Home Improvement: Floor length curtain FAIL

This looks a lot like our kitchen/patio door area with the white cabinets, white backsplash, white trim, and dark floors. When I first saw this image, I loved the geometric print curtains, but after staring at it for awhile, I was hesitant. I just wasn't in love with the print (or any similar print).

(via HGTV)

Then I laid eyes on this photo:

(via BHG)

Bold, bright, horizontal stripes! Only I wanted them in royal purple (to pick up the bits of purple in our granite countertops). Unfortunately, my sleuthing skills failed me and I was never able to find premade curtains with horizontal stripes in purple.

DIY it is! They can't be that hard (I'd eat those words later). Since I'm making them myself, I have full control of the fabric choice, the finish, and budget. I wanted the look/feel of silk dupioni, but I didn't want the price that came with it. So I went cheap and just picked up some of that fake shit from the apparel section at Jo-Ann. What was I thinking? 

After procrastinating for a year, I finally decided to just sit down and knock them out as my first home improvement project of the year. Not to mention, finally sew something for myself. It took 3 days, a hell of a lot of fabric; 6 yards; 12 if you count the lining fabric, and a shit ton of cursing. Damn my perfectionist ways. They looked great and exactly like I had pictured it...until I threw them into the wash. 

Why, oh why did I think that was a good idea? I didn't prewash before sewing. And clearly, I hadn't thought about how cheap polyester does not hold dye well. Yeup, and in just 15 minutes, I had ruined 3 days of work. The purple dye had migrated and tinted the white stripes a pink/purple hue. The off-white that I had painstakingly picked out and matched the trim so perfectly was no longer white! 

Oxiclean failed me. I love the stuff when I'm cleaning my white dinner napkins, but it only made my curtains worse. The tinted white stripes turned completely pink! I tried Shout Color Catcher, but to no avail. I'm done trying to save these things. I'm just going do what I should have done in the first place; BUY the damned things.

Anybody want these?

A day in pictures: 5.15.2013

Union Square Donuts in Somerville, MA - Go there, it's totally worth the hype.

• Maple. Bacon. Donut.

Gather Here in Somerville, MA - fabric shopping for a custom quilt I'm making for a little girl. It's been a blast working with the mom on the design and picking out fabrics.

Lunch at Flour Bakery + Cafe in Cambridge, MA

• Roasted chicken, mashed avocado, and jicama sandwich (not pictured)
• Chocolate chip macaroon (not pictured)

I couldn't resist from immediately cuttin into the fabrics as soon as I got home.

How sweet is this print (Kokka, double gauze in Red Ribbon Kitty)? You should feel it, it SUPER soft.

Celebrations - Ended the night by celebrating with friends and delicious port wine they had brought back with them from their recent trip to Portugal.

Just like the last time I drank with these peeps, I went to the gym hungover the next day. 

I am quilter

A year ago, on this day, I bought my sewing machine, Bessy. It's crazy to look back and see how much I've learned and expanded. The number of quilting tutorials available online is ridiculous. I have never taken a class in person. Everything I have done has been through reading/following tutorials and trial and error.

My first quilt: After seeing a Downy commercial, I was inspired to help Quilts for Kids. This was made using a quilt kit (pre-selected and pre-cut fabric). It was a lot of fun, but I wouldn't suggest using the using the quilt kit as your first project.

My second quilt: Quilt top made from a baby quilt kit from Bijou Lovely and quilted following Holly's awesome tutorial. The binding is completely machine bound!

A photo posted by Celia Hung (@_celiamhung) on Nov 11, 2012 at 6:26am PST

A photo posted by Celia Hung (@_celiamhung) on Nov 11, 2012 at 6:36am PST

This was technically #3, but it took me forever to finish it. This is the first quilt in which I selected the fabric. The colors are much more vivid in person (yay winter phone photography). Truthfully, I'm not a fan of the colors, but a friend saw it and loved it. Quilted in a circular pattern after seeing Munchkin Quilts do it. I made the mistake of pulling at the fabric too much in the corners so the quilt doesn't lay flat, oops!

