Accessories

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Mass Production

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Do you remember that post I did for a secret Santa, where I made an earring display hangar. I’ll link here it if you don’t. 

You should check that blog out first because this is me refining that process. Mr. Smith’s Aunt makes jewelry and owns a shop where all the goods are hand made. You can find out more about it on their Facebook page here. 


I thought it would be fun to get involved by making some fun ear ring cards. I’ve got a few different styles I’m working on, but the most involved ones are a variation on the one I did for my secret Santa. 

I started off by doing a color wash on the laser cut frames in green and purple; they are the primary colors of the store.


I then cut out appropriately sized sections of lace for each frame.


Then my favorite part…experimentation. I used some diluted paint to dye the lace. 


I soaked the lace in a paint and water mixture and then just gave it time to “cook”. By that I mean I zapped it for about 1 minute in the microwave and then just let it sit.


After 10 minutes or so I pulled the lace out of the paint mixture, doused it with lots of salt,  and gave it a good toss. Yup just plain old salt. It acts as a fix for most dyeing projects.


After a very good rinse in cold water I  lay the pieces out to dry. 


In my original hangar I used a second, identical frame to sandwich the lace between. This time around,to cut costs, and because the double frame was a bit hard to situate, I chose to use long slender craft sticks. 


I simply cut them in half and sanded the raw edge round to match its opposite. 


After a coat of paint on the sticks I used wood glue to sandwich the lace between the frame and the craft sticks, and clamped them with clothes pins


After a good drying period and an exact-o knife to clean up any overhanging lace on the back, the finished product is ready for the shop. 

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Secret Santa-ed

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‘What did you get for Christmas?’ ‘A house’ ‘Well merry Christmas to you indeed’ am I right?

It’s a little scattered here 

  
How did we get so many chairs, all the furniture we own consists of chairs  

 luckily I planned ahead a little bit so I’ve got a few posts I can share with you 

So lots of people are likely doing their secret this coming week and I thought I would show you what I did for my secret Santa. 

My secret Santa wanted gift cards (boring) or ear rings (I can work with that) 
Most secret Santa gifts are limited to around $10 to $20. You can’t get much for that anymore. And to me small presents are all about the presentation so along with some $8 earnings from H&M I got $2 worth of craft supplies to make a little ear ring holder/ornament. 

You’ll need two laser cut frames like I used in one of my very first posts found here. 

  
Some paint, lace and some ribbon or twine for hanging.

  
First I painted my frames using a stippling technique to give them some texture. 

  
Then I just used hot glue to glue lace to the back side of one of the frames. I also layered some tulle in there simply because my lace had very large holes and the tulle would secure ear rings better.

  
Then I spot glued a small length of ribbon onto the back of the frame to serve as a hangar. 

  
Finally I coated the back of both frames with wood glue and sandwiched the lace and ribbon in between the two by gluing the frames back to back and carefully lining them up.

  
I clamped the layers together with clothes pins while it dried 

  
After about one hour I had a lovely way to gift ear rings and money left over in my Santa budget for other goodies. 

  
  

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M.I.A.

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Once again it’s been a while since a post. It’s been a crazy month for Mr. Smith and me. Luckily that crazyness has involved visits from family and (for me) fun makeup and lots of work with it.

  

Oh, on that note  thank you to everyone who has pinned and passed on my white rabbit look on Pinterest. Yes you can follow TinyBows on Pinterest and it would be greatly appreciated.

Visit TinyBows’s profile on Pinterest here. //assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js

The white rabbit has gone a wee bit viral, at least by the standards of little old me. You can also find me on Facebook if you’re interested.

Anyway I apologize for being a little lax in projects. Or at least documenting projects

I went wreath crazy last week, but failed to take any pictures of the process. Just the results.

   
    
 I’ve also done at least three Halloween makeup looks since the white rabbit, one of which involved making a headpiece… I also failed to take pictures for that.

  
I’m being a pretty terrible blogger and it bugs me, so im going to attempt to do better in the coming months. Though the holidays are a terrible time for resolutions. At least in the new year I’m going  to rock this.

