Tutorial Archives - Page 107 of 117 - Violet LeBeaux

Decoden Bling USB Stick Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 27, 2010 | Craft, Decoden, Decoden-Tutorials, Tutorial

I thought I’d show you how to make a deco USB stick with your initial today.

I’m still going through all the entries to my give away tonight so please be patient for another day while I pick the top 3 for you to vote on. There are so many awesome entries and I’m having a tough time picking ^_^

In the mean time I’m thinking about deco a lot lately! I just did my new camera today and I can’t wait to show you all photos of it 😀

Firstly pick a USB stick in a cute colour.

This one is pretty cool because you can fold it in on itself.

Now lay your red jewels in the shape of your initial. I made this one for James’ Mum so I used a “P”. It’s important to lay the jewels out so you can get the shaped exactly right and make sure the jewels line up exactly right.

Stick the red jewels in place using epoxy glue.

Now start filling in the gaps. As you can see from the photo below I am using a very basic grid pattern for the jewels, this means that the go in completely straight rows both vertically and horizontally. Because of the curve in the “P” I had to compensate with other jewels around it.

Continue the pattern on the bottom as well. Once it’s dry keep going onto the other side. Once you are finished you have something like this:

Very simple and quick but it really personalizes your USB beautifully! Let me know if you make your own deco USB stick!

Decoden Umbrella

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 23, 2010 | Craft, Decoden-Tutorials, Tutorial

So I promised a tutorial on cutening up a plain old umbrella and here it is, deco umbrella time ^_^

There are so many different things you can do with an umbrella and so I decided to do a few versions of this.

How you can decorate your umbrella will depend on what you’re actually going to use it for. For example if you want it to be a parasol and protect you from just the sun then you can do pretty much anything at all with it… but if you need it to protect you from the rain then you shouldn’t sew anything into the top section of it because the hole you poke with your needle and thread are just going to let water in!!

The key things I want my umbrella to do are keep me dry and fit in my handbag so I didn’t want to add anything too bulky or put any holes in the top. I decided to start off small and just add lace around the edge of the bottom of it.

What you need:

Umbrella
Lace
Needle and thread

What you need to do is open the umbrella up completely. Thread your needle and start sewing lace on.

It’s quite self explanatory really ^_^ When you get to the corners you should pleat the lace so it sits flat then start up the next side. I took this photo after it had been crushed in my bag for a week so you’ll have to use your imagination >_<

Keep going until you reach the end and tie it all off ^_^

Done! This is a way of just adding a little bit of something cute to a plain old umbrella. Nothing will be left un-cute by the time I’m finished ^_^

Though after looking at it for a few months I think it’s still a little plain so I decided to add some more details to it. I haven’t finished yet so you’ll have to wait until next time to see it all completed. I’m going to add small bows to each of the points and deco the bottom of the handle 😀

So I’ll show you it properly finished by the end of next week! Hope you like the deco umbrella ^_^

Making A Cute Shower Cap

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 21, 2010 | Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial

Morning everyone, today I’m making a cute shower cap ^_^

Continuing on in my series of cutening up every day objects today I’m going to show you how I made my shower cap that little bit pinker 😀

To make this particular cute shower cap you need:

Plain shower cap (got mine from Coles for around $2)
Some fabric of your choice
Eyelet lace
Ribbon
Needle and thread

So get out your shower cap and lay out your fabric.

Stretch out your plastic cap to find out how wide it is. You need to cut out a circle of fabric with that diameter plus a few inches for seam allowance.

Now a note on choosing fabric, because this is going to be getting wet often you will need to choose a fabric which dries very easily or else it will get moldy! I am using toweling. This is my circle:

Now thread your needle and with the edge folded under, stitch your fabric into the elastic of the cap. You will need to stretch out the elastic as you sew it in. This can be a bit tricky when you only have two hands so what I do is use a notebook or something solid like that to hold it stretched while I’m sewing.

