Spring Shaving

Instead of Spring cleaning? Nah, there's still time for that.
I found a neat sweater dress at a flea market a while back, but wasn't wearing it, because it was full of pilling. I tried to get rid of it with tape roller, packing tape and duct tape, but nothing worked. Until I found this blog post on How to de-pill your clothing. So this weekend I got my shaver out, wiped off the dust from the winter time (ah-ha-ha-haa) and started to shave my sweater dress.

This is how it looked like before:



So much pilling. The white pilling from the dots was the worst.



You can see the progress! So cool.



And here's the finished product.



It looks so much better. Almost new again. You have to be really careful with the shaving though, so you don't make holes in your clothing.



Yay, it's pretty again. So if you got a piece of clothing that is full of pilling, but is worth the time, do it! Also good to know when you go thrifting. There's always a way to make old thing look pretty again.

Dreidel dreidel dreidel...

... I made it out of clothes!

I'm selling all the clothes items that I didn't get rid of at the fleamarket on the german website kleiderkreisel.de (literal translation: clothes-top toy).
Started last Saturday and already sold 6 items. It's fun! And much less stressfull as a fleamarket. I think I will put a few of my handemade accessoires on there as well, just to see if I'm able to sell them at all.

You can find me on Kleiderkreisel HERE.

Captain Bluebear Makeover

Got this coffee table from an old lady living next door. When we moved in together here in munich we hung up a flyer saying we're looking for free ort cheap furniture and stuff, cause we didn't have anything. That's how we ended up with sll second hand furniture.

Been wanting to decoupage this old thing for a while and a couple of weeks ago I had the perfect opportunity, cause I had some glue left from another project (coming soon).
So it's from this:



To this:



Cool, huh? I really gotta learn how to take good pictures.. look at all the crap in the background. Soon.. still learning. The comic strips are from the beloved character Captain Bluebear, a silly old seabear telling fantastic stories to his grandbears.

Projects on the side

The money I earned at the fleamarket was quickly spent. Mostly on a new camera, that I've been trying out the past week. It's a Canon Powershot S3 IS 6MP from ebay, so a little older, but perfect for me to try out photography and take some better pictures for this blog.
I'm very much ejoying the zoom.



I was finally able to modify the castle I made a while back (look see here) and turn it into a planter. Can't wait for the small green sprouts to emerge from the dirt.



And finally here's my pinterest win. if you don't know pinterest, it's pretty awesome. You can pin interesting stuff you see on the internet on a board and look at stuff other people pinned. Found this link for regrowing celery and tried it out.





Pretty cool, huh? You can find me on pinterest here.

Other than this I've been busy with my first craft swap on Craftster. The theme is The Walking Dead. I'm pretty excited. I'm all done and will send my package out tomorrow and will post pictures of what I made here as soon as it arrives.

Fleamarket Madness

I spent most of my January sorting out crap I don't need anymore. All kinds of crap. Clothes I haven't worn in forever or at all, mostly thrift finds I thought were interesting to alter, but never got to it. Books I never read or I won't read again. Shoes I bought even though they were a size too small.. I'd walk em in.. yeah, or not. I even found some things in the kitchen like a mixer I used once. CDs, tapes, electrical devices, belts, bags and much more. Too much. Maybe it's true what my man says, I'm a hoarder. But we're moving soon, so I have to get rid of some stuff! With clothes it's really an ordeal. So many memories. But some things that were once dear have to go eventually.

My mom planned to visit beginning of february so I wanted to take advantage of having a car in town and go sell at a fleamarket. We have a night fleamarket in town called nachtkonsum, it starts at 5pm and you can sell and buy till midnight and it's inside plus dj and live music. There's a fee to get in, but with the music and atmosphere it's worth it and it's packed with mostly young people every time. So I wanted to book a table space as soon as possible, but the day the sale started I was too late and it was sold out already. Just a couple of hours after the sale went online! I was devastated. Cause by then I had already sorted out so much stuff and was really looking forward to selling it.
Look at all the stuff I got:



Well, the website said, that spare place would be available past 4pm, so an hour before the fleamarket starts. So my mom and I took the risk and went there anyways. I was so excited and anxious, I flipped out when there was police everywhere in the middle of the city on the way. We had to make a huge detour because of a stupid demonstration and I was freaking out, cause I thought we'd be too late. But the we still got a place, phew. It wasn't the best place, but oh well, better than nothing. They placed us on the balcony, where the bar and the stage were. The problem with that place is, that most people start looking through all the stuff downstairs and then go up to have a drink and listen to the band, so they're kinda done with thrifting. We still got rid of a bunch of stuff.
This is my fleamarket table + my mom ;)



Here's the rest of the fleamarket.



This clothesrack drove me nuts. Nuts I tell ya. I got it from a friend just for this occasion and I should really have put it together before coming here. It ended up duct-taped after falling apart twice.



So many shoes, all a size too small... you'd think I'd learned after one..



I brought a couple of handmade items and displayed them on this little barbie suitcase. Sadly noone bought any of these necklaces. The only handmade item I sold was a tobacco pouch.



All in all it was a pretty interesting experience and I'd like to go to a fleamarket again soon, maybe shortly before we move. I definitely need to get a better place next time and seperate the handmade item clearly from the other fleamarket stuff, so people don't get cunfused. Need to work on my organizing and decorating skills here.
Until next time.

+1000 Clicks Give-Away

Alright maybe I cheated a little, but I really didn't know that commenting on a dawanda facebook post with a link to my blog would give me this many clicks on one day. And the link was related to the post, so yay, whatevs.

I was thinking to celebrate I'd do a little give-away. Just comment below if you want to get some mail with either a slide or an ice-cream necklace.

I'll draw the 2 winners on wednesday evening.

GOOD LUCK!

EDIT:

Winners are chosen! Everyone won! Except for Ken :P
It's my first give-away, so I'll mail out goodies to all four people that commented, except for my fiancè. YAY

The making of a tablet cover

Last week we bought a piece of cloth at Weißer Rabe thrift store in munich. Ken picked it to be the cover for his new tablet computer he got for christmas. I was inspired by this video by DazzleDIY, who does several DIY tutorials on youtube.

I started out with the cloth, an elastic band (it used to be a dior pantyhose) and an old calendar book which pages I cut out.



I started by hotglueing a piece of padded cloth to the insides of the book. The I figured out how I wanted to cut and sew the cloth around the book and decided I would make it like a book cover that you could slip off and on again. Before sewing that I sewed on the elastic bands on the top and bottom of the inner side of the book cover. For some reason I didn't check with the tablet in place before sewing, so the elastic bands were a little too far apart and not tight enough to hold the tablet.



After taking a few days brek to figure out how to fix it I decided to add another elastic band on the bottom and to hot glue it on instead of sewing. Then I glued on a band of cloth on the outside of the cover and added kam snaps.



Turned out alright, I think.



It even has a little secret compartment between the cloth cover and the padded inside.