DIY Lip Scrub!

 

I’ve been wanting to make a lip scrub for a long time now, but my standard lip beauty treatment of biting the dry skin off was holding me back. It’s just so much easier. What it also is is quite disgusting, and it does absolutely no good for the lips. So I finally decided to start taking care of my poor mangled lips. While there are a ton of DIY lip scrubs out there, with a whole bunch of things that can be added to the recipe, this one is really basic.

I used one tablespoon each of white granulated sugar (which acts as the exfoliant), honey (which soothes the skin) and olive oil (which moisturizes the skin). Mix them all together and voila! It’s done! Super simple isn’t it? I put mine in a tiny little container. I wanted to buy actual lip balm boxes, but I haven’t been able to locate them anywhere yet.

To use, take a bit on your finger and rub it gently over your lips. Let it sit for a couple of minutes and wash (or lick!) off. This can be done 3-4 times a week, or less if your lips are very sensitive to the exfoliation.

I can’t wait to try it out! My lips are in dire need of some TLC!

Tip: Coconut oil and Almond oil are good alternatives for Olive oil.

~ Kirtana

Embellished Hair-Tie DIY

Hair accessories are some of the most fun odds and ends that clutter up your dresser. I love them all, from clips to head bands, and now that my hair’s grown enough to tie into a respectable ponytail, I’m having fun with tiny scrunchies and elastic hair-ties in a rainbow of colours. But sometimes, don’t you just want more? My personal peeve about fancy hair-ties is that they’re always so big! And voluminous. And completely engulfing my still-growing ponytail. So I thought it would be fun to create hair-ties that added a little special something without being too overwhelming. And the beauty of this entire process is that it’s so quick and easy, and uses up things you’ve been hoarding saving for a rainy day.

Without further ado, please assemble your hair ties (I like the nice elastic ones that have no metal in them), a good strong glue (I used E6000), buttons, cameos, anything that you’d like on the tie, and the secret weapon – ponytail holder findings, that have a groove for the hair-tie to sit in and flat surfaces to glue your embellishment on.

Then choose your combinations, and glue away! I started off with a tiny lucite flower cluster, being in a matchy-matchy mood, but found it was too small to completely cover the finding, so I swapped it for an Eiffel Tower glass tile. I placed the glue on the finding, and then the hair-tie in its channel, and pressed the embellishment onto it.

If you don’t have the finding, don’t despair. You could easily do this with any bits of sheet metal you have lying around (because, of course, sheet metal is something that everyone has to spare! <eye roll>) or even pieces of cloth. The only problem would then be that your embellishment would be glued directly onto the ponytail elastic, and you’d have to pay a little attention to positioning it when you tie your hair up. To use old metal buttons, just cut off the shank with a good wire cutter, and you’re all set.

And there you have it. Pretty pretties that you can make in under five minutes! What would you use to embellish your hair-ties? Do let us know!

Have a great week!

*Ammu* 

Mobile phone pouch DIY

Phew! Relief relief everywhere. I’m finally back to using a smart phone (I tell you, these things have taken over the world) all thanks to A, and for anyone who knows me, I’m super paranoid about new things getting spoilt. So I decided to make myself a mobile phone pouch! This took me all of Saturday simply because I made a million wrong choices and stupid mistakes, which I shall warn you about during the course of this tutorial, so you don’t end up wanting to weep and shred the whole thing.

Things to ABSOLUTELY (yes, I used all caps) keep in mind before making this pouch

. Make sure the colour of the fabric you’re using doesn’t bleed/run.

. Use a sewing machine if you have one and if you’re not very good at stitching by hand.

Now that those two things are established, let’s begin!

Things you’ll need:

Felt, fabric, a pair of scissors, fabric glue, needle and thread, a picture of what you want on your phone, your phone (for measurement), and ideally, a sewing machine.

First, measure the size of felt you need by using your phone. Leave wide enough margins – I left a bit more than the thickness of the phone on both sides. This is so that the phone is nice an snug, and there’s also room for the stitches.

