How To Make Elastic Lolita Or Fairy Kei Style Sock Toppers
Time for the follow up on yesterday’s Ribbon Sock Topper Tutorial! This version is held on with elastic instead of ribbon and it has some very soft netting. I made these ones to go with a tulle skirt I have… The good part about elastic sock toppers is that you don’t need to be afraid of the ribbon coming undone and getting lost, the bad part is that unless you’re precise with measuring the elastic they might be too tight and cut off circulation or too loose and fall down. They are also less versatile as they can only really go where the elastic allows them.
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Cut a piece of tulle which is at least twice as long as the eyelet lace. This will create a nice ruffle.
Cut a piece of elastic using the measurement around your calf. These are the pieces you should have…
Using your needle and thread, running stitch along the top of the tulle, if you pull it tight as you go this will create the ruffle.
Tie it off when you reach the end and you should have something along the lines of this:
Place the eyelet lace on top of the tulle.
Stitch the eyelet and the tulle together in two rows, one at the top and one at the bottom. This will form a channel for the elastic to be threaded through.
So you should having something along these lines:
Now you need to thread the elastic through the channel, I used a safety pin to guide it:
Make sure the other end of the elastic doesn’t slip through! Once it’s all gathered on you should have both ends out the sides.
Stitch the elastic’s ends together securely.
Then it’s just a matter of threading some ribbon through the eyelets. I used a bobby pin to do that because the eyelet holes were too small for the safety pin.
Make sure that you leave enough ribbon so that you can completely stretch the elastic without it being pulled back inside. That should give you enough to tie a bow on the end since you don’t want to have to rethread the ribbon every time you wear them!
Stitch the ends of the eyelet lace together so it closes the gap, tie the ribbon in a bow and you’re all finished!
Taadaa! Pretty cute ^_^ I like these because the tulle makes them a little difference to standard sock toppers. When you wear them with over the knee socks they look a little more grown up too!
Hope that was useful and as always let me know if you have any questions! |
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How To Make Lolita Lace Sock Toppers
Taking on another reader request today: a tutorial on lace sock toppers! This is another of the ones where I lost the name of the person requesting it when I moved emails so if it was you let me know and I’ll update!
So yes there was a period in my life when I wouldn’t have been caught dead without frilly socks. At that point they were pretty hard to come by here in Aus so I made my own sock toppers to go over plain knee high school socks. These days I don’t wear them anymore because I no longer wear Lolita and prefer stockings to socks but there’s no reason why I can show you guys how I used to make them! I get a lot of requests for Lolita themed tutorials but I’m always wary of doing them because it’s no longer my area of expertise ^_^
There are two basic designs I used to use to make these, today I’ll show you the first which is completely adjustable and tied on with ribbon.
What you need for ribbon and lace sock toppers:
Now normally for this kind of thing you would use a lace which is as thick as you want the end result to be tall but I didn’t have any on hand so instead I am making this using several thinner laces which I will stitch together to form a thick piece. Obviously you can skip this if you already have thick lace. Also I am using a mixture of cotton and nylon lace, if you want a quality result don’t use nylon because 90% of the time it ends up looking cheap. Again I didn’t want to buy new supplies for something I might not use at the end so I’m sure you can just get the general idea from this and then choose your own materials! So you need to measure around the top of your calf and cut lengths of lace which are twice that measurement. Below are the pieces I am using for 1 topper: eyelet, two nylon and one cotton to edge it.
This is the order they will be stitched together.
The first thing to do is stitch the 3 bottom pieces together so it combines to make the large piece of lace.
Overlap them slightly and use a basic running stitch to hold the two middle pieces together.
This is the result:
Then do the same with the bottom edging.
And you’ve got something like this:
This is where you come in if you already have thicker lace. Lay the eyelet lace over the top…
And stitch that in place too!
Fold the ends under and stitch them in place as well.
And we’re almost finished! What you should have at this point is a long rectangle of lace with no raw edges.
Now to thread the ribbon through! I picked a light pink ribbon so it stands out but not too much.
Thread the ribbon through the entire length of eyelet lace. It can be a pain to do a lot of threading without something to push it through, only problem is that the eyelet lace is a bit small to thread a safety pin through as you would usually do. So my solution is to tie the ribbon to a bobby pin.
And push it through all of the holes!
Don’t skimp on the ribbon, you need to leave enough that it can be easily tied around your leg with enough for a pretty bow. Keep the ribbon flat so it’s not twisted at all.
Pull the ribbon, gather all of the lace together and tie the ends together in a bow!
Cuuuute!
This style with the ribbons is good too because you can tighten/loosen it enough to use them as wrist cuffs, hair accessories or anything you like. Yay for versatility. You know now that I think about it more I’ll probably use them as hair accessories haha!
So there you go, hopefully this was useful to someone! As always if you have requests feel free to send them my way ^_^ Next time I’ll show you the elastic version of sock toppers!
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Cute Decoden Glasses Fun
I have a bit of a soft spot for glasses, in fact I’ve worn them since I was around 9 years old and while my sight is a lot better now so I don’t need them for reading or distance (unless its for a long period of time) I still love the way they look! I’ve been wanting to deco a pair properly for the longest of times, mostly as just for a fun photography prop and when I realised the potential of the gold sunglasses I got from Fashion Addict I decided to take the leap.
