Great Finds

More great stuff from the world wide web!

More DIY's from Oh the Lovely Things.

Tutorials from Bubby and Bean.

And some more from Brit + co.

Yum Yum Potato Salad

Another great find from Popptytalk! Yum. 

Salt and Vinegar Potato Salad

1/2 red onion, cut into strips

1/4 cup + 2 tbs cider vinegar

2 lbs baby potatoes

1 1/2 tsp Old Bay seasoning

1 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp honey

1/4 cup olive oil (or less)

Toss the red onion with the 2 tbs cider vinegar and let marinate for 30 mins. Drain.

Boil potatoes in medium sized pot until just tender, for about 15 mins.

Meanwhile, whisk together the remaining vinegar, salt, honey, and seasoning in a large bowl.

Peel potatoes while still warm (or not). Slice potatoes into quarters. Add quartered potatoes into the bowl with the vinegar and spices. Add in onion mixture and slowly pour in oil (you may not need all of it) and lightly toss. Add more seasoning and salt if desired. Serve at room temperature. Serves 4.

DIY Bow Pillow

I'm loving this pretty bow pillow form Ariadne at Home.

Below are the instructions in english. (Thank you Google Translate!) Will def make time to make this. :-)

The feminine form of the bow fits perfectly in the BB-pane. And is very simple to make.

Materials:

0.80 m plaid fabric camellia Elmore 7460/49, 137 cm wide (Romo, 030-605 32 18, romo.com); fiberfill (haberdashery business); rectangular pillow 40 × 60 cm Fjädrar € 3.99 (Ikea Netherlands BV, Ikea. en).

How to make the Bardotstrik:

Cut out the fabric for the cushion cover 1 piece of 42 × 124 cm, for the band 1 piece of 32 × 58 cm and the mesh strip 1 piece of 32 × 72 cm.

Cut out the fiberfill for tie strip 1 piece of 32 × 72 cm.

Fold the cloth for the cushion cover double, so it's 42 × 62 cm. Stitch the short side with 2 inch seam, but leave a piece in the middle, and later open to reverse the pillow. Fold the seam towards the middle and stitch the long side with 1 cm seam. Turn the cover. Put the pillow in it and sew the opening closed.

Fold the band for the double, so he's 16 × 58 cm is. Stitch the long side with 1 cm seam and once the band. Stitch the ends with 1 cm seam together and once the seam on the inside.

Place the fiberfill-rag on the checkered cloth for tie strip and incorporate more layers as 1 layer. Fold the double, so he's 16 × 72 cm is. Stitch the short ends oblique, 45 degree angle, leaving the inclined lines are parallel to each other. Cut the excess fabric to 1 inch from the stitching. Stitch the long side close but leaves it open for a lot of times. Turn the assembly and sew the opening closed.

Fold the ribbon strip in half, so that the oblique lines aligned arrive. Stitch the strap just below the fold through all layers, so the tire can be pushed to the pillow and ribbon strip hangs underneath.

Illustrator Practice

So I'm currently learning Adobe Illustrator. I've been reading tutorials for the past few days, and I'm liking it very very much! Yes I know, I'm super behind. I had no idea how perfectly convenient and powerful and versatile Illustrator is. I've only ever used Photoshop. Everything I wanted to do I can now in Illustrator, with so much more ease. :)

I'm trying out some tutorials in Nicole's Classes. This one's on creating grid style art boards. I've always wondered how bloggers made theirs. I tried making one. (See previous blog) It didn't quite turn out that well. :P

I redid it based on this tutorial and there you have it :-) It's not that neat, but it'll have to do for now. I can't get the sizing right, though. I might have made the original image bigger that needed.   

What if's

Divorce is as common a word as love nowadays.

In other parts of the world, anyway.

Here in the Philippines, though (and in other Asian countries), it's not so common. But separation is. The Catholic Church strongly and proudly denounces divorce with every ounce of authority it possesses [and imposes]. However, it cannot stop couples, who aren't getting along, from splitting up  and going their own ways. Divorce is, after all, only the legal aspect.

People are a lot more open-mined today. Divorce and separating aren't anything new. But to me, they kind of still are. I guess if you belong to a close family, those words would seem strange. I often hear  stories from friends, distant acquaintances, and even our staff about married couples separating. These stories are common, but they always surprise me. Even my cousin and her family talk about this all the time. Her parents always talked to her about these 'what if's' over dinner, and I found that a bit weird, and funny. I thought that that was the last thing my family would ever talk about at the dinner table!

Then came a time my mom actually brought up the subject. It surprised me a little, but I didn't let it bother me. As far as I could tell, she and my dad were getting along quite alright. Then these talks became more frequent, and that started to really get at me.

Is that what marriage does? It invites these awful ideas? I can understand some I guess, about where these words might be coming from. All those years of marriage are bound to leave some hurts and problems. It's normal I guess to feel tired from a relationship. But to get too tired to leave it all?

It's frightening. It scares me to think about my own future. I'm bound to get married somewhere in the future. Will I experience the same pains that would lead me to think about abandoning my better half?

I hope not.

DIY Photobooth :)

Another DIY weekend! Here's an idea, make your own photobooth! All you need is a blank wall, a tripod and a camera. We stuck paper cutouts of flowers and butterflies to our wall to dress it up a little. It was for our YWD Friendship General Meeting. And the props are great fun to make! Huge smileys, little headpieces, mustaches, speech bubbles, and whatnot. Add some text and a white border on photoshop and you'll never tell the pictures were all DIY :-)

Vintage

I've just been to Fossil's blog and looky what I've found. A ton of vintage and a whole lot more!

I especially liked this! Pretty timely. I was, well, still am -- in the process of making my own little sketch book. Will be posting about that later when I finish :-)