New Products: Something for the Ladies

Here are a few pics of my new line of ladies skirts! I got bored with making straight panel skirts (not to mention finding copy cat sellers), so I put on my thinking cap and designed these fabulous skirts!

They twirl and sway a little like a square dancing skirt but are fabulously light and cool. Perfect for spring and summer. They are made from recycled jersey and T-shirts. Each one is guaranteed unique, as I do not follow a specific pattern (it's more of a process!) I pull together coordinating fabrics, and get to work. Each skirt is overlock serged for extra durability. My wide jersey fold over waistband allows you to wear your skirt up or down a few inches depending on your mood. It also allows for a wide range of fit, so if you plan to drop a few pounds over the summer, order a size or two smaller than you need and wear it as you lose weight!

Click here to order one of your own!

New Products: What's New in March!

I have been diligently designing new product lines for Handmade Pretties. Here are a few gems that have come off of the machines in the last few days.


Recycled Jersey Skirts!


Recycled Jersey Skirts with built-in Pantaloons!



Recycled T-shirt Bloomers!


And One Super Fantastic Floor Length Sweater Skirt!

Personal Favorites: 15 Albums

I originally posted this as a note on my facebook page, but I found it to be blog worthy, or rather I have been feeling too lazy to write new blogs so I am reposting this.

So here are 15 albums that in someway changed my life and/or made it more tolerable. These all span from about 1993 to 2006 (mostly known as the college years). I find it harder to become completely smitten with an album in the age of the iPod. There are a few, but that is another post entirely.

Gateway Albums = pot for your ears...

1. Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream: This album made me love music again. Popular music in the late 80s and early 90s had nearly destroyed music for me. When I heard this album, I had finally found a jumping off point. I am not saying it is the best album or that I would even haul it with me to a desert island...but.


2. Bottledog - Hot Dolphin Terror at Chirpgobble : THIS album completely changed music for me. I was in Ames in the early days of Bottledog, and when Laura Watral (of Coupleskate) sent me this album, it totally freaked me out. I thought it was really really weird and maybe not in a good way, and then it totally got under my skin and completely changed the way I listened to music.

The actual album cover is a painting by Andrew Kleindolph (Femur).

Saved My Soul From Breaking into a Million Pieces Albums = Prozac!

3. Bedhead - Beheaded : Perhaps I could have lived without this album, but I am fairly certain that I would not have wanted to.


4. Dirty Three - Horse Stories : Same deal. My cd player actually asked me to pick something else.


5. Rex - C : I had entire friendships based on a mutual love of this album.


6. The Palace Brothers - Days in the Wake : Vinyl. Probably trashed from repeated playings. It is still one of the first albums when spinning some vinyl


7. P.J. Harvey - Stories from the City Stories from the Sea : Grad school really sucked the first term. PJ helped me deal. This is not necessarily my favorite PJ album (Dry probably holds that title), but it was somehow more important.


8. Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne : Good grad school elixir.


9. Neko Case - Blacklisted : My children subconsciously know this entire album b/c I sang it all the time in the car whilst preg. Beatrice will sing "I Wish I was the Moon" from start to finish.


Albums that Made good art = crack?

10. Godheadsilo - Elephantitus of the Night : Try NOT to paint to this


11. Trans Am - It's a tie between Surveillance and Futureworld : Painting in the OMB!




12. Bill Ding - Trust in God but Tie Up Your Camels : I remember making a lot of paper to this
album.


13. 18th dye - Tribute to a Bus: General mayhem.


14. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Self titled : I recall doing a lot of sewing to this disc


15. The Arcade Fire - Funeral : many a website was created with this playing in my ears.

Around Our House: Kombucha or Bust - Part 1

Working from home with the kiddos means that I have strange shifts. Most of my sewing happens at night between the hours of 9pm and 2:30am. Since the girls are alive and ready to rumble at 7am, this often leaves me sleep deprived. I have found that drinking a bottle of kombucha every other day helps me kick the fatigue.

After forking over about $12 for three bottles of kombucha, I have decided to start brewing my own. My first step? Kombucha mother.

I have purchased an original bottle of GT's kombucha (it is raw and unpasteurized). Following the instructions I have been reading online, I will pour this bottle into a jar with some sweet tea and let it sit until I get this...


It might look skanky, but it's fantastic.

