25Jul | 2012

Nursery: Felt hot air ballon mobile – tutorial and pattern

Today I want to share one of my favorite pieces of the nursery we’re putting together for our baby Peanut =] A very colorful hot air ballon mobile made out of felt.

I wanted to make the ballons as real as possible, and researched for ideas that were not so complicated to sew, because some designs are gorgeous but at a small scale can be a nightmare. Ken used to work with a hot air balloon company, so he had a big share of “the real deal” – in my case I’ve always admired the colors and designs but I’ve never been lucky enough to get on one, but I was lucky to see my first balloon festival last year, and that’s where I got the inspiration from =]

To me hot air balloons are just gorgeous! So hopefully baby Peanut will love them too, if not at least he/she will have a lot of time to stare at these guys:

And of course I had to share a template and basic assembly directions so that everyone that loves hot air balloons can create their own designs =] So here the PDF file with the 3 different sizes I used to create mine and the instruncions.

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Joy


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23Jul | 2012

An update and a big Thank you!

I wanted to pop here and say thank you for all the messages over Facebook and the emails I’ve got from all of you concerned about how I’ve been doing.
For those of you that don’t know, 2 weeks a go I started having contractions and signs of pre-term labor that end up with me spending the night at the Hospital. It was a very scary night and the fact that Ken was on a fire assignment out of state added more stress to the whole situation =[

After a few test, ultrasound and another visit to my Doctor I can finally be relief that hopefully that will not happen again until it's time to (about 11 more weeks). My Doctor said to limit my physical activities, try to relax and not stress, so I've been taking everything very slow and even tho I still have a million things to do before this baby comes I rather do only half of them and not rush this baby out in any way =]


[Some of my Instagrams from bed rest]

I am super happy now that Ken is back home and I feel better to know he’s only minutes away when he’s at work and not States away =] Curly has been keeping me company on my couch rest and I think he has no complains, he has Mommy all to himself all day long (well almost all day long) and he likes to use my belly as a pillow -even tho that works for him only until the Baby starts to kick him out =]

Anyways, I wanted to give you all an update and let you know that even tho things will be slow here, I have a bunch of post and projects I worked on before all of this happened so there will be noise in here =] Scheduled post!

Thank you for all the lovely emails and messages, it means so much to me all of thoughts and prayers that were sent my way! You guys rock!
XOXO

Joy


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4Jul | 2012

Belly Sewing: $3 XL Target t-shirt into maternity with ruffle shoulders

A few weeks a go I shared this picture on Instagram. And today I am going to share a little tutorial on how to transform an XL t-shirt I got at Target for $5.00 into a cute maternity friendly with ruffle shoulders!

I am so happy by how comfortable the t-shirt is now and thanks to how stretchy the fabric is I know that it will fit me even after my belly gets bigger. Even tho I feel like I could not get any bigger right now =]

Are you ready to make your own?

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Joy


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29Jun | 2012

Nursery: DIY Elephant lamp

If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw the little previews I did while I was working on this project. I am so happy to finally be done and be able to show all of you my labor of love =]

This is my first Nursery project, a fully DIY Elephant lamp. When researching for inspiration for the nursery I found this amazing lamp by Jonathan Adler. It was just like what I wanted, with only one downfall the price-tag is $395.00 – So very quickly I had to forget about it, instead I planned to make my own version of an elephant lamp.

I wanted mine to be gray instead of white, and with more details than the Jonathan Adler’s version. I wanted my elephant to be in a slightly different position and even tho at first I didn’t plan for it to have a pedestal, the $5 thrift store lamp I got (to use the socket and structure) worked perfect and I kept the pedestal to give it a little bit more height.

I paired the lamp with a lampshade I recovered with a chevron pattern in red and white. I just love the way the colors mix together =] so now, let me show some more images of the finished lamp so I can also share how I made it!

I didn’t set this post as a tutorial because I mostly free hand shaped everything, I didn’t follow any pattern or image, so it would be too hard for me to explain how to make one, but if you feel creative I can share the materials I used and what my thoughts were, who knows maybe this can inspire someone else so try something similar, right?

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Joy


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20Jun | 2012

My Studio: Ikea chair revamp

When I started working on my new sewing room, I immediately started looking for a chair to use with my build-in table, I wanted something comfortable that allowed me to move and that would not be a pain to sit on if I needed to sew for a long period of time, after some research I found the perfect one in the Ikea website, the SKRUVSTA chair, sadly it was WAY out of my “office renovation” budget, so I hunted on Craiglist until I found the almost-exact-one I wanted for just $30.00 – SCORE! I already had fabric and foam to give this very dirty found a brand new look =]

I definitely wanted the wheels that the more expensive version of this chair has, so on our last trip to Ikea I got the set of 5 wheels for $9.00 to make the total for the brand new chair a low $39.00 compared to the $149.00 retail price of the leather version.

If you saw the revamp I gave my office chair, you already know that one of the most important factors when recovering a chair to me is making the cover removable. Because well, I have a little dog that loves chairs and going outside – not a good mix!

So in order to make the covers removable, because of the shape of the chair I decided to add 2 zippers, one on the back and one on the front-bottom part. The original chair was in a very decent shape, it was just dirty and the only really bad part was the foam of the cushion.

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Joy


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Hola there! I'm Joy Kelley, Chilean Designer, sewing fanatic, obsessive crafter, upcycle passionate. Welcome to my blog!
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