Halloweenigami

At work on Friday, I was very bored. There wasn't any work to do and the 5 hour shift lasted longer than my entire week. So what did I do?

Origami. Duh.

Since today's Halloween, I am (procrastinating real homework) and going to post the cute 'gamis that I did.
Also, if you're bored and have a square of paper, I highly encourage origami. Mostly because it's frickin' sweet, but it's also... because it's origami. What else do you need?

What was the Hippie Vampire like?
He was ghoul, man. Real ghoul.

What do you call a mummy that eats cookies in his tomb?
A crummy mummy!

What do little ghosts drink?
Evaporated Milk!

The vampire came from the 365 Days of Origami calendar at work (really cool... er, ghoul) and here are the links to the others... 

the ghost came from this great website

http://www.spiraclemusic.com/webwalk/origami.htm

and the mummy from this one:

http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/pdfs/Origami_Mummies.pdf

the mummy is super-easy and would be great for kids! 

I wish everyone an awesome Halloween!

The American Constitution Hard at Work

In an e-mail, my sister-in-law, L, asked, "What are you going to be for Halloween?  I don't know what would beat Flo, probably nothing.  But, you'll try I'm sure."

So here's last year's Flo costume:

And did I beat it? 

I'll let you be the judge.

Wait, what is that?... is that...? Is that what I think it is??

Yup. It's

THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

The right to bear arms.

So now that I've told you the end, I'm gonna pull a Quentin Tarantino and go back to the beginning. Waaaay back to the beginning of my hairy tale (see what I did there?) to June, I think, when I read a headline in the paper at work. The headline said "Something Something Something The Right to Bear Firearms" and it amused me, and I smirked (or at least I would have) and thought, that's funny because now you can't make it a pun. And then I laughed out loud (my co-workers must've thought I was mad) because BEAR ARMS. So then, BEAR ARMS is running through my head all day long (and still made me laugh) because we all know how much I LOVE puns.

And then the costume idea was born. 

And this is how that went:

The Beginning. This also spurned a "bear skin rug" idea... more on that later.

Then it turned into:

The right to bear arm.

And you can't have bear arms without...

Let me open that for you with my BEAR HANDS

One last little detail to pull it all together...

Why only four stripes you ask? Either I was too lazy or I only recognize 4 original colonies. Your choice.

So now we've come full circle and it's the end again. I'd post the after photo again, but you can just scroll back up. Finger exercise. 

WAIT! A Twist! 

It's not the really the end! Remember when I said "More on that later" ?!?! That was foreshadowing. Astute readers would have gotten it. 

Bear. Skin. Rug.

Now all I need is an appropriately-colored and -sized teddy bear to decapitate so he'll have a head.

The [actual] End.

really.

The Argyle Gang

We're all just argyled-peas in a bar-shaped pod.

An Outing in Argyle!

My roommate, we'll call her E (for privacy reasons, of course), chose to have an argyle-themed birthday outing. Instead of wearing the one argyle shirt I already had [boring!] I went to the good ol' Goodwill and purchased this monstrosity for a measly $2.96:

A little bit of Grandpa with a little bit of 80's... and a whole lot of argyle.

I know you're now thinking, "what in the world was she thinking?" I was thinking "Deep V-Neck Cardigan!"

So, I hacked that puppy up a little until I ran into this problem:

The knitted collar was not going to cut it for a deep V.
Solution: It had to go.

I folded the raw edge under & made a (not-so-straight, but who's perfect?) new hem. Success!

Problem number 2: button holes. How the heck was I supposed to do button holes?

Solution:

I totally sewed them suckers straight on the front.
Tracie: 1 Button holes: 0. 

So then we're left with the final outfit. I threw it over a tank & some leggings & a necklace I got from a garage sale a couple years ago, put on some flats and we were ready to rock!

Ze front

Ze Back

All in all, it was a great night, and I wish a very happy birthday to E. As soon as I have access to the photo of the whole Argyled-Gang I'll post it!

This Project: Sweater: $2.96
                    Buttons: $3.75 (don't you love that I paid more for buttons than the sweater?!?!)
                  Total: $6.71

Whole Project: $6.71

Next time: A brief history of the spork.
                                                               Kidding.

Anything Unrelated to Elephants is Irrelephant!

I have a plan that includes making purses and lining them with silver satin and calling my "brand" Silver Lining Purse Company. Here is the first one... it's a Before & After though, does it still count? And it's not completed yet, I'm still going to cover the sides and back... someday.

The original was a gift from an old roommate... she got it for free during Spring Break in Florida, and everything I used on it was given to me or I already had, so total cost for this purse... $0!

The Before:

The Pieces:

I added the striped background, the elephants, the heart, the cute cupid "grass"

Lace cloud :)

Some fabric, a little tatted piece and a button make the sun

The After:

Two cute elephants sharin' some love on the savannah

Project Cost: $0

Total Cost: $0

That's all for now!

Being Inspired...

I've been tossing around the idea of making a blog for awhile now, but worrying what people would think: that they'd think I was showing off or making a big deal of my creativity. Then a good friend said to me, "Do what you want. Stop worrying about what other people think." And two days later, Elephants in Pearls was created as a place to put my stuff and share some inspiration. Because we could all use a little more inspiration.

Good Night!