I wanted to share this really quick because I feel like it's an interesting way to think about crafting--then again, harnessing the power of the wind is a very old technique.
All pics are from Merel Karhoff's blog. I recommend going there for more pics and a video. I'd like to make one of those someday...
I got this awesome Dick Dale tee when I went to his show at The Belly Up [in San Diego] last year. It says "Dick Dale for President", which makes me smile. Here's a pic of me and The King of Surf Guitar:
Here's the transformed tee:
I'm really happy with how it turned out. I used this tutorial from fellow Etsy-seller Lex's website, WhatTheCraft.com. As I've mentioned before, Lex has many easy written tutorials, and has even made some videos recently. She's a great teacher! [I pretty much idolize her and I hope she doesn't find it creepy!] I love taking a simple, soft tee and turning it into something of my own.
The fabric is really thick, and it was hard for me to control while sewing. The ruffles came out so uneven. And I didn't even catch all the layers when sewing on the ruffles and the waistband. So sad! Whenever this kind of thing happens, I shove the ugly thing in my closet until I figure out what to do with it.
I've thought about the depiction of women in the media a lot, as I'm sure most women have. I like "fashion" magazines, and I usually try to avoid the beauty tips which are really just thinly-disguised ads; and the pictures of beautiful women, airbrushed to perfection. But it's hard not to see the negative message, and I've realized that the content I'm looking for is not worth it, or simply not there at all. Why am I even wasting my time on these magazines, looking for cool fashion and interesting articles? When I read The Seventeen Magazine Project a few months ago, I started thinking about these things all over again.
Let's get down to the truth: You will never lose the belly flab, have fake lashes from a tube, get rid of the cellulite on your ass, eat less than 1200 calories a day, exercise every day, find Mr./Mrs. Right, become a millionaire in a few years...Why? Because of biology, physics, airbrushing, and economics! It's a lot to ask from a person and women shouldn't feel bad if they can't do it all. Plus, magazines are made up entirely of ads that are meant to make us feel not pretty, too fat, or in some other way inadequate so that we will buy products that don't make us happier anyways.
It's time I finally had a nice banner for my Etsy shop. This one is pretty dumb:
I'm not even sure that it's accurate... I already know that Gimp is a free graphics manipulation program that many people use, so I downloaded it and tried it out. I played around with it for a while, but I was so overwhelmed by all the buttons and I just didn't know what the eff I was doing! Then I saw this article: Etsy Seller How-To: Banner Tips that had the following simple tutorial to get me started on Gimp.
Ah, the awesomeness that is Etsy!
I opened up Gimp and prepared for the challenge. Everything about my Etsy shop seems to take so long! I searched Google for a "heart attack ekg" -type image...
This was kind of a basic idea I was going for. I changed the background to pink after some mindless clicking and messing up, and then I searched for an awesome font.
