SPARKLY LADIES!: Covered Bins

SPARKLY LADIES!: Covered Bins: So cute and so cheap!  Love this idea from Tales from a Cottage !  Just a simple bin from the dollar store  covered with a cute fabric and the beauty of it is there is NO SEWING involved!  That's right!  All tacky glued together!

Making It Well: I Made My Own Dress Form!

Found this great tutorial on making your own dress form from brown paper tape from the office or art supply store.  This is the post from Jo at her blog, Making It Well.  Estimated cost:  $17.50

Making It Well: I Made My Own Dress Form!: 

Here's a list of supplies Jo used - she provides step by step instructions and pictures on her blog.

Well, shall we get started?

Here’s what you will need:

-paper tape

-scissors
-garbage bag or thin t-shirt you don't mind cutting up
-masking/duct tape 
-newspapers/fabric scraps/stuffing
-flip flops
-sponge 
-thick cardboard
-blow dryer (optional)
-an awesome husband or helper

Click here for Jo's complete step-by-step tutorial at Making It Well

Reuse Sewing Pattern Tissue Paper

1.  Craft a pretty bouquet.  Tissue paper flowers shown are by Montclair Made.

Found a clever site - Crafting a Green World, The Home for Eco-Friendly Crafts.   This is a blog post from Jackie Hernandez  using sewing pattern tissue in several re-purposed projects. 

Here are a bunch of inspiring ideas for reusing sewing pattern tissue paper.

 

2. Wrap up a gift or use sewing pattern tissue in the gift bag.  The cute wraps here are by Lil Fish Studios.

 

 

3.  These matching gift tags also by Lil Fish Studios look stunning with stitch detail and found buttons.   Comic books and greeting cards make great gift tags, but who would of thought to use sewing patterns.  All they need is a sturdy foundation.  

 

4.  Make flower tissue twinkle lights with this how-to from Everyday Beauty.

 5.  Decoupage letters.  These paper pulp letters with sewing pattern decoupage are by Copabananas.  You could get a similar effect with paper mache letters found at most craft stores.

6.  You can never have enough craft storage.  Decoupage a box with the tissue and cutouts from the pattern envelope.  The adorable sewing button box here are by Sewing Geek.

 7.  Junque Art Studio and Crab Apple Design makes really cool magnets using both the sewing pattern tissue and the pattern instruction sheets.  

Organizing Sewing & Craft Supplies

How to Organize Sewing and Craft Supplies

Sewing and craft supplies are easy to misplace and lose. Get it all under control with easy and interesting ways to organize all your sewing and hobby items.

Sewing supplies as well as arts and crafts needs are not just always, in demand but also, always getting misplaced, resulting in panic, stress and buying things that you’re bound to find someday. The easy solution to this chaos is to organize all your sewing and crafts supplies so that each time anyone in the family needs to sew or make a school project, they’d know where to look. Moreover, you would be able to keep a tab on what needs to be bought or replaced, making a big difference to the family budget.

Collect Everything Together

The first thing to do would be to gather all your sewing and craft supplies and place them in front of you. Start putting them together into neat piles-colors, paint, glue guns and tubes, threads, needles, wool, cotton, buttons, trims, lace and anything and everything that you would use for sewing or arts and crafts. Take a good look at the piles you’ve made and see how many containers you would need for them. This would take you to the next step.

Use Divided Clear Containers

Since most of your sewing and craft supplies would include a lot of tiny stuff that would often, disappear when you need it the most, it would be a good idea to invest in a couple or more of divided clear containers. Use these containers to store all those sewing and crafts supplies that get lost when shoved into drawers or closets or large boxes.

• Use separate containers for sewing and craft supplies.
• In one divided container store all your buttons, hooks, lace, trim, ribbon and ribbon roses, thimbles, spare buttons that you get with your clothes, needles, tape measure and all other small sewing supplies. Also, put in a pair of scissors.
• For threads, use clear containers that come with spindles to hold sewing machine threads and invest in a plastic container that comes especially to store embroidery threads.
• Put all crafts supplies into another divided, clear container. Glitter, motifs, ribbons, and anything else that you use for school and crafts projects should go in here. Put a separate pair of scissors, a child-friendly one, in this container. Tubes of paint or glue can also, go into clear jars.
• If you do a lot of sewing and craft work, it would be a good idea to organize your supplies according to type- cross stitch, fabric paint, everyday sewing, quilting, knitting and so on.

Storing Paper and Cloth

Paper and cloth of all kinds is used for both sewing and creating crafts, so it is important that these be stored along with your other craft and sewing supplies. Both cloth and paper should be stored either rolled up and tied loosely or spread flat and smoothed out. If rolling it up, store it all in a tall container. You could use an old jar for this.

If spreading paper or cloth flat for storing, slide them into folders such as a CD folder or even, large Ziploc pouches, and label them, identifying what kind of paper or cloth they hold. So, when you’re looking for them, you wouldn’t have to open half a dozen folders.

Organize Storage Space

Once you have everything sorted, you would need to identify a proper space to store your sewing and crafts supplies. Wherever you decide to store them, ensure that you keep all of them together. So, your clear containers, paper and cloth rolls as well as folders should all be together in one place.

Keep a few small empty containers to hold any miscellaneous stuff. Store in a cabinet or closet or even, on a shelf but remember to put up a pen and paper to jot down anything that needs to be replaced to save you time and effort from going through everything when you’re about to leave for the store.

Keeping all your sewing and crafts supplies in an organized manner would save you a lot of time, effort and money. Knowing that you have everything at hand would prevent undue stress and bother over school projects, missing buttons or torn shirts.

So, take out some time now and organize all your sewing and crafts supplies to enjoy the results later.

I Finally Did It!

Yes - I finally did it! 

Here is (or soon will be) all of Carol's Tag Sale - from across the web to this one compact site. 

There is lots more to come soon! 

Right now, http://www.carolstagsale.com/ is still directed to my About Me page on eBay.  Before this blog, it was the only site with links to all my selling venues.  Believe me, this blog will be even better!  The hub of activity for Carol's Tag Sale - posting to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, pattern & crafts listings on eBay and Etsy.  And - on the subject of Facebook - I'm setting up a real page.  I have been busy!   

Until this all gets set up, you know that you can still visit me at http://www.etsy.carolstagsale.com/ and http://www.ecrater.carolstagsale.com/ and http://www.ebay.carolstagsale.com/ for great deals on new and vintage sewing patterns and crafts. 

NEWS:  I have lots of new and gently used costume sewing patterns to list this next week.  You can see the costume patterns I have for sale right now on Etsy at http://www.etsy.com/shop/CarolsTagSale?section_id=7216682.  

If you are looking for a certain costume, just convo me through Etsy and I will see if I have it. 

See you soon!