A photo posted by Celia Hung (@_celiamhung) on Mar 9, 2013 at 2:59pm PST

Quilt for Kids #4! I went with a simple design that I made up and pulled the colors from the backing.

A photo posted by Celia Hung (@_celiamhung) on Jan 26, 2013 at 1:09pm PST

#5! I discovered fabric bundles. Someone else picks coordinating fabrics and I just buy them as a set. The mitered corners on this on were nearly perfect.

A photo posted by Celia Hung (@_celiamhung) on Jun 2, 2013 at 10:11am PDT

In between the quilts I tried my hand at various things:

Baby blocks.

A photo posted by Celia Hung (@_celiamhung) on Aug 18, 2012 at 4:25pm PDT

A jewelry roll in which I completely made up (no pattern)!

A photo posted by Celia Hung (@_celiamhung) on Sep 8, 2012 at 6:03am PDT

Then I sold a quilt!

I tackled a pile of old skirts from college and upcycled them into toddler skirts for my friend's little girl. Which then led me to open up an Etsy shop.

I'm still too intimidated to tackle the large pile of clothes that need alterations, but hopefully that'll change in the near future. 

Like a real quilter, I can now say that I have a fabric stash (that I keeps growing, I may have a slight fabric problem) and a pile of WIPs (works-in-progress). I think there are like 4 finished quilt tops and a shower curtain in the pile.

Next on the horizon is Fabric Fest! I can't wait to see my friends from The Makerie 2012 (some photos posted here.) and learn new skills.

Riley Blake Fabric Fest 2013

*photos taken either with dSLR or Instagram.

Creative plans

via Oh, Hello Friend

I have a master plan for these. Let's just see if I actually get around to using them before I catch that plane to India.

May 2012

Bah! I meant to have this posted on May 31st, but I totally failed at that didn't I? Well at least it's technically the first full week in June.

My friends and their families have been keeping me busy with cupcake orders the last couple of weeks. I kicked started May with a bridal shower order for 5 dozen cupcakes.

Follow me on Instagram @hungc.

We attended our first wedding of 2012 (we were invited to 4 - at least for now). I don't know about Jake, but I got a huge kick out of seeing the props from the photobooth at our wedding reused.


Congratulations to the newlyweds!

Steampunk Festival 2012! Every year, our town hosts a steampunk festival. I remember wanting to check it out last year, but we must have been out of town or doing something wedding related. It was small, but there was a lot to see. A full day of people watching if you will. There was also an abundance of tiny top hats and goggles! I had to restrain myself from buying a tiny hat that I'll never wear.

Blimp!

I had my first photoshoot! Our friends asked if I would be willing to take 6 month photos of their darling baby girl. Um, YES OF COURSE! I'm still blown away and humbled that they trusted something so precious to me. After spending half a day together, I ended up with 606 photos! We had to stop because I ran out of space on my memory cards. 

The money shot, taken either during a diaper or clothing change (right).

Cross eyed babe! (left)

Baby M and I hanging out during her playtime.

Such a beautiful family! We <3 you!

For the last month, I had been frantically working on a baby blanket that I can FINALLY talk about. Let's start with the inspirations first. This colorful combination used for wedding ceremony decor caught my eye. It was pretty perfect since the mom-to-be was trying to decide between either a grey/yellow or a grey/red scheme for the nursery. The aqua-teal color added a nice punch and was gender neutral enough that I felt it would be safe to run with.

Ceremony decor via Style Me Pretty.

Following mom-to-be on Pinterest was also helpful. I was able to see that she was gravitating towards chevron patterns. So I started looking for a chevron baby blanket pattern and came across this beautiful blanket by Good Knits:

Chevron Baby Blanket by GoodKnits


Put the two together and TA-DA!