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Late for a date

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Okay, not late. In fact, very early. Halloween is over a month away but I couldn’t help trying out a costume. I was actually inspired by the clock I demolished then repurposed way back in this blog post here. 

I’ve always loved Alice in Wonderland but I’ve never been able to pull off Alice herself (ok maybe when I was like, 6 with glorious long blond hair) 

  
So enter the white rabbit

I started with a base of high coverage foundation

     

 Then went in with white cream to highlight or bring certain features forward. Making my nose and upper lip appear more protuberant. I started out using a cream face paint then just decided NYX shadow base in Milk would work better, it did. 

I then did some cream shadows to get a more herbavore face going. A stark shadow low under the cheek bone and under the jaw line and down the nose and a little bit of shadow to upturn the lips. I kept all of these shadows grey to stay with in the monochromatic look. 

  

  
Then I set everything and intensified it with powders, turns out I don’t have a stark white powder but a slightly pearlescent eyeshadow worked relatively well and added a little more dimension

On to a few details I used a black eyeliner to do the philtrum (that little cleft under the nose) and black and grey to do the eye brows. 

  

  
I gave the brows a very flat and tapered (almost permanently worried) look

And I used a baby pink lipstick set with shadow for the nose.

  
For the eyes I did a really simple smokey look just running black liner through the water and tight line and smudging it through the lash line and along the crease. I wanted to keep it messy and easy. To give it some color I used the same pink shadow (or blush) I used on my nose to blend around the crease of the eye. Liberal amounts of mascara or false lashes and the eyes were done 

I also applied liberal amounts of blush which you can see in the eyeshadow picture.  I took it from the apples of the cheeks up to the temple area. To make sure I didn’t lose the highlight effect I did touch up with the pearlescent white as a cheekbone highlight. 

  
Now the fun details. I just took a small detail brush and using the same pink as before began to draw a clock face around one of my eyes. Enter the crisis where I can’t figure out if I did the clock face backwards thanks to how my spacial reasoning sucks then you add mirrors to that. 

  
Once I was satisfied with the placement I started to intensify it with darker colors making it look as though it were a shadow or brand on the face. First grey then a little black. 

  
Pop on some ears pin up the hair.

  
And put on your bunny smile.

I don’t have all my accessories yet. There will be a giant bow tie and of course my clock lantern. But I’m pretty happy with how it turned out for a first attempt. 

  

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Lemon aid 

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When life gives me lemons…. I remind myself how much I love lemonade, seriously it’s an addiction. Know what else I love 

Put it this way, when life gives me scraps, I make bows.

  
When we were visiting Mr. Smith’s Aunt she kindly gave me a ton of amazing (adorable, wonderful, darling, “OMG I need this in my life!”) scrap material 

One stipulation… I had to make bow ties for her new yorkie… 

  
Oh what a hassle that would be (can I just inform anyone unfamiliar with tinybows that statement was dripping with sarcasm) 

I got started right away

  
Just use the same template found on this blog post for my felt hair bows and cut two pieces of the bow loop part of the template. 

  
Cut them at the same time with right sides facing towards one another and take into account seam allowance

   
Sew the two pieces together (still with outsides facing towards one another)

  
Then turn the piece right side out and flatten your seams. If needed (or wanted) you can iron it to get the seams to cooperate, I didn’t because the bows tend to be a little fluffier if you don’t flatten the seams with an iron.

  
Then cut a small rectangle of fabric about 1 inch by 2 inches and sew the long sides together with right sides facing together and again turn right side out

As a tip I had to use a pencil or sometimes a crochet hook to turn the pieces.

  
Then sew the two ends of the bow loop together.

  
Sew the center piece to the side of the back seam of the bow loop.

(Optional if you plan on attaching it to a collar) Sew a small strip of elastic on top of the  center piece

  
Wrap the center piece around the bow loop and sew it on the same seam as it started

  
Here comes the hard part, you have to stretch the elastic and sew it to the remaining centerpiece so that it rouches the fabric and allows the elastic to stretch

  
Trim any excess fabric and elastic and sew the end to the opposite side of the back of the bow 

  
You can of course adjust the size of the pattern based on how big you want the bow for your fur baby but the elastic allows it to easily stretch over the latch of a collar.