Kitties
Camera Strap Cover Tutorial
August 8, 2011
I just registered for my fall classes and one of them is Intro to Photojournalism! Jeremy bought an entry level DSLR a year or so ago. I’m slowly learning my way around it and how to take some nice pictures, but why not have a professional train me instead? I’ve heard the first thing to do when you have a nice camera, to avoid looking like tommy tourist, is to get rid of the horrible name brand strap. You can buy them on etsy, really cute ones too, but why buy when you can create! Rather than admitting that I had a horrible weekend….again, I thought I’d occupy your attention with a quick tutorial on how I made mine.
Fabric:
Something durable is a must, I probably won’t actually wash it, but it will likely see it’s fair share of dirt and what not, so quilting cotton it was for me. You could do both sides the same fabric, but I decided to opt for something more comfortable on the neck. I happen to have bought some minky dot for another project that I have not yet done, but I know I have way more than I need. I thought the minky dot was going to be A LOT more difficult to work with than it actually was. I had heard stories of what a nightmare it was. I do have a trick to share with you, but we’ll get to that shortly!
Dimensions:
My strap is the standard that came on it. It has strapping that is 1.5” in width and 24” in length. I cut my fabric to 5”x25”. You could do it with much less, but I want easy construction and use.
Technique:
I started by taking my individual pieces, with right sides together, sewed up the long sides, with a ¼” seam. Then did the same with one of the short ends and flipped right side out. To avoid seeing a seam with the finished product I made my seam be in the middle of one of the sides. I folded the other short side, tucking the raw ends inside, and sewed up the end, repeating the same seam on the other end, so they match.
Start all over and do the exact same thing with the other fabric.
Matching the two pieces up along all four sides sew the long sides together, leaving the short sides open (that’s where the strap will go through). I sewed mine 1/8” in, depending on how much bigger than your strap you cut it will determine how much of a seam to make. You don’t want to make it much better than the strap because then it will move around and that’s no fun.
You can see the minky dot peeking out from underneath the cotton.
You can use less fabric, iron a seam on each side of each fabric and sew the two together, the same as the other. I decided not to do this because I wanted it to be very slim against the existing strap with no extra bulk. The way I did mine leaves no seams to bunch or snag the strap, just makes it much easier.
The hardest part of making this was getting my strap through! On side is strapping and the other is a rubbery texture so it doesn’t slide around your neck. I pushed mine halfway down then fished up and caught it from the other side. If you have a better technique I’d love to know!
My one tip with working with the minky dot (or any fleecy type of material) is to put something between the feed dogs and the fabric, if not, it doesn’t flow through nicely. I used a piece of paper, not advisable, it was thick and hard to pull off. I suggest using parchment or something else thin and easy to rip because once your done you just rip it from the seam and you have a nice neat seam and no hassle!
So that’s that and here is the finished product
Guinness decided to pose for me, so I gave my new strap a whirl!
Now to either buy a purse and make a purse to turn into a camera bag. I’ll make a tute for that too!
I’ve purchased another cookbook and hopefully will actually do my series on it. It’s a cookbook entitled The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight & Eating Great by Pam Anderson. She has devoted several pages devoted to her struggle with weightloss and how she overcame. Like me, she decided to cut out dieting and just eat healthy. Any diet that cuts out a whole food group can’t be well rounded and not good for you! I’m excited about this cookbook, almost all the recipes sound delicious. Tuesday night I’ll be making Baked Fish with Oven Sautéed Tomatoes, Basil, and Garlic, sounds delish right? Check back Wednesday for my review and the recipe!
Posted in 
My office redo update
January 21, 2011
It’s been months in the works, but my home office is finally on its way! If you’ll reminisce with me I talked about starting my office redo in this post, way back on October 26, 2010. Since then I bought a desk and painted the room, both in this post. It’s been very slow going and I’m still not done, and I may never be done, there is always some cute to add or change, but I’m very happy so far!
So here is my before
And after
The desk is a goodwill find, nice sturdy desk, for only $25! I sanded, primed, painted and sealed it. I thought there was too much white, so I broke it up a bit. The brown is the same color as the walls, and the pink, well the pink is the same color as the bottle sitting on my desk. The bottle was a gift from Jeremy for Christmas and the paint really closely matched the fabric I have planned for the chandelier, which you can see in the corner in the after picture, the window treatments, chairs, if it involves fabric it will be one of 6 designs I found at hobby lobby, it’s brown with pink, green, blue, and yellow, maybe some other colors, but they are all coordinating fabrics, which I love!
The Chandelier will be another post, I have all the shade frames made, I’m too cheap to buy them, I might change my mind when I try to cover them, we shall see. Chandelier shades are CRAZY expensive. So far I’ve spent $46 on this office makeover, which includes the chandelier, shades and fabrics. Not bad, huh?
The lovely art you see on the wall was a Christmas gift from Jeremy. I love barbies, you can’t see my small collection of them, so Jeremy painted me some watercolor barbies. They are all the same silhouette, different /colors/ethnicity blond, auburn, black, Hispanic, and Asian. I also have a Barbie puzzle he gave me last Christmas that I am working on putting together and then I’ll get that put up.