Baby Y's blanket! Guess I didn't take any shots of the whole blanket.
Red Heart Soft (red, grey, and aqua) and Vanna's Choice Baby (yellow) resulted in a super soft blanket.

Project: No Sew Placemats

I finally "found" placemats for our new dining table! We've been searching for linens for months now, but it has been a battle between the chairs and our new dishes. It finally dawned on me that we should forgo a tablecloth and go with placemats. That way the beautiful wood wouldn't be covered up, but still be able to protect our table top.

LOVE it!

Have you ever priced out placemats? The pretty ones are redonkulously expensive. At least I think so. Then again, I have this tendency to not buy anything that I can make myself. DIY placemats...so freaken easy!

Our almost naked table.

Let's get this tutorial started.

Materials:

fabric (look for something mashine washable)

fusible interface (try to match fabric type: cotton, polyester, blend) - You could skip this step if your fabric has a nice weight to it.

self healing cutting mat

straight edge

tape measure

rotary cutter with pinking blade (pinking cut will keep fabric from fraying)

iron

damp cloth

First up, you will need fabric. I found this 100% cotton body pillow cover at Target ($9.99 + tax) and instantly thought it would be perfect. It's bright, has a subtle pattern, neutral without being beige, and it's roughly 20" wide; placemats are 19".

Next, rip out the seams. This is a little time consuming. You could just cut the seams, but then you'll have little bits of thread to pick out. In hindsight, it would have been fine because it'll get cut off.

The zipper side tricked me. Thought the fabric was serged all the way around. It wasn't.
This fabric frayed easily, but it wasn't a problem.

After ripping out all the seams, iron all the wrinkles out. I had a piece of fabric that was 20" wide and just over 100" long. From Joann's, I picked up about 3 yards of cotton fusible interfacing ($7 after 50% off sale!). Just my luck, it was 20" wide. I had never used the stuff prior to today, but it's awesome.

Position your fabric, wrong side up. Line up the fusible interface on top (nubby side down). Put down a damp cloth on top of it all, (I had to do it in sections) apply hot iron and press firmly. Repeat, slightly overlapping until all the interace is fused. Be sure to keep your cloth damp.

In the photo below, I've ironed on half of the interface. I screwed up at the fabric store and had cut at 50" before realizing that I needed 100"; I ended up purchasing two 1.5 yard pieces.

My ironing setup. Yeah...we don't own an ironing board.
I actually, don't know how to iron. I own steamer for a reason.

If you get a bubble here and there (I definitely did), go over it with a damp cloth and the iron. Before cutting, try to iron your fabric complete flat. I rolled mine to keep the wrinkles at bay.

Now it's time to cut! Be careful, a new blade is extremely sharp. Whatever you do, do not retrace your cut. Just move over and make a new cut. Well, I guess you could, you just won't have a consistent wavy edge unless you painstakingly line it up. Mine were cut into 19"x 14" rectangles. I was able to squeeze out 7 placemats.

Finally, pat yourself on the back for a job well done and decorate your table! You could wash these first, I was too excited to. Plus, it's not like you are going to eat off of them.

Close up of pinking edge

Total cost (not counting my new cutting tools) for 7 placemats is a wopping $17.47. That's $2.50 per placemat!!! Not shabby for about 2 hours worth of work. Probably would have been just a touch faster if a) I hadn't been working on the floor, and b) I hadn't been watching tv.

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Invitations: Cost

Anyone want to take a guess as to how much our invitations cost? Lower. Lower. Still lower. You'll never guess.

Design: $0.00
 - Designed it ourselves
 - I can't even begin to guess how much it would cost for a graphic designer.

Labor: $0.00
 - Did it ourselves myself, mostly
 - You don't even want to know how many hours have gone into printing, cutting, punch, gluing, etc. went into this. I would be rich if I even charged myself minimum wage.