When you finish you should end up with something like this:

Now this is where you can do one of two things… Either go nuts with the cute and add a frill to the edge here like a vintage styled one or move straight on to the lace. I personally find frills at edge to be cute but not practical because the water catches in them so I went straight to the lace.

Sew one edge of your eyelet lace around the very edge of the elastic.

Then sew on the other side. It should hide all of the edges of the pink in a nice little sandwich.

Lastly thread your ribbon through and tie in a bow. You will need to stretch it out and make sure there is enough ribbon there to go around your head.

You’re done! Ok so there is a limit to how cute you can actually make a shower cap, no matter what they always look pretty silly. But it’s Winter so it’s a very necessary item… and I think this is an improvement on the original ^_^

Hope you enjoyed and let me know if any of you give the cute shower cap a try! ^_^

Taking Care of Decoden Shoes – Sneaker Sunday

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 18, 2010 | Craft, Shoe-Tutorials, Tutorial

Morning, it’s Sneaker Sunday again!

So you took the plunge and deco’d your sneakers? Good for you! And you’ve been wearing them for several months and didn’t think anything of taking care of them? Now they are looking quite dirty and a bit yucky huh?

So how do you maintain them?

Well it’s quite easy really 🙂

First thing’s first let’s give them a nice clean! Use paper towel soaked in water and wipe them off.

Dish washing liquid is perfect for removing stubborn dirt.

Now it’s time to remove any jewels or deco that are beyond repair. I used epoxy glue on these jewels and they have cracked, I didn’t know that the area was going to be bending a lot, when you need flexible glue I use PVA.

Clean under there too. The pearls around the edge could easily have been left there if I had cleaned the dirty glue off the top and re-coated them but I wanted to change the pink flower too so I ditched it all and started again.

Gather any replacement supplies and start gluing. Note that I also removed the laces and gave them a really good wash.

I think it is easiest to glue from the outside in. Again I am using PVA glue because it needs to be nice and flexible.

I decided to fill that section with tiny plastic little stars.

So you should glue them down and then paint the glue over the top of them to seal it all in. Do a couple of coats but wait until each one is dry before starting the next.

Put the laces back in.

And you’re finished! Sorry for the dodgy phone photos I am having a tiny bit of trouble uploading though. I will put the HD photos in the next post 🙂

Cute as and almost as good as new.

The lesson here is that with a bit of maintenance an forward planning your deco sneakers can last almost as long as you want!

Check out Valerie‘s post on sneaker Sunday maintenance too this week 😀

Lace Glove Tutorial ^_^

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 13, 2010 | Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial

I’m sure you’re all sick of my talking about Melbourne… but Melbourne is cold. I’ve never lived somewhere that actually requires me to wear gloves so this is a bit exciting for me!

Of course I couldn’t just have normal gloves! When we were moving I was also very short on time so I had to think of a way to make my plain old $8 Kmart gloves cuter in a big hurry and only using things I already had.

So what I used was:

Pink gloves from Kmart
Rose lace
2x lace collars
Matching ribbon

Have you seen these lace collars before? They used to sell them everywhere but I haven’t seen them in a while. I bought them thinking I would put them on a black blouse when I was into Lolita but this seems like a much better use now 😀

So what I did was very very easy… I put on the gloves to make sure where I was sewing was stretched out enough and carefully pinned the collar in place around the top of the wrist.

Because they were meant to be collars the lace flares out and the pattern is more on one side. I pointed this towards the edge where my pinky finger was so they have a cute flare to them.

I stitched it all in place then placed some lace over the top.

When sewing it on make sure to stretch the fabric that way it will stretch enough to fit over your hand.

Lastly I added a nice big fat bow on top because you can never have enough decoration!

Taadaaa!

And there you have it, I didn’t buy anything new, I used up some of my old stash aaand now I have cute gloves ^_^

I think you could really replace the lace collars with pretty much anything, even just a frill of other matching fabric. It didn’t take more than 20min to do so they are the perfect quick craft to do at night while watching tv.