Let the process begin.

Do It Yourself: Flutter Butterfly Puppets

One bright and sunny butterfly floating on the breeze.

This is a great project to make while you are waiting and waiting and waiting for spring. These cheerful little butterflies make great puppets or even a fun bouquet. Do this as an afternoon activity or make these as a craft at a birthday party! Perfect for children old enough to use markers up to adults.

Supplies:
basket style coffee filters
food coloring
spray bottle filled with water
washable markers
chenille stems (some traditional style and bump stems)
scissors


All of our supplies ready to go.

1. Beautify the wings (coffee filters). We started by wetting a filter on top of a towel and dropping food coloring onto the filter. You can also draw on a dry filter and them wet it to make the colors run. We hung ours to dry using a hanging laundry carousel. We did this part of the project on one day and finished it the next. Filters should be dry before continuing.

2. Further beautiful your wings if desired. After our dye job dried, we drew patterns and lines on them with markers.

3. pinch the center of the filter, trying to keep an even amount of "wing" on both sides of the pinch.


Pinching the wings into shape.

4. Take one of the bump chenille stems (cut in half) and wrap the thin middle around the pinched wings twice.


Ready to wrap the bump stem around the middle of the wings.


Wrapped and ready for antennae.

4. Take a regular chenille stem cut in half and wrap both ends around a marker to curl. Fold it into a "V" shape.


Curling the antennae.

5. Center the bottom of the "V" on the top of the butterfly's head.


Lined up and ready.

5. Fold the tip over and wrap around the antennae a few times to secure.


Folded over and ready to wrap around the antennae to secure them to the head.

6. At this point you have a butterfly. You can attach them to gifts, or tie a string to suspend. But we like to make butterfly puppets. Taking a whole chenille stem (not the bumpy ones) sneak the tip of it under the center back of the butterfly's body.


Attaching the controls.

7. Twist to secure and you now have a butterfly puppet. Hold the far end of the stem and allow your butterfly to gently bob and sway with the breeze. If your stem gets bent, you may need to replace it. Gather together a handful of butterflies for a bright and cheerful bouquet!


Fly little friend!

Project designed by Lara Newsom of Handmade Pretties

Around Our House: Painting Painting Painting

Well we could wait no longer for fresh spring breezes, we had to start painting my husband's man cave yesterday. He chose Toasted Pumpkin by Behr for the color. Yes. I let him pick the color. This is how you know I love him. We bought Behr's low VOC paint that is supposed to be paint and primer in one, but I have to say that IF they ever do truly make a one coat paint I do not think it will be in my lifetime. Painting over the bright sky blue with orange is definitely a two coat job.

I suppose it was probably less fumy, but it was still too much for my sensitive head. If we had been able to open the windows, it would have been more tolerable. Today the room smells a little "painty", but not too bad. We will however wait until spring to do the girls' room.

Here are some cute pics of our girls "helping". They like to paint for about ten to fifteen minutes and then they are done and will let us get to work.


The girls hard at work.


My step-brother Josh came over to help. I had him prime over our tree, since it broke my heart to do it (Sylvia and I painted it together when she was 3).

Welcome to Esty: Sandy Dyas Photography

I love this photo of Caroline flying through the air. Photo by Sandy Dyas

My first new Etsy shop to feature is a good friend of mine, Sandy Dyas. She is a fabulous photographer with a knack for catching reality at it's most sincere. I am positively smitten with her photo of her granddaughter bouncing on the bed in her supergirl outfit. I'll let her shop description tell the rest of her story.

Sandy Dyas Fine Art Photography

Welcome to My World. Indeed this world is rather strange, a bit unusual and beautiful too. I have had a camera in my hand since I was a young girl. Cameras make you pay attention to what is right in front of you. For years I used film and sometimes still do but I own several digital cameras now in addition to my old-school cameras.

Drawn to people and their environments - and especially natural light, I strive to create a collaborative and authentic portrait of the world we live in. I look for photographs in the constantly changing world that strike a note with me; images that contain reality and ambiguity. I use my camera as a way to see, to interact with the world and to remember.

Early in my career, I owned a small portraiture business in Bellevue, a small Iowa town near the Mississippi River. A dozen years later, I moved to Iowa City. I received my MFA in Intermedia (Performance Art & Video). My first book of photographs entitled Down to the River; Portraits of Iowa Musicians was published by the University of Iowa Press in June 2007.

