Open Shop!

My shop The Rustic Lily is open and ready for business once again!  We've taken a bit of a hiatus over the summer to spend time with our families and work on some new items.

Here are some of my current favorites from the shop:

This sweet watermelon bloom headband is from our children's line, Little Lily.  I love the fun, bright colors!

We have some new rag bracelet sets in the shop now-this is our Black, White and Red Allover set.

These delicate Falling Leaf Earrings are so pretty and available just in time for fall!  

Perfect for special occasions or days when you just want to feel extra lovely, our Coral Chiffon Bloom adds that pop!

Halloween is right around the corner (I know!  Where has this year gone?!) and our Hair Pin Trio in Pretty Spooky is all treat.

I love love love this antiqued brass Bird and Branch necklace-with just a little pop of red.

This is my favorite of our baby blooms-the Floral Bloom headband's center is hand beaded with pearl beads and adds some sass to your little one's outfit.

And we have a TON of awesome vintage goodies in our Vintage Lily section-this awesome Elephant Cuff is in there and would make a great statement piece for any outfit.

And because you guys are awesome and I love you, I'm offering 15% off all purchases in my shop until the end of the month.  Use code SCRAPANDSCRIBS15 when you checkout for your discount.

Hand Towel Bag Dispenser

I'm a big fan of reusable grocery bags.  They make my life easier.  But I some times forget to bring them into the store with me, so we do end up with plastic bags.  I use them as liners for our trashcans and in lieu of fancy diaper pails.  So I need a place to keep them organized and at hand.  For about $3, I turned an ordinary dish towel into a nice little bag for my bags.

This one hangs in our garage, right outside the kitchen door and I made a second one for in the baby's room.

To make one, all you need is:
A dish towel

Skinny elastic

Small safety pin

Hot glue gun and glue

Cut two lengths of elastic just a few inches longer than the ends of the towel.  Take one of the pieces of elastic and the safety pin and pin it to one end.

Using the tube created by the hem at the end of the towel (it should be open all the way across, so look for that when picking out your towel) thread the elastic through, safety pin end first, using the pin to pull it through.  Make sure you hold on to the other end while you do this.

Grab the two ends of the elastic and pull tight

Until it's a tight as you can get, forming a circle.

Like so.  Tie the ends of the elastic together in a knot and trim off extra.

Repeat on the other end.  Keep the opening at this end a little looser when you tie it closed.

Your towel should look something like this now.  Flip it inside out and line up the outside edges.

Using your hot glue gun, draw a line of glue, a little bit at a time, down one of the edges and glue the other to it.

Turn it right-side out

It should look something like this-a tube with holes at either end.

I added a small loop of ribbon to the loose end to hang it with.  Just tie a piece of ribbon or twine or whatever you choose around the elastic, knotting it at one end.

Hang and fill with bags from the top (where your hanging loop is)

Pull the bags out through the opening at the bottom.  And there you have it-a cheap, easy and quick way to store those plastic bags you've got laying around.

{Blast from the Past} Purple Rosette Tee

I dug this one out of the vaults and dusted it off for you all, in case you missed it the first time around.  I'm sure you have a tee or two hiding in your closet or shoved in the back of your drawer that could use a makeover.  Here's some inspiration for you:

Purple Rosette Tee

Today I'm sharing a simple way to disguise a holey tee.  I'm still a novice seamstress, so when it comes to me and sewing, simple is best.

I had a little bit of a mystery-a bunch of almost new tees were developing holes in them, all near the bottom of the shirt, thus ruining otherwise perfectly good shirts.  Not only was it frustrating because I didn't know what was causing the holes, but I felt like I was wasting money because these shirts that had only been worn 2 or 3 times were now trashed.  

This is only about half of the pile of shirts with holes.  I needed to come up with a creative way to cover up the holes without it being obvious that I was hiding something.

With the purple tee (which is also right there on the top), the holes were kind of big and covered a wider area

They were also a little off-center, so it presented a bigger challenge. 

To fix yours up, you'll need:

A holey tee

A tee to cut up in a matching/coordinating color

matching thread

rotary mat, cutter and ruler

tailor's chalk 

Then I found this tee at a consignment shop and had an idea.  It matched the contrast stitching on the purple holey tee perfectly.

It was only $3!  And HUGE!  I've never seen such a large medium-sized tee!  But that meant there was plenty of fabric to work with.

To start off with, I folded the dark purple tee in half and with tailor's chalk, marked a line diagonally down from the collar to just past the last hole at the bottom.

I pulled it out flat like this, still keeping it folded in half (see the chalk line) so that the area I cut out would be even.  Then I cut out that chunk-bye-bye holes!

I measured the length of the piece I cut out and the width at the bottom and cut a piece out using those measurements from the lavender tee.

I wanted it to have a gathered look at the top, so I stitched some thread in about 1/4 in. down from the top of the edge and gathered it by pulling on the thread.

Then, using the piece I had cut out of the purple tee as a guide, I trimmed up the lavender piece

Then pinned it in place.

And sewed the pieces together.

Like so.

Now, you could stop here if you wanted.  But I felt it needed a little something more.

Rosettes make everything prettier!  I cut a few strips of fabric from the lavender tee and rolled them into rosettes, stitching them in place as I went so they wouldn't come undone.

Then attached them to my tee at the collar.

And there you have it!

Holes? What holes?

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out and I hope you love yours too!