Boot Customization Tutorial :D

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 7, 2010 | Craft, Shoe-Tutorials, Tutorial

Heehee I think a lot of people have been waiting for this boot customization tutorial! I’ve been keeping everyone on my Twitter up to date with the progress on the boots that I bought on Saturday.

See boots and I are actually bitter enemies. I have *never* found a pair of boots that have fit me well. Ever. The problem seems to be that I have small feet but I also have abnormally small calves so every single pair of boots, no matter how fitted, look like cowboy boots. Not being a cowboy, I have no use for cowboy boots.

So after all these years of searching I decided to take things into my own hands!

I bought this pair of boots from Target 50% off for $45. I chose them because I liked the heel, the rounded toe and they fit my feet comfortably. Because they are thigh high there was lots of room to play with. I also liked the velvety wedge thing on the outside.

Unfortunately the leg part was massive. So I set about making them much cuter! (Yes I’m going to make you wait until the end of the tutorial to see the end result mwahaha build the suspense!)So first thing is first… let’s turn these suckers into knee high’s :DPut the boots on and measure how high you want them. I wanted mine to be knee high.

Remove the boots and cut the tops off, make sure to leave an extra inch for seams. Also make sure the zip part is at the bottom of the boot so you can still use it!! From this point on you should be careful when using the zip that it doesn’t fly off the end!

Oh and just for the record, they are not this shiny/cheap looking in person, they are actually a nice matt black but to show the details and stitching I had to use a lot of flash >_<

Now put the boots back on (carefully because of the zip). As you can see, they are not form fitting at all. I have drawn where my actual leg is over the top of the picture ^_^ The main thing I want to do is fit them around my ankles and calves.

Let’s get going!

Most boots have seams up the front and the back, by changing this seam you can very easily change the entire shape of the boot!

Move the lining away from the seams and unpick them down the front and back of the boot.

You end up with something like this:

Put the boot back on and pin the seams back in place in the way that you want them. Pin both the front and the back.

Take them off again and thread a needle. If there is any excess leather/vinyl in the seams you should trim it off now. Be careful not to trim too closely just in case you change your mind about the fit later.

Turn the edges of the seams inside again and re-pin them in place.

Now get sewing! Thread your needle and choose a stitch that matches the rest of the boot. Sew up the front and the back ^_^ If your boots are made of a heavy leather you will need a special leather needle. Mine are synthetic and quite thin so hand stitching was not a problem.

So this is what you end up with, the modified boot is on the left and the old one is on the right.

Un-modified on the left and fitted on the right. You can see the differences around the ankle and the calves.

Much much much better fit and more comfortable because of it.

Now repeat on the other boot ^_^

You will end up with something along these lines…

The last thing you should do if you’re just fitting the boots is to create a seam around the tops and prevent the zips from coming off. Do this by turning the tops inside and sandwiching the raw edges between the lining. Sew around the tops and secure the tops of the zips too. Done!

Now that’s all well and good but they are still very plain right? There are a couple of things you can do about that. I decided to use the left overs that I cut from the tops to make some cute accessories.

I thought about cutting it into scallops and adding a new top like this:

Instead I decided to recycle some old Innocent World socks ^_^

I cut off the lacy tops and sewed them into place on the top of the boots.

Lastly I used some of the left over fabric to make some little bows for the front…

I used black lace for the middle so they matched the new tops of the boots ^_^ I sewed them on the front and that’s it!

Taaaadaaaa!

Lovely fitted boots with bows and lace! OMG THEY ACTUALLY FIT!!

I think one of the things I love so much is that they are cute but not too over the top so I can wear them with so many things!

Jesus Diamate boots: $300+

Violet’s Boots: $45 plus a few hours of work

I am so happy with them because they are really cute and also really comfortable! I took them out for a test drive shopping today and after 2 hours walking there was no pain at all. I think I’m going to add a little bit of padding on the inside so they are like wearing slippers mwahaha!

So was it worth the wait? What do you all think? ^_^ Let me know if any of you try out the boot customization tutorial yourselves!