hide underneath me and come out at night
When I turn jet black and you show off your light
I live to let you shine
I live to let you shine

But you can skyrocket away from me
And never come back if you find another galaxy
Far from here with more room to fly
Just leave me your stardust to remember you by

If you'll be my boat
I'll be your sea
A depth of pure blue just to probe curiosity
Ebbing and flowing and pushed by a breeze
I live to make you free
I live to make you free

But you can set sail to the west if you want to
And past the horizon till I can't even see you
Far from here where the beaches are wide
Just leave me your wake to remember you by"

 XOXO.