My photographs have appeared in the New York Times, Glamour, Jane, Simon & Schuster, No Depression, Newsweek, Random House, RedHouse Records, Vogue and many more publications.

Photographs are printed on Fuji Lustre E Surface Photographic Paper unless otherwise noted.
All prints are on archival paper and printed at a excellent professional lab I am been using for many years. There are more options such as: Metallic Photographic Paper, Canvas on Masonite and more - Just Ask!

Most images can be printed at various sizes.

More about my work:
http://www.sandydyas.com
http://sandydyas.blogspot.com/


James and the Pronghorn. Photo by Sandy Dyas


Green Dress on Orange Wall. Photo by Sandy Dyas

Handmade Pretties in the Press: Better Homes and Gardens - March 2010

This cute little shamrock brooch (on page 18 of the March 2010 issue of Better Homes and Gardens) is made from felt, vintage lace, and a beautiful brown glass button from my grandmother's button collection. While I make more elaborate intricately stitched brooches for sale on my website, this brooch is relatively easy to make with just a few supplies like felt, lace, buttons, tacky glue, hot glue, and a safety pin. I simply cut two clover shapes from felt, and then trimmed one down so that it would nest nicely inside the other and carefully glued the lace down with tacky glue. The button is sewn to the center, and the safety pin is glued to the back using hot glue on a strip of felt to cover one side of the safety pin like a band-aid. My daughter and I sewed one on a headband for her to wear at school on St. Patrick's Day.


Page 18 of the March 2010 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. The whole issue is full of beautiful colors and great spring inspirations. Perfect for those of us lost in the land of "Snowmageddon".


Our simple shamrock headband. The clover is glued together and the buttons are sewn on. The whole thing is sewn to the fabric covered headband, although, glue would probably work too.


One of my shamrock brooches for sale on my etsy site.

Etsy Favorites: Sub Rosa Fashion

Sub Rosa Fashion is out of Sarajevo. I have found several artists based out of Sarajevo who masterfully use color and texture in their knitting and crocheting. The line of clothing made by Sub Rosa is fun and unusual, but not outside of the realm of practical. It is relatively affordable as well considering how much time and materials must go into each piece. She uses a broad range of colors, ruffles, and textures to create her fabulous unique pieces.


I just love the crazy colorful oversized ribbing.


The uneven hemline reminds me of seaweed.


Ok what pink ruffle loving gal DOESN'T want this dress!

Do It Yourself: Handmade Labels

When I started selling my products on etsy, I ran into a problem. How to label all of my items without spending a ton of money or having to wait for reorders. Originally, I would print out labels on iron transfer ink jet paper and fuse it to felt. These labels worked fairly well. As my business grew, I found that I rarely had time to make more. The print would also tear a little towards the edge of the felt, not to mention my complete lack of ability when it comes to ironing-on. So I began to look into new methods.


Here is an example of one of my early iron-on labels sewn to the bottom of a titty pincushion.

I tried shrinky dinks, mainly because I wanted to MAKE shrinky dinks. This was even MORE labor intensive and convoluted than the iron-on decals, but made for a very unique and charismatic label. I have kept this idea around for some of my more expensive jewelry items.


Here is a shrinky dink label sewn to a fun mushroom pincushion.

Finally, I had the idea to have a stamp made of my logo. I found a company online, Rubber Stamping Across America, that would create an 8" x 10" stamp sheet for a small price. Since there was extra space on the sheet, I designed several fun stamps to use with my work, and had my logo made in two sizes. I had to cut the sheet and attach each stamp to a wooden block, but it was well worth the effort. I recommend paying the couple of extra dollars to get the adhesive backing pre-glued.

When I make labels, I use black "StazOn" brand ink. It claims to not be for use on fabric, but I have washed my labels on clothing repeatedly with only minimal fading. I use different colored scraps from larger projects to print the labels. To cut the labels, I prefer to use my pinking shears. The labels are sewn on by hand or by machine with a tight zigzag stitch.

For my skirts and pants, I have found it to be more efficient to stamp directly on the garment. I purchased a set of number stamps to stamp the size. This saves me the extra step of sewing on the labels after the garment is complete.


The tools for the job.


Stamped labels in action on rainbow sweater balls.