DIY: Tie Dye Embellished Sweatshirt (á la Beyonce)

OK, I'm part of the Bey-hive.

Amazing Bey art by GNODPop

I love me some Beyonce. 🐝🐝🐝 I got a little inspired when I was in Paris over the summer and was peeping all of Queen Bey's Formation posters littered across the city promoting the tour.

I said to myself, I want to slay too!! So, a Beyonce-worthy top is what's getting crafted! I was feeling the French spirit while singing "I Slay" over and over and over on my trip that I thought, what if I found out the French translation for that phrase and embellished my hoodie?

Je domine means "I dominate" so  it looks like we've got our saying! I began with a thin cotton H&M sweatshirt and some sequin trim for lettering! I was inspired by a post on A Beautiful Mess using sequins...

...and wanted to create something similar!

I pinned the sequins to the shirt to hold them in place while forming the lettering and then used Aleen's Fabric Fusion to actually affix the sequins to the shirt!

But then what happens when you wear your new shirt out to dinner and you spill what you ordered on it? You get that bottle of tie dye ready to go. 

I grabbed a bottle of Tulip One-Step dye in blue (I wanted to match the navy sequins I used) and began the process by getting the top completely wet!

Whenever I dye clothes I try to keep a pair of rubber gloves on hand just to avoid dyeing of the hands as well!

Once the piece was totally wet, I folded the top in an accordion shape and added rubber bands. (These areas underneath the bands will be the portions of the top that won't change color!)

When the bands were all added, it was time to dye! I took an old baking pan and covered it in plastic wrap. (The things you do when you have to dye inside!)

With the Tulip dye, all you have to do is fill up the bottle with water and shake it to disperse the powder coloring. Once the dye is mixed it's time to squeeze onto the garment!

Love the blue! 💙

We're so close!

Once the shirt was saturated with dye, I let it marinate for 8 hours before cutting the bands and rinsing the piece out with water until the dye ran clear. Once it was dry, it was time to wear it again!! (Fingers crossed I don't spill something metallic on it next!)

Dye success!

I'm totally rocking out to Beyonce right here! (Hello yard dance party!) 

Spot be gone! Can't even see it anymore.

Such a fun way to give a simple shirt some flair!

I might need to add sequined lettering to more things now...stay tuned!

DIY: Shamrock Shoe Clips

Today is the holiday of my people (shout out to all my Irish friends out there!!  Virtual Guinness cheers!!) so I wanted to repost this fave DIY from last year. Because my Valentine's Day shoe clips were such a hit (quick refresher HERE)...

...I figured that a St. Patty's Day version was just calling my name.

Here's how to make them!

Whenever I try to figure out how I'm going to adjust a vintage dress, I try it on and just focus on detail for a bit until I start to see things.  Sometimes I see exactly what I'm going to do, sometimes I see nothing, and sometimes I see stars. When trying to come up with a fun themed project for this holiday, I knew what I was going to do but was coming up with all kinds of methods to get to the end point.  I guess it's awesome that I'm pretty much swimming in rhinestones when I work, because as I was planning out the different options, I started to have one of those "seeing things" moments. I was staring off at the kit of stones that I have and started really looking at how the stones were sitting, I began to see little shamrocks in the formation of the heart stones and then my aha moment set in.

Four of those stones are going to make awesome shamrocks!!

I pulled out eight stones and began to paint them with a fabulous shade of green nail polish.

After the first coat, I let them dry and then painted another coat. I wanted to make sure all the open areas were coated in the glitter.

Once my hearts were dry, I turned on a hot glue gun and began to glue the backs to a sheet of green felt in the clover formation.

The felt is the perfect backing for these stones because it's a bit thicker than just a basic cotton. However, if you have leftover fabric in your stash, reuse it here - you can always layer multiple bits to make it a bit sturdier.

With my stones in place...

...I trimmed the excess felt all the way around my shoe clips. I affixed clips to the back and had some fabulous new bits of flair for my feet!

I added them to a pair of nude flats (Forever 21 has a fab/budge friendly option here) just to make them pop a bit more! But they would work with any other colored/patterned shoe.

I ended up adding a small green rhinestone to the center of the clips for an extra bit of shine!

I mean, Michael Flatley...move those dancin' feet over! You've got a new Irish gal ready to get tappin'.'

They're just the right amount of sparkle to rival those pots of gold at the end of the rainbow!!

I plan on wearing these straight through the weekend!!

DIY: Sequined Heart Shoe Clips

This is one of my favorite posts from a few years back! With Valentine's Day around the corner, I thought some sparkly heart action was in order. I still wear these all the time too. Happy almost <3 day! I've been a fan of ban.do's sequined pieces, so I thought that I'd make my own version of their red sequined hearts today!

I started off with my supplies - red felt, sequin trim, and loose sequins, as I'm going to make two versions of these hearts.

I cut hearts out of my felt by folding the rectangular piece in half and cutting an "ear" shape out.  For the shoe clips, because I wanted the same size, I put two layers of felt together before trimming.  The smaller hearts were cut from the excess pieces and two of those guys are going to become earrings!

I started with the mini hearts first - I put glue down and then dropped off sequins on top and pressed them in place to stick.  I repeated this step until the entire heart was covered.

The mini hearts are finished!

Now to really recreate the ban.do version, I used the sequin trim to match.  I started by gluing the trim right at the center of the heart and then continued to follow the edges of the heart.

I'm almost there!!

And we're done!!

The minis are going to become stud earrings, the middle sized ones will be shoe clips, and the large one will become a headband!

For the shoe clips and earrings, I used jewelry findings - a pair of flat backed earring posts and two alligator clips (or shoe clips if you have them!) - and affixed to the back.

I added some alligator claws with glue to the bottoms...

...and had my pretty pair...

...ready to be added to my leopard flats.  My version...

ban.do's version...

My earrings glistened in the sun and my headband was rocking.

Sparkly hearts overload??

Eh, not so much.  It's Valentine's Day, so it totally works.  And...it totally works post-V Day too!!  There is never a wrong time to rock hearts!  xoxo