Is it me or can you not get more 'merican than on Memorial Day weekend & Independence Day; I associate those days with burgers & barbecues. I feel like it's the American way.
I took a wallpaper class last semester and did this burger pattern that I felt was appropriate to share considering the holiday.

I had 50s diners in mind when I came up with the idea. The idea basically expressed how burgers are the center of everything, and the toppings revolve around them.

On a big sheet of simple bond paper, I traced my image and formed a half drop repeat. To make somewhat of a textured pattern, I just used magazine scraps to fill in the images. So this was all cut paper & colored pencil in the background. Took a long ass time to color the back, but I liked the effect. So determination helped.

Here's a great Kids In The Hall skit about America. It's all spot on if I may say so. 'merica!

So, I have officially graduated. I was lucky to have this week off before I start working full time next week. These days off I tried to balance projects for myself between sewing jobs for others and hanging out with friends who will be leaving to go back home now that we're done with school.

01. Early this week, I made plans to get tattoos with friends. I made this a graduation present to myself. The day didn't go too much as planned as I was the only one to get inked from my group of friends. It was a fun day regardless.
02. Worked on a custom wristband order as well which was exciting. I love when people give me reasons to be crafty.
03. I took on another project for myself which I've been thinking about for a long time. I decided this is a great time for me to get it started, and this Blue Velvet illustration is where it started. I can't wait to get far into the project to talk about it!
04. Wrapped up the week with a trip to Coney Island with friends. I'm not a big roller coaster fan, but I went ahead and risked my life to ride on that wooden Cyclone with the gang. Really was a terrifying experience. We also got to visit the aquarium and watch the sea lion show, eat some Nathan's and ice cream, and walk the boardwalk.

Aside from that, I've really been enjoying Damon Albarn's new album. I've had it on repeat. I love, love, LOVE it.

The other day, I shared a post about screenprinting at home. I made my own little screen out of an embroidery hoop, synthetic woven material, and Mod Podge.
I made a shirt full of lips.

I got this design idea from a dress Tavi Gevinson wore. I have a bit of a fascination/obsession with Tavi and everything she does. At such a young age she's accomplished so much changing the lives of so many girls, and she does it with such a cool sense of style.
I just really wanted to recreate this.

I found a light colored t-shirt and laid it out on top of newspaper. A neat and clean workspace is important! As well as putting newspaper inside the shirt so the paint doesn't seep through to the back.

I used my screen to paint the red lips on the whole shirt using red screenprinting Speedball paint.

Afterwards I simply made the lines of the mouth with a small paintbrush and black Speedball screenprinting paint. I did a little bit of shading, but mostly kept it simple. I wanted each mouth to look different and unique.

I kept going, painted the lips throughout the entire shirt: the front, back, and sleeves.
Does take a little bit of time to paint along the whole shirt because the painted bits have to lay flat and dry. But it makes for a cool shirt indeed.

I was browsing through my computer and found these old photos, so I felt it was appropriate to share this in an FBF post.
I jazzed up this Psych hoodie for myself years ago, but rarely wore it. So I took photos intended for Etsy back in the day.

I don't recall ever actually posting it in my old store. I dug up the hoodie about a year ago and was going to take better pictures for my store but my friend showed interest, so I gave it to her.

Being a huge Psych fan, I made this obviously to showcase that. With fabric paint, I wrote a quote from the show that I thought summed up the series pretty well, and wrote 'Psych' on the back. I liked the black and white theme so I made my own zebra pattern by cutting out white fabric and sewed them on the pockets.

I'd like to think that I've gotten much better at customizing my clothes since then. But I always love coming across clothing and whatnot that I customized from back in my middle school/high school days. This was a nice trip down memory lane.

I've been super interested in screenprinting for a while. I always brushed it off because after taking a class, I realized it involved too much machinery for me to deal with. Here and there I experimented with easy methods of printing at home. Stencils -> been there, done that, over it. Then I found a simple way that involved an embroidery hoop, pantyhose, and Mod Podge. LIFE CHANGING.
But hold your horses. This isn't too glamorous of a post. Here's a lesson of something my professor called 'trial and learning'. Keep reading.

