Fun in the Village

For my upcoming whirlwind trip to Japan, I’ve been making a list of cool stores I must visit and Village Vanguard is one of them.   Their website is entirely in Japanese but that doesn’t stop me from taking a quick browse and making a shopping list:

The Book of Bunny Suicides 1260 Yen

Funky T-Shirt 3360 yen

Camera Bag 1470 Yen

Unfortunately, the Village Vanguard online store does not ship overseas. I will have to mad shop when I get there in person.

Tags: Accessories, Creative, Stuff we buy

DIY – Leather Necklace

Besides our passion for hand-painted shoes, we also have a passion for funky jewelery.  Sometimes we make our own and they turn out horribly, but this one’s so easy there really is no excuse to go out and pay for something like this.

Stuff you need:

- scrap pieces of leather

- 2 hoops

- 1 lobster claw

- 1 old chain

1. Find scrap pieces of leather (I cut mine off of a skirt that I made shorter)

2. Cut leather into rectangle of whatever size you please

3. Cut fringes into the leather. Basically cut straight strips but leave around 1 cm at the end attached.

4. Poke holes using a thick needle near the upper corner of the leather. (Upper being the part where all the pieces are attached)

5. Attach a hoop to each hole (I used hoops left over from the minipunkz project)

6. Attach lobster claw to one of the hoops

7. Find an old chain that you don’t really wear anymore and attach it to the necklace (hoop to lobster claw)

8. Attach additional dangling bits to hoops

9. Wear it!

Tags: Accessories, DIY, Stuff we make, Stuff we wear

0 Calorie Junk Food

Ada and I love junk food.  We love chocolate, we love burgers, and we love ice cream.  But since it’s short shorts season, we gotta lay off the 1000 calories snacks, so instead, we satisfied ourselves by ordering some junk online.

Yummy!

The pizza is especially deceptive:

Look at that burnt crust!

Pizza and Taco coin purses available on modcloth.

Tags: Accessories, Stuff we buy

DIY – Wall hanging earring holder

Ada and I always lose our earrings.  So we decided to do something about it by making a wall hanging earring holder.  That way, we can display our earrings, and have a place to put them.  This is what the finish product looks like.  (By the way, this one is mine, the purple one below is Ada’s in case you’re wondering why the step by step shows a different color).

Materials needed:

- 1 x blank stretched canvas
- 1 x round tip medium acrylic brush
- 1 x flat tip large acrylic brush
- 1 x acrylic color (base color)
- 1 x acrylic color (tree color)
- 1 x tin foil
- 1 x thumb tac

Start by wrapping a notebok or a piece of cardboard with the tin foil.  This will the surface on which you mix your paints.  If you suck at mixing colors, you might just buy the exact color you want at an art shop instead of buying a bunch of colors and mixing.   You can then squeeze the paint onto the tin foil.

Paint the entire surface area of your stretched canvas with your base color.  I also recommend that you paint the edges as well cause it’ll look nicer once you hang it up.  Give the base color about an hour to dry.

Next you add the tree using the rounded brush.

If you want, you can paint the edge as well.  The picture below shoes the bottom of the painting.  See how the tree truck continues onto the edge of the canvas?  Give it another hour to dry.

Finally, use your thumb tac to poke holes onto the canvas.  You can do as many or as few as you like.  I personally like to poke two holes fairly close together so that I can place a pair of earrings side by side.  Insert your earrings and hang.

Total time: approx 3.5 hours (including sitting around waiting for the paint to dry)

Total cost: approx $40 Canadian

Now go make yourself one of these!

- Miranda

Tags: Accessories, Stuff we make