Posted on January 20, 2010 by city-made_admin

Melany and I have been really trying to refine our creative space. Right now we have moved from the impermanence of the my (Carol’s) dining room and taken over the basement. We are sharing space with a large amount of barbie dolls and action figures, but we are making it work.

One way we are putting it all together is by making these nice, functional wall hangings. Melany and I made this one on Monday specifically for a support beam in the basement,  I mean studio. We had fun matching colors and doing small details. It took a short amount of time and just some scrap fabric.

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Don’t Kick the Can

Posted on January 20, 2010 by city-made_admin

Re-purposing project #20- Don’t Kick the Can

Just an ordinary empty bean can? No, a pretty and functional pencil holder. Before you recycle the cans, consider using them for containers. We simply took some decorative paper, buttons and hot glue to create our trio of holders.

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Flower Girl to Snow Princess

Posted on January 19, 2010 by city-made_admin

From Flower Girl to Snow Princess

This past Halloween I, Melany, had a request from my four-year-old to make a snow princess costume.  Having never sewn clothes before this task seemed very daunting.  Instead of starting from scratch I remembered that I had saved one of my flower girl costumes from when I was young.  By removing the red trim and hemming the bottom of the dress I had a great base to start from.  Carol had bought a pair of white mittens for her daughter and it came with a white scarf that she did not plan on using.  She let me use this to trim the dress with and I also sewed on some little snowflakes.  Carol made a beautiful white cape to keep her warm out of some white fleece she had on hand.  She loved her snow princess costume and has now “repurposed” it into her favorite dress up costume.

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Play Castle

Posted on January 18, 2010 by city-made_admin

Princess Lauren

Repurposed Play Castle

Our re-purpose challenge for the day is a play castle made from re-purposed items.

Our girls love to dress up, especially as princesses.  I (Melany) drew up a plan for the castle and found items around the house to use.  I used old baby blankets for the sky and old dance costumes and fabric scraps for the castle. I then embellished the castle with ribbons and hair bows that are plentiful in our house.  I hung the castle on a tension rod that I found in our attic so that it fit in-between doorways.  Sewing this castle was a bit of work but the girls love it and have gotten so much use out of it so it was well worth it.

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Keep Cold Out with Mexican Beans and Serape

Posted on January 17, 2010 by city-made_admin

How to repurpose an oversupply of dried beans and a serape from mexico…just in case you were wondering.
Living in an older home means cold drafts in the winter time.  It is amazing what a difference it makes in temperature by sealing up these drafts.  The Spiehs home has an abundance of dried beans that I, Melany, knew would “some day come in handy”.  I had also been saving this wool serape that my parents got in Mexico before I was born.  By sewing several tubes of the fabric and filling them with dried beans I now have a couple of beautiful and warm draft snakes for my house.

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Repurpose Challenge Day 13

Posted on January 13, 2010 by city-made_admin

Repurpose Challenge Day 13

I don’t know about any one else but packaging of any sort, especially plastic, makes me crazy.  There was a great sale on down comforters at Target last weekend that both Carol and I (Melany) could not pass up.  Of course the comforter came in a giant plastic zip up package.  In the past, I have been able to re-use a package like this to store something else but this time I immediately thought “re-purpose”.

I decided to turn it into a make-up bag to hold my very limited make-up collection.  I sewed a piece of fabric, from old curtains, in between the layers of plastic and used an old zipper that came from a fleece jacket that I recently turned into a scarf.  It is really fun to have a completely new item from some things that I would have normally gotten rid of.

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Purse Envy Leads to Sewing

Posted on January 12, 2010 by city-made_admin

Carol here. Last Thanksgiving Melany walked into my house with this cool purse and was like, “I was bored, I made a purse”. Ever since, I have eyed her purse with envy. I even bought fabric hoping that in her presence a purse would appear. No such luck, but I am lucky enough to have had Melany help me make mine. So, today we sewed my purse (the hounds tooth pattern). It is the size I want and the inside has plenty of pockets. I love it.

Thanks for the inspiration Melany.

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Containers Can Contain LOTS of Things

Posted on January 12, 2010 by city-made_admin

Reuse

Our re-purposing project today is a simple one.

You finish your yogurt, eat all the praline cookies, or drink all the coffee in the can. Don’t throw away the container. Reuse it. Containers can come in handy in all sorts of ways. We use yogurt containers for paint and water, an old coffee can for colored pencils or a small container for paper clips. It’s all about how you look at something. So before you throw something away or recycle, think to yourself, “what can I put in this?”

Tell us what you reuse.

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Rainbow iPod Case

Posted on January 7, 2010 by city-made_admin

Rainbow iPod case.

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Rainbow over Omaha into Rainbow iPod Case

Posted on January 7, 2010 by city-made_admin

This was a strange thing to see in Omaha, Nebraska on a snowy January day, when the high was -2. I was driving to pick up my husband from work when I saw this beautiful rainbow in the sky. It is one thing to see a rainbow in the sky on a hot summer day but seeing this on a frigid winter evening was like a gift.

Here in Omaha we have had somewhere close to two feet of snow dumped upon us in just several weeks. Winter is long and hard and messy and unpleasant. I was inspired to create something that would help me remember this rainbow until the first warm summer rain.

As soon as the children were bathed and asleep I went to work creating something from very brightly colored rainbow fabric that I had in mind. This case will only hold my ipod for now but will also serve as a memory of this day.

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