DIY lace and ribbon shoelaces

Winter is knocking on our door which means scarves, gloves, coats, hats and most importantly boots! I happened to walk into a shoe store the other day and I found these on sale for $27.

 I wanted to make them a bit more exciting so I thought I would make some lace shoelaces.

You will need ribbon (in the colour of your choice), lace (in the colour of your choice), matching thread and a needle (or sewing machine).  I used 10mm wide ribbon which was perfect for these shoes.

• I cut the ribbon to the length I wanted and cut the lace to 10cm longer than the ribbon.  The lace was cut to 2cm wide.

• Since the holes in the shoe were quite small I decided to thread the ribbon first and then hand sew the lace onto the ribbon, leaving a lace bow.

• I started to sew the lace about 5cm from the base of the lace, leaving enough room to loosen the laces.  I had to figure out the hard way that I needed to leave room at the top.

As you can see, my first attempt was lopsided.

• I did a few folds at the start of the laces to give it more texture and then I continued to sew the lace straight against the ribbon. 

This is the end result. 

Voila! Simple but funky! I also wore these shoes in my photo shoot here.

Photo Frame Creation

A couple of years ago I bought a few plain wood photo frames from Ikea.  They were totally boring and needed to be decorated, but I just didn't know what to do with them.  And I have never been the kind of girl to have mountains of photographs of me and my man Trent around the house.  But then I had a baby girl which led to thousands of pics of her, and then a light turned on in my head.  Lots of baby photos... frames just waiting to be decorated... HUZZAH!  I can finally use the ugly frames and do some painting at the same time!  I have a few pics of the nearly finished project, but I am not certain if I am going to add anything else to them yet.

I found some small letters at Spotlight and decided to join the frames together with her name.  I wanted to do something pretty but not too babyish.  Using acrylic paints I chose to go with three different background colours, then I painted on a pattern over the top.  I dry brushed some metallic paints over the top of that just to try and make the pattern sit more in the background.  Then I went with a flower detail on the edges of the frames.  The whole structure is not quite strong enough so the frames will have to be reinforced in some way, maybe with some balsa wood or something.
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This is the flower detail up close.

 

I feel like something is missing, maybe a 3D flower somewhere - I'd love to hear your thoughts :)

Future Projects

There are quite a few unfinished projects floating around my house at the moment, some for my baby girl Evelyn, some for me (sometimes I just can't stop myself).  There are also some I am itching to start and following are the culprits causing my multi-project predicament.






Scrabble magnet board - My plan is to do a magnet board for Evelyn that I could have in the living room based on this design.

 

Via The Twice Remembered Cottage

Chalkboard Paint - I am going to use this tutorial to make coloured chalkboard paint for future projects.

  

Via The Idea Room 

Sorry, having trouble posting, I will finish this post later.