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So these are the glasses I started with: I wasn’t a fan of how they looked on me so they had been sitting in my cupboard since I did the original post. No point having them there if I’m never going to wear them so I got to work and this is what came out:
Perfect for the diy at home purikura booth I’m planning to rig up for a tea party 😀 What I used:
First thing to do was poke out the lenses, they were really hard to break so I ended up moving the metal frames with the pliers and then forcing them free.
Lens free!
Then it was a metter of changing the shape to something a bit more suitable for my face. I achieved this by using some pliers and bending the metal into a more flat square shape. I also bent the curve around the face so it was much flatter.
One on the right done, left untouched:
Happy with the shape now, super old man style ^_^
Then I decided what I wanted the feature piece to be. I used a bow that came off a pair of Bodyline shoes.
I picked a couple of different jewels and cabachons to experiment on a style with.
I laid out the rest of the jewels to decide on the design next!
And after that it was just a matter of mixing up the glue and sticking it all down.
The top section was done first…
The around the bottoms:
I did the bottom in smaller sections because the rims were thin so I needed to wait for the glue to be tacky and balance the jewels in place. Lastly I added a little butterfly over the bow to cover the ugly string.
Last thing I did was add matching jewels to the side while making sure not to prevent the arms from opening/clothing.
From the back…
And the front…
Pretty damn happy with the result! They are super huge, super over the top and super awesome as a blingy accessory 😀
Ridiculous bling for the win ^_^ And to show how ridiculously huge these really are, here’s a crappy phone photo from 2am after I made them!
What do you guys think? Love or hate glasses?
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Sock Clips: Alternative Use For Shoe Clips!
The obsession to use up all of those clip on earrings I got continues XD And stemming from that I found another use for the shoe clips I made: sock clips! I’ve been wearing a lot of over the knee length socks lately and most of mine are quite plain. So what better way to jazz them up than by cute clips which you can change to suit your outfit?
Same technique as before but I will run through again in case you missed it.
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What you need:
Cut out the pieces for 2 bows, 4 rectangles and 2 thin rectangles for the middle ties.
Sew the big rectangles together, turn inside out.
Wrap around the middle tie and secure in place.
Done.
Get your earring clips.
If they are still attached to earrings remove them with pliers.
Glue to the bows. Make sure they are both the same way up. Don’t burn yourself, hot glue + metal = ouch.
Optional: Add felt to cover the metal parts.
DONE! Cute socks are now yours, wear with pride and make several to match every outfit 😀
Crappy phone pic of them on, real photos to come in outfit posts! Have a good weekend everyone <3 |
Nautical Yarn Wrapped Bangle Instructions
Nautical prints and things have been big on my mind lately so I’ve been trying to accumulate more accessories that I can add into my outfits. After Lee suggested that I make a wrapped yarn bangle from left over rainbow yarn from my year’s worth of hat I decided that would be a good crossover project 😀
This is the bangle I ended up with:
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What you need:
The foam I used was cut from the end of one of those latex foam memory pillows but you could use regular stuffing too.
Roughly arrange/tape the foam around the cardboard tube. It doesn’t need to be perfect because when you wrap the yarn around that will even it all out.
Tape the end of your main colour of yarn to the inside of the tube.
Start wrapping XD I decided to make things a little more interesting by wrapping the yarn on an angle.
You can see that if you keep the yarn at an even tension it will squish the foam into a uniform shape.
Keep wrapping….
and keeeeeep wrapping…
Eventually I ran out of the blue yarn and there were still a bunch of holes which were very unattractive. So I wiggled the yarn into sections this:
You can see above that I marked the sections with some crochet chain, I was planning to use all of that but it ended up looking terrible so I undid it and replaced with regular thin white yarn:
To give it a more nautical feel I laid out some red ricrack over every 3rd stripe.
As there wasn’t enough to wrap it properly, I hot glued it in place. This is what happens when I don’t have the cash to replenish my crafting stash XD I’m down to odds and ends of everything!
Lastly I glued a strip of lace on the inside of the top and bottom to add a girly touch.
And that’s it! If you wanted to make it neater you could glue a section of felt on the inside to hide all of the loose ends of yarn…. but I’m out of matching colours of felt too hahahaha! I’ve done a lot of nautical yarn related things lately, I even knitted a skirt for myself, I’ll actually have to put them all in an outfit and post that one of these days!
I really need to get some more craft supplies >_< |
How To Make Fairy Kei Accessories
I’ve been seeing these puffy accessories everywhere lately so I figured I would show you all how easy they are to make 😀 Swimmer and a couple of other brands have them as hair clips, brooches and all kinds of things.
This is how my version turned out:
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What you need:
Take apart the coat hanger…
And use the pliers to make the shapes you want. I did a star and a heart.
Use a piece of tape to hold the ends together…
Get some yarn and start wrapping it around…
Keep wrapping and keep wrapping and keep wrapping… and keep wrapping some more until they are really big and squishy like this:
Hot glue your decorations on in a completely random way and that’s it…
You can then add on a brooch pin or something on the back to attach it to yourself and that’s all there is to it ^_^
You can also make bows in the same style by knitting a square out of this yarn and scrunching the middle of it. Add a little ribbon to hold it in place and you’ve got a very cute accessory! |
Hope you enjoyed ^_^