Postage: $107.55 (rsvp - $0.44/each, domestic - $0.88/each, 3 international, 5 sent in one package to be hand delivered to family, 4 hand delivered locally, and one for a keepsake)
 - I already knew that because of the shape (square), our invites would be slightly more. But I was crossing my fingers in hopes that they didn't tip the scales. Thank god they didn't!

Reusable materials: approximately $100 (after discounts and taxes, but not rolling this into the final cost)
 - White gel pen used for the "please recycle" message
 - Stamps of our graphic (Purchased from Paper Source. We have both the large and the small one (two for whatever reason my bridal brain came up with back in December of 2009!)
 - ColorBox Pigment Stamp pads in black and scarlett
 - VersaMarkStamp pad
 - Clear embossing powder
 - Paper punches (border and corner)
 - Embossing heat gun
 - PVA glue (left over from lord only knows what project)
 - Printer and ink. I got this printer at 50% off waaaaay back when.
 - Font

Raw Materials: $76.11!!!!
 - This amount does not include shipping as other paper products were also ordered at this time. All paper was ordered from Paper and More. I highly reccommend them!
 - 12x12 100# cardstock in black for the enclosure
 - 8.5x11 100# cardstock in cherry red for the invitation and name card backing
 - 8.5x11 80# cardstock in bright white for the invitation, information card, rsvp card, and name card
 - 4 bar envelopes in bright white
 - 6x6 square envelopes in bright white
 - 96.75 yards of twine. Barely made a dent in my giant spool of twine.

Grand total: $183.66
 - Each invitation suite cost just over $0.88!!! $0.885 to be exact!!!
 - $2.20 including all postage for invites shipped within the USA. Can you believe that?!?!  The postage was the bulk of it!
 - Paula told me that our invites could have easily run $1300 if we had a real staionary vendor do them.


45 days.

Invitations: The guts

Every day after work, I rush into the apartment hoping to find more RSVPs waiting for me. It's like having mini presents to open everyday. Well kind of. It's exciting regardless.

We got 5 RSVPs in one day! This was the third day in a
row that we had them in the mailbox. No stalkers please.

Now that I think everyone has received their invites, I think it's time to share them with the internet. You ready for the reveal? First up, the envelopes. They are kind of plain on the outside, but it's what's on the inside that counts right? I had grand plans to embellish the envelopes but got lazy. Names and addresses were printed on my Epson R1900. The font is Monterey BT.

We didn't print, stamp, or use wrap-around labels for the return address. Instead, we used our handy-dandy address embosser. I was a little bit afraid that if an invitation had to be returned, it would get lost in the mail. But, so far so good.

You ready to tear into the envelope yet? Guests were greeted with a red and white polka dot liner. Want to know a secret? That liner is wrapping paper that I cut up and glued in. Our invitations were strategically placed so that the backside was facing up. I did this for two reasons. 1) The envelopes were kind of thin. I didn't want the embellishments potentially causing a tear. 2) So that the "please recycle" message was received.

Turn the invitation around and you get, personalization. Each invited guest had their name printed on the invite. The embellishment I mentioned above is the baker's twine that I used in lieu of a pocketfold. The goal was to minimize paper and weight of the total invitation package.  

Let's take a closer look at the details, shall we?



 

The names are in Kon Tiki Enchanted. See the faint outline behind the names? That is actually an embossed stamp of the graphic we picked for the wedding. You can kind of see that the twine is flush with the edge of the cardstock in the photo below. A edge paper punch was used to make just enough of a notch to keep the twine in place.

Now for the real guts of the invites: the actual invitation, the information card, and the rsvp card. Sorry for not posting a close up of the invitation card itself. Not much to see after bluring out our names and dates. Our names are in Kon Tiki Enchanted and everything else is in Century Gothic.

More embossed craziness.

The information card. Since most of our guests are from out of state, we chose to make our wedding a weekend affair and invite everyone to all the events. We are hoping that this will give us more time to catch up with folks rather than trying to squeeze it all in the day of. Headers and website are in Kon Tiki enchanted and details are in Century Gothic.

