With all the fantastic geek fabric hitting the stores and interwebs these days, you may be wondering what to make with it. Here’s an idea from Sasha of Tattooed Martha – add some flair to your favorite pair of shorts.
Her tutorial walks you through creating a custom panel for shorts you already love, with the bonus of Velcro tabs so you can switch the panels out! Genius! And extra bonus? It’s all NO SEW!
I would think this might also work to create interchangeable geek fabric pockets to attach to the front or side of skirts.
What geek fabric would you like to use to spice up your wardrobe?
A Monster to Love is this great online shop where, for every cute little monster doll you buy, Sam, Ben, and their dad Ray, donate a monster doll to a kid in need. They partner up with children’s hospitals and even the World Relief Refugee program out of Atlanta.
I ran across their awesome work about a year ago on Craftsy, including a pattern to make your own monsters to donate to local kids in need, or send off to Ray and his boys in Colorado so they can donate the cuddly little monsters to kids in need.
I try to organize a Monster Making Party at least once or twice a year–they’re fun, and pretty easy to do. Here’s how:
1. I buy a couple yards of fun colored fleece fabric when it’s on sale (usually in the summer). You can get quite a lot of monsters out of a yard of fleece, or even half a yard. Just be sure to shop when it’s on sale! Along with fabric, I’ll pick up a box of stuffing when it’s on sale too (or with a coupon). One box can last a long while and stuff a lot of monsters (probably around 30). I’ll also purchase Safety Eyes for the dolls, which can be attached before sewing, and don’t require any sewing knowledge to install. I purchased my Safety Eyes here, but there are tons of vendors and craft stores out there that sell them. The 18mm sized ones are what I used, and I liked to mix and match colors too. 15 pairs of eyes cost about $15. You can also use buttons for the eyes, but make sure they are SEWN on really well. If the eyes are not sewn on securely, Ray and his boys can’t use them. Do not glue on eyes. Ray and his boys can’t use the monster dolls if the eyes have only been glued on (hello choking hazards!).
All in all, I spent about $40 on supplies for making the monsters, but I did it over the course of a couple of months.
Angie brought her own sewing machine and helped build a couple monsters. That’s my mom in the background stitching away madly.
2. I set up a FB event and ask folks to bring their own sewing machines if they’ve got them, but I also tell folks that there’s plenty of other ways to help too: attaching eyes, stuffing, cuddle testing, and hand stitching are great ways to get even the most novice of crafters involved in a Monster Making Party. Along with the fabric, stuffing, and safety eyes, I also bring along thread, scissors, and hand sewing needles for people to use. If you’re worried about materials cost, you can always ask people to pitch in a couple bucks to help out.
3. I cut out at least some monsters before the party so there are dolls ready to be sewn. I also set up stations for people to work at installing eyes, stuffing the monsters, and hand sewing the monsters closed after stuffing, and even cutting out more monsters if necessary.
Here, my friend Chrystal is stuffing a monster.
Eunice is hand sewing the monster closed.
4. We have music playing, and I ask folks to help out with some food (like chips and dip, cupcakes, and frosty beverages). And I invite folks to come when they can and stay as long as they’d like to. It’s a fun way to spend an afternoon or evening.
5. I’ve found three hours to be a great length of time for a Monster Making Party. You can get a lot done, have time to chat, and still steal a cupcake too. Once the party’s over, you’ll want to box up your magnificent creations and mail them off to A Monster to Love! Their address is on the last page of the PDF.
All our Monsters boxed up and ready to go!
If you have your own Monster Making Party, be sure to take pictures and share!!!
More Links of Interest
A Monster to Love: check out this great online shop and see where they’ll be selling their cute little monster dolls next!
Check out the story about A Monster to Love on Craftsy
With Easter almost upon us, it’s time for creating eggs that show off your own natural geekiness!
For the steampunk fans out there, Jen from Epbot has once again created some beautiful metal-looking eggs with charms added as a great extra bit of cuteness. She used papercraft eggs as the base, and then modified metal tape to put over it.
Next, the wonderful crafters over at Our Nerd Home posted a quick and easy DIY to make your own Yoshi eggs! Using large plastic eggs from Michaels, they spray painted a layer of white, and then added large colored dots to create eggs that Super Mario would be proud of.
Hopefully that will help you geek-ify your Easter basket this year, and here’s wishing everyone a very Happy Easter!
There was a lot of celebrating on the farm today. After three weeks and two days, we finally found our cat, Ari! Apparently he was hiding out in our closest neighbor’s shed the whole time. I was pleasantly surprised that even after a 23 day stint in the pitch-dark shed he didn’t really resemble Gollum at all.
In addition to more cuddles than he’s comfortable with, I’m making him these geek cat toys as a welcome home gift. (Underneath that cool cat exterior, I have no doubt that Ari is a total Whovian, Final Fantasy, AND Harry Potter nerd.) The best part? No sewing machine is needed for these adorable toys from Allons-Y Kimberly.
Oh man, remember when we posted this? What a charming place for a geek cat to hang his hat!
Ah, yes…it’s that time again: Earmuff Day! Actually, I’m ashamed to report that somehow this very salient holiday escaped my notice until this evening, when a friend alerted me to its existence. My response was, of course, to make little miniature earmuffs out of all of my leftover pipe cleaners and mini yarn pom pom balls from previous projects and go around the house putting earmuffs on everything from the owl shaped cookie jar in the kitchen to the hurricane lamps in the living room. (My boyfriend will be so impressed when he wakes up tomorrow morning and sees my handiwork! Is there such a thing as the Earmuff Fairy? I think I sense a new tradition…)
In the spirit of Earmuff Day, here are some crafty earmuff ideas from around the web:
My boyfriend’s birthday is this weekend, and I’m getting him a new smartphone(!) which has been quite the ordeal. And apparently while I have been transfixed on trying to select and purchase the perfect gift on the sly, my shiftiness has become evident to my boyfriend, who smugly mentioned this afternoon that he “knew” I was throwing him a surprise party this weekend. While this revelation was quite distant from reality, I acted like he’d caught me (to throw him off my smartphone scent)…but now I have to throw him a party, too. So since everything in my life has been smartphone-centric for the past few days, I thought: Why not theme the party around….emojis?!
Fortunately, the decoration portion of my party planning was made incredibly simple when I came across these spot-on DIY Emoji Balloons from Studio DIY, which I’ll definitely be whipping up this weekend:
…and these hilarious Dancing Girls piñatas, also from Studio DIY:
Whew! I’d better be receiving beaucoup smiley, heart, and kissy-filled texts next week for all this. :)
