If at first you don't succeed, Tie Dye Again!

I have wanted to try my hand at tie-dying for months now.  My eye was on a pair of purple jeans that I always wore with a solid top, and I thought the pants would look great in a fun tie-dye pattern on the bottom.

So the term "tie-dye" is not correct usage in this project.  There was no "dye" involved, only a "taking out" of dye by using bleach.

WARNING-SIDE RANT::  Who knows why I kept putting off completing this project...it was so EASY!  A few months back, when the idea first came to me, I picked up a bottle of hydrogen peroxide at the drug store (thinking I would use that as my beaching agent).  Why H2O2?  I don't now know why.  My brother used to use it back in high school to lighten his hair, but I don't know why I just didn't go straight to using bleach.  DAH!  :FINISH RANT

I found what I was looking for yesterday when surfing blogland: Katherine at MakingChickenSalad, tutorial for bleaching out denim.

As soon as naptime commenced, I was gathering up my materials and starting on my project.

Problem is, I have a real deficiency in following directions.  As soon as my pants were ready to go in to the washing machine, I threw them in and then turned on the water.  Wrong!  By the time I added the bleach (and I threw in the H2O2 for extra power, not sure if adding that was really was worth it) the jeans were already soaked with the hot water...I didn't allow for them to properly soak-up the bleach solution.  DOH!  As soon as I realized my mistake, I went back to the tutorial and read everything sentence by sentence.  What I decided to do was just finish out the wash/rinse cycle, post wash with detergent, and throw in the dryer to see what I got:

Some parts were not bad, but the good areas were mostly up at the waist and nothing done to the legs.  Well I did manage to get one star-burst on the leg, but it was much more subtle than I wanted.  So next naptime, back to the beginning (which included a trip to the grocery store to purchase more bleach) .  I re-banded and this time I added the bleach (I used maybe one quarter of the bottle) to the hot water BEFORE adding the jeans.  I left it to soak for about 2 hours.  When I went to check on it, what came out was entirely pink!  "Oh no!  I've OVERDONE it this time"  But, again, I went through the rest of the steps (wash, rinse, repeat with detergent, and dry).  I'm pretty happy with what I got in the end.

Now I can't wait to wear these and show off my handy-work!  :-)

Closet Wrap-Up

So over a month ago I decided to join the DIY Bloggers in their summer challenge.  I failed at completing the project on time, but eventually it did get finished.  I think I managed to have it at 98% by two weeks past the original date.  I still have some sewing to do at the top, but here it is-in all it's glory...

My closet is now a place of inspiration for me.  I'm not the best photographer, so maybe this picture doesn't do it justice, but I love the combination of gold, hot pink, and tomato red.  The white molding just pops, although I can see it sort of clashes with my off-white dresser a bit.  I finally have a shelf to keep my purfume bottles and earrings up away from my little explorer's hands.  I did leave some items on a tray though that he can get into.  I have a case filled with plastic bead necklaces, big ol' shiny plastic rings and braclets, and bright sunglasses that he loves to play dress up with me.

Some "in-progress" pics:

It's very important to have a "spotter" in case you miss something:

My first time painting stripes on my walls!  More Pinterest inspiration for that:

Source: None via Petra on Pinterest

I painted the shelves as well and installed contact paper on the tops:

I'm so happy with the result!

Before

After

Husband is Out of the Closet

I'm so excited to be joining in on the one week design challenge, title above, hosted by the following lovely ladies...

I've been following all of their DIY home design blogs for some time now (Younghouselove.com,BowerPowerBlog.com,stylebyemilyhenderson.com,JoeyandLana.com) and when I heard that the four of them teamed up for this challenge-well, I had to get on board.

What I didn't expect was my husband to get a whiff of my excitement and want to help out.  "Help out" turned a bit into "take over" and has stepped up the project into something much more than what can be accomplished in one week.  Or at least, when you get started Friday night-will not be complete by Monday night.

I digress.  Let's get into the inspiration for this project...

Source: bhg.com via Petra on Pinterest

Oh how I yearn for an organized closet like this one. I have the good fortune to have a pretty large closet all for myself in our spare room, but it is a disaster!

(BEFORE)

Soon after we bought this house and moved in, I had my husband take off the triple, heavy, sliding closet doors and replace them with this white steel rod and shimmery gold curtains I found at a discount linen store.  I have an extra panel of curtain that *we* (husband) have been meaning to make into a transom for filling the gap above the vertical panels, just haven't gotten around to doing so.  So both Thursday night and Friday night, after the babe was laid down to rest, we hashed out our plan.  My plan: to add some boxes to the shelf and have better organization for my jewelry and knick-knacks, and also get objects (like my perfume bottles) up high out of reach from MVP (our active 1 year old, who likes to come into Mommy's closet and pull everything down).  His plan: to completely gut out the entire closet and rebuild it all back up with unfinished lumber, which he can manipulate (with cuts, curves, and routing tools) to his hearts content.  His motivation-my love pouring over.

My Plan-Storage boxes via Target

His Plan-rip out shelves and build fresh ones with plywood

It is really coming along...he is actually still cutting, drilling, installing, and cutting some more as I type out this posting to have it done for tomorrow.  He really wants to meet the deadline tomorrow and I think he'll make it.  Just I won't have my part completed, you know, the painting of the shelves and ofcourse the filling back up of the closet.  Also, I've got further plans to sort through all my stuff and purge purge purge!  Man, I sound like my mother right now.  She's always getting into projects and losing track of time.  My husband laughed when I just read those last two statements to him.  He had just uttered in the same moment "Man, I hate it when home owners leave their furniture in place and you have to work around it" (referring to my dresser) He sounded just like his dad-the general contractor.

testing the strength of his manny-work

So for the next few days, I'm going to be living from my closet on the floor until I can find the time to paint, buy wallpaper, and more boxes, oh-and rope lights (excited about that plan=husband's).

But I will NOT admit DEFEAT!  Oh no, I have a backup project in my Pinterest board:

My mom's crochet purse from her hippiedaiz

 and some silk flowers, wah-lah!