RSVP cards and return envelope. Since it was just coming back to us, I decided not to add embellishments.

The card is folded card. I have never been a fan of traditional rsvp card verbiage for names. I also tend to think that people get confused by M__________. So I changed it. It's pretty straight to the point if you ask me. Let me tell you, printing this card so that the graphics bled to the edge of the paper was a big pain in my backside. I fiddled with my printer settings for a good two hours before it came out right. Let's not count how many test sheets of paper I had to use.

The entire suite together.

Everything you see here was handmade from blank cardstock, with the exception of the envelopes.

Next up, the cost breakdown. I'm curious to see how much it actually cost me us.

50 days.

Save our Date!

Hello Family and Friends -

We are getting married! Our celebration will take place on August 20th, 2011 in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

This will be a great way to visit Boston if you have not had the chance yet. And for those of you that grew up in the area, you can hit two birds with one stone and visit family, too.

We would love for you to be present for the festivities, but we understand if you cannot make it for whatever reason. Please, do not feel obligated by any means.

In the mean time, please click on the link below to help us fill in our address book, otherwise we won't know where to send your invitation!

Celia and Jake's Address Book

We look forward to celebrating with you,

-Celia and Jake

Designed by yours truly. Photo credits from left to right: Hung Family, Perkowski Family, and Jason Angelini (last 3).

Click here to see the first round of STDs we sent out to our friends living west of the Mississippi. (STDs is wedding speak for save-the-dates, not venereal disease.)

Coming to a newsstand near you

I've taken wedding crafting to a whole new level of insanity. I sought out to create a wedding party newsletter about a year ago. But, I've been dragging my feet on it. I didn't want to just use a boring template from MS Publisher. Of course, my idea isn't completely original, I stole the magazine style idea from Mrs. Piglet via Weddingbee. Even though I had the idea, I knew it was going to take hours to put together. As I previously mentioned, I can layout a publication no problem, it just takes time. Having to write all the copy (articles) that go in it, is another ballgame and not my strong suite.

I bet you want to see how all the blood, sweat, tears, and hours upon hours I poured into this project ended up. Just click on the link below.

The Adventures of Celia and Jake - a wedding magazine - volume 1, issue 1
Best viewed in Reading Mode with Page Display set to "Two-Up" and "Show Cover During Two-Up")

Not too shabby. Yea, I wished this was actually going to be on display at a newsstand near you.

Project YAY!

I brought up the concept of "yay" flags a couple of months back. Well, they have come to fruition much sooner than I thought. I decided to make them for my wedding cohort of Young(s) and in Love; an early wedding present if you will.

In trying to be a good blogger, that or just to document the process so that I can possibly repeat the project, I took pictures along the way.

Step 1: Purchase premade canvas flags from Oriental Trading Co.

Step 2a: Upon receiving flags, remove wooden dowels and iron fabric flat.

Step 2b: Outsource dowel modification to friends with wood working experience. Big thanks the A. and C.! The dowels are sharpened at one end, like a skewer. For safety reasons, I choose to have it filed down.

Step 3: Size and print out design on paper.

Step 4: Trace design onto plastic stencil. Blank stencil plastic was purchased from Michaels.

Step 5: Cut out design with exacto knife.

Step 6: Mess up and repeat steps 2 and 3.

Step 7: Paint! I used acrylic paint and a sponge brush. Tip: I used a damp paper towel to wipe away excess paint between flags; making sure to wipe away paint on the back side of the stencil (the side that touches the fabric) to keep the image from bleeding. Oh and depending on the paint you use, you might want to take breaks for make sure that you have the windows open ;)

Step 8: Let dry.

Step 9: Dip end of dowel in glue (Elmer's is fine), you just need a dab. Insert dowel into flag and let dry.

Step 10: Say "YAY" and wave them around!