I made another mistake here – my side measurements were perfect, but I later realized that I should’ve left much more at the bottom. So do that (you can always adjust it and make it shorter later) and cut out two identical pieces of felt.

Next, get your felt cut outs ready using your drawing as a template. You can see that I experimented with different sizes before I settled on the perfect nose and eyes.

Once you’re happy with your cut out, it’s time to put them all together!

I wanted a two-colour background, because I wanted the dog to look like it’s peeping over a wall. I measured some blue ( a little more than half the length of the felt piece) and pink (a little less than half the length of the felt piece) fabric, and cut them out leaving some extra fabric to fold over. Apply fabric glue on the edges of the felt and stick the two pieces of cloth on it. Turn it over, trim off the excess, line the felt with glue again, and fold the extra fabric over the felt. This side is going to be on the inside of your pouch. Turn it over again, and that’s where you’re going to be sticking your felt cut out.

I stuck a strip of black felt over the area where the two fabrics overlapped to cover the messy edges. Place your cut out on the fabric, and when you’re happy with it, go ahead and sew the pieces together. You can opt to simply stick the bits together if you have a strong enough glue, but I’m glad I sewed mine together. I’ll tell you why in a bit! Once the entire piece is ready, sew it onto the fabric. Yes, I know, I forgot to mark the digits on the doggie’s right paw. I put it down to the terrible cold and headache I had on Saturday!

Now comes the slightly tricky part. Tricky for me to explain, that is.  I wanted a lining on the inside of my pouch because my felt seemed slightly rough, and remember my paranoia? Yeah. It’s much simpler if you don’t need to line the pouch. Anyhow. Remember that other piece of felt that we haven’t touched yet? That’s going to be the back of your pouch. We’re going to be working with both felt pieces now, so pay close attention! Measure two pieces of fabric (one for each piece of felt), and cut them out again leaving margins on all sides. Place one such fabric piece on your untouched piece of felt, with those extra margins tucked in facing the felt. Phew. Secure these two layers with pins.

Do the same with the other piece of felt. The extra margins of the second piece of fabric should be facing the back of this piece of felt. Secure with pins.

Time to sew! I don’t know why I had the brilliant idea of sewing by hand even though I have a very decent sewing machine. Big big big mistake! Go ahead place the two pieces together – felt facing each other – and sew three sides together. Leave a bit at the top so that you can fold it back and stitch across the top, to make it look much neater. Here was when I realized that I had measured too close to the phone. Can you see in the third picture how the phone is just at the fold? Well, I thought that meant it was fine, and I went ahead and stitched it. But once I turned the pouch inside out, the phone was sticking up quite a bit! So make sure to leave some extra room!

Once that’s done, turn it inside out – or rather right side out. Here’s when I was glad that I had stitched all the doggie bits together – nothing fell apart while I was struggling to turn this thing inside out. This was when I wept at the fact that the phone was sticking out. So I undid the stitches at the top, and replaced it with some very very very untidy work up there. I don’t even know what I was trying. Just to sort of neaten it a bit, to get those two layers to sit together. Anyway, I wasn’t too happy with it, but happy enough with the rest.

But! Here was the biggest mistake ever. I was super thrilled that I had finally reached the finish line, after having to re-do the entire top portion (and then bits of the sides too, and then I just went and ran a whole set of stitches through everything again, this time with the sewing machine), and then I looked down at my hands, and thought I was dying. No really, I did. They were this very very scary pale blue. And then I realized that the colour from the blue fabric – which I had used to line the entire pouch!- had rubbed off onto my hands. I was mortified just imagining what was going to happen to the neon red back panel of my phone! So I soaked the pouch in salt water overnight, scrubbed it thoroughly on Sunday morning, my tears mixing with the blue water in the basin, and let it dry all of Sunday, finally taking a really bad picture of it on Sunday night.

Phew.

I know.

So I used it today, and the colour isn’t rubbing off anymore! Yay!

All in all, I really loved making this pouch, and can’t wait to make more, with all these lessons learnt! Remember, if you don’t want to DIY, we take orders for all the items featured in our DIY section. But in case you do decide to make a pouch, send us a photo! We’d love to see it!

~Kirtana