I for some reason found it hard to find decent tutorials when I first tried it. So I experimented on my own and gathered materials that sounded good.
First I made a little design and printed it out. Then found an embroidery hoop that fit the design perfectly, old pantyhose, Mod Podge, and screenprinting tape in which I still had leftover from my class. And of course pencils, a brush, and a scissor.

I put the pantyhose in the embroidery hoop and really secured and fastened it. Then I cut pieces of the tape and placed it around to make sure the screen stays in place.
I found I didn't like tracing the image onto the pantyhose because the material was too stretchy to make that work. So I elevated the embroidery hoop with the image lying underneath and kinda just eyed where to paint the glue. It was effective and I was able to successfully copy the image with the glue.

After it all dried, I found fabric to experiment on, and this is how it came out.
Ptthhh. Didn't work.

I researched more, and came to the conclusion that the pantyhose wasn't effective. It's too stretchy.
Screenprinting is also known as silkscreening - silk can be used for screens; it's a strong, woven material with big enough tiny holes to let paint print through. I rummaged through my house looking for fabric with those qualities and found some synthetic voile. Another alternative is sheer woven curtains in which you can easily find at a thrift store.

I went for round two bringing in less materials. I drew lips as an easy second experimentation attempt. Same as the first time around, I secured and fastened the new material, place the screen on top of the sketch and copied the image using the glue and brush.

This material is a little more tricky. Took a lot of attempts to cover the large areas. The glue gets pushed around more than being absorbed as it did with the pantyhose, so it's best to let the glue dry every so often before adding more + more layers.

I didn't want to use that tape again because it was pretty annoying, but I wanted to add something to make sure the screen doesnt slip out of the hoop. I used Gorilla Glue to do just that (that's what the white bubbly crap is in my screen. It dries pretty funky but it does the job.)
After all the glue dried, the screen just felt durable. I went ahead and placed it on my shirt and just painted with a sponge brush.

Annnnd the final conclusion: It totally worked. Hurray!

Tips:
• If you're working with an image with type or anything of the sort, depending on how you decide to work with the screen, make sure the image is mirrored so it will be painted the correct way onto your shirt.
• When inserting the fabric in the hoop, make sure you bring in the fabric tight but not tight enough to rip the fabric (I accidentally did that, oops).

And there you go.

The same coworker whom I did the simple t-shirt sleeve alteration for wanted to put my sewing skills to test by asking me to make two tank tops with his logo for him. He provided the fabric and the tank top for me to imitate.
One was a white jersey mesh and the second was a stretchy black cotton.

Sewing up the jerseys were a little tough, but once I got a good flow, I made it work out. The tough part was cutting & sewing the logo.

For the white jersey tank, he asked me to cut out a coral 'N' (for his brand Nativ Label). I brought the 'N' into Photoshop, sized it to what he wanted, printed it 100%, cut it out, and pinned it to the fabric to trace and cut.

After sewing it on, I had to repeat the whole process for a black tank top with a creamy-ish colored 'N'. The black cotton was easier to work with than the jersey mesh.

I got a two thumbs up. He has more projects in mind, so we'll see where that goes!

My friends and I are the worst with following through with things. Okay, that may be an exaggeration. Everyone has their quirks, obviously. We just take our time with things.
Here's an example: The five of us wanted to do Secret Santa for Christmas. We found this website to jumble our names up, we each got an email of whom we had to give a gift to, and we all put together gifts. That was easy. The hard part, being that we're all spread across the east coast basically - we had to mail our gifts to each other. Some haven't send out the gifts yet. I gave mine early this month. Talk about delays, delays.

Of course I went down a creative route. She currently lives in Louisiana, was born & raised in New York. I bought a plain mug & glass paint, and painted Louisiana and New York with planes traveling to and from.
To cure the paint, it can either air dry for 21 days or be baked. I let mine air dry.

I wanted to put together a nice little gift bag, so I bought three nail polishes and a manicure set with files, clippers, etc. Obviously I bought it around the holiday season, so the red sparkled set screams Christmas.

I put everything in that nice little gift bag and sent it on its way.

Side note observation: Martha Stewart does everything right. Glass paint! ...That's all I have to say.