One of my dearest and oldest friends asked me to help her outfit her little boy for Halloween. She probably only has one more year of picking whatever Halloween costume she wants, so she picked Pinocchio. Perfect for a real BOY like this little guy! My friend pointed me in the direction of this amazing Pinocchio costume and tutorial at For the Good Days. I followed Cammi's tutorial pretty faithfully with a few adjustments. One touch I added was a stripe of embroidered trim to the sides of the shorts just like the real deal. via Amazon To add the trim, simply sew it down centered on the side of each leg before hemming or completing the waistband. Adding the trim before hemming or completing the waistband allows you to finish the trim off when you complete those Continue Reading
Posts
Fixing the Ugly Wall
When we moved into our home, I quickly discovered a wall that would annoy me for months to come. It is a small wall - about four feet wide - next to our staircase. The wall sticks out into our family room area, which means if you are sitting on one side of the sectional, you are staring right at it. And here's the problem: The builder decided, "Hey. I know. Let's put the doorbell and the thermostat and two light switches all in the middle of this wall so it is impossible to put anything pretty on the wall." Great idea, builder. So for a good year and a half, I gave the wall dirty looks. I made excuses for the wall when we had guests. The wall and I - we were not friends. Then, one day, while browsing Pinterest, I saw the clever idea of hiding the thermostat in the middle of a Continue Reading
The Shell Crochet Cowl: Free Pattern
The Shell Crochet Cowl is made up of puffy shells and a ribbed buttonhole edge. This free pattern walks you through all the steps to make your own. This post contains affiliate links where possible. See my full disclosure policy here. Welcome to Persia Lou! If you are new here, you may want to check out some of my other free crochet patterns right HERE. Or sign up for my newsletter to keep up to date on new posts. We have had a cool-bordering-on-cold week here in the desert, which has motivated me to finally finish up the pattern for this Crochet Cowl that I started back before it got hot. (I sometimes have a hard time digging into a pile of yarn when it is over 100 degrees out) This is a thick, warm cowl that buttons up the front. I used cover buttons because they are the Continue Reading
Paper Doily Envelopes
I am basically behind on everything in my life right now, so my daughter's birthday party preparations are certainly no exception. BUT I did actually finish the invitations (mailing them is another story entirely... why did I think I should do a real paper invite again?). I mentioned the paper doily envelope idea before, but I thought I would show off how they turned out. The one I made is very similar to paper.mein's (click for directions!). I used 10 inch round paper doilies that I found at the dollar store. My invitations were 4 inches by 6 inches, and the 10 inch doily worked perfectly for that size. I placed my invitation in the middle of the doily and folded the doily around the invitation, and then cut out the corners, which I thought made the envelope prettier and less Continue Reading
Faux Shell Wall Hanging
This is the project I shared over at the Country Chic Cottage's Beach Bash last week. Ain't she purty? It was inspired by a beautiful piece of art I saw a several months ago in House Beautiful: Sorry the picture looks wrinkled... My magazine may have been dropped in the bath tub. Â Maybe... See that sparkly loveliness on the mantle? Here's what the magazine has to say about it: "A framed grid of shells on fishing wire 'sparkles and catches the light from the windows and the fireplace.'" Sounds like a dream, right? It also sounded fairly do-able to me, so I went to work. I quickly learned that pretty, sparkly shells are not so cheap. BUT - do you know what is? Wax paper. Wax paper is totally in my budget. Maybe you saw that awesome wax paper cadiz shell Continue Reading
DIY Baker’s Twine
Yesterday I posted a few pictures of my most recent canning adventure, and you may recall that the jars had little baker's twine bows tied on them. Well, when I decided I wanted to tie baker's twine bows onto my jars, of course, I did not actually have any baker's twine. So with the powers of Google and making do combined, I came up with this technique for making your own. You may have seen this clever tutorial at the Frugal Crafter for making your own baker's twine using cotton crochet thread and a permanent marker. Well, that's great, but I didn't have any fun permanent markers, so I moved on. Next, I stumbled upon this idea at Between the Lines to twist together two strands of colored embroidery floss, which I always have on hand. Here's how you do it. Tie two strands of Continue Reading
Pretty Pom Pom Packaging
 Here is my guest post from earlier this week over at Sarahndipities. Hope you enjoy! Last Christmas, when I began to run low on ribbon, I came up with a fun way to top packages that also uses up some of my yarn stash: pom-poms! A big pom-pom on top of a gift is fun and a bit unexpected. It adds height and a big shot of color. There are many, many different ways to add pom-poms to your packages, but here are a few of my ideas. When attaching one or more pom-poms to a wrapped package, you can simply wrap the yarn around the gift a few times and tie the pom-pom on. Another option is to use a crochet hook to chain a "ribbon" for your gift. (Sarah from Sarahndipities has some good info on how to make a crochet chain here.) There are so many great ways to use pom-poms. Continue Reading
Plastic Wrap Watercolors
Confession: These guys aren't actually on my wall yet, so I'm not sure they should count as a PGSOMW project (That's Project: Get Something on My Walls. Obviously. haha... ). But they will go on my walls once I get the frame situation figured out, so... here they are! I have enjoyed doing some watercolors now and then, and I really enjoy playing around with washes and textures. I came across an excellent, detailed photo tutorial on how to create this fun effect at watercolorpainting.com. It is very easy to get this fun result, and I look forward to playing around with it more in the future. Check it out! Basically, you need watercolor paper, watercolors, a brush, and plastic wrap. That's it! I just love the texture it creates. It reminds me of faceted gems. So, what do Continue Reading