Oh, I almost forgot! Back to my desk….I thought to make my desk a little more personal I would monogram it, and again break up some of the white. It’s not really on there yet, just a print out stuck on there. What do you think? Too much? Tacky? Let me know!
Until tomorrow, I have several projects and recipes to share that I just haven’t as of yet! I will get better with blogging, I promise, 2 in one week, that’s pretty good! With that I’ll leave you with some cute photos of my silly animals
Guinness and Roosevelt cuddling in a box, how adorable? A box is all the toy they need
Malcolm (on the bed) and Molly napping one minute
The next they are both grooming themselves
Dogs are so weird, but cute!
Tags: Get to know my family
October 28, 2010
I have a crazy family, but they are the best and I wouldn’t replace them with anyone else! I talk about them a lot so I’m going to take this post to introduce you to them.
The first and really the most important is my darling husband, Jeremy, whom I will likely refer to as the Mister or Mr. Martha, I haven’t decided which yet. I’m not worried about someone stalking us, just more so for future readers who won’t know him by his name! We met at Barnes and Noble and bonded over frappuccinos and our desire to see Sweeney Todd, which had just come out in theaters. Our relationship wasn’t perfect, we hit a few bumps in the road, but I think that just pulled us closer and even more in love. We were married on October 8 of this year at an amazing wedding with all of our close friends and family. You can see the recap in my very first post with tons of pictures!
Jeremy is an ‘instructional staff’ member, I believe, at our local university, Western Kentucky (Go Topps!). He teaches a book club for Literacy 199, which is a class for students who didn’t score high enough on their ACT. He also runs the literacy lab, which is a place for these students to go when they need help. He loves his job so much, I love that he’s happy but he works really long days half the week, and I just miss having him around the house.
Atlanta Botanical Gardens
Snorkeling in Rivera Maya
Playing in the snow
Best day ever - Our wedding
We are the proud parents of 2 puppies and 2 kitties. I’ll start with our first and move on to our new addition.
I’m allergic…to basically everything that moves. Outside is basically off limits to me while everything is blooming and pretty. Worst of all I’m allergic to anything with fur. I’ve always had a soft spot for furry critters though, they’re so helpless most of the time! We have a store here called Repets, it’s a store front, they sell all kinds of pet supplies, but they also have dogs and cats for adoption. When we’re in the area of the shop we like to stop by and see what they have. We’d been talking about getting an animal but we weren’t really to the point where we were going out to actively look for a cutie. New years ever we were in the area of Repets and had to stop and we found two of the cutest little kitties and my heart just melted and I had to have one, or maybe both. We asked about getting the kitties, they have a buy one get one for $5 special on cats, so why not get 2? They were 4 and 6 months old, the 4 month old was chocolate brown with big pointy ears, such a sweetie and the 6 month old was black with white spots, a half pink half black nose with half black half white whiskers, he was so cute! We were told they had been there basically their entire lives. The chocolate brown’s mother would not nurse him so he moved to the black and white one’s mother and she nursed him like her own. They were basically brothers, and all alone, all their other brothers and sisters had been adopted and they were left in this crate to await a home. We inquired about adopting them and were sadly informed that the chocolate brown one had just had adoption papers drawn up on him by that couple over there, as she pointed. They were not happy that there was a wait period, they wanted the cat right then. We were disappointed but went about the process of adopting the black and white one. We went and bought all the necessities and 2 days later they called and told us to pick up our kitty. We went and picked him up and the adorable chocolate kitty was still there. We took our cat and told them that if the other couple didn’t want him we did and went home to play with our new bundle of sass. We hadn’t even pulled into our driveway when the store called and said the other couple decided against getting the kitty and told us to come get him. I stayed home with our kitty while the Mister went to pick up the other. Apparently the other couple only wanted him that day and changed their minds! All the better for us! The staff said they really wanted us to take both of them, so I wonder if they fudged something so they couldn’t have him. After observing them for a while we decided the black and white one was Roosevelt and the chocolate one was Hemmingway. Roosevelt was very cat like, I like to call him uppity, he’s better than the rest of us. Hemmingway was very aloof and playful but as the days went by he became a little heathen who jumps all over the furniture and attacks Roosevelt, but all in a playful way. We decided a few weeks after we got them that he was not a Hemmingway he was more a Guinness and he became so. He’s never changed, still all over our furniture, and crazy. He’ll attack your leg for no reason whatsoever. He often does Matrix moves on the walls. He’s our little puppy kitty who likes to chase his tail and fetch and lick your face. Roosevelt is indeed still uppity, he only likes to be held or really even looked at on his own terms, he’s quite mean and often gets drenched with water because he doesn’t know how to control his claws.
Roosevelt
Roosevelt napping
Roosevelt's favorite spot
Napping Guinness
His bunny ears for easter, never wore them but liked napping with them!
Guinness's favorite spot - the washing machine
Guinness in his element - Crazy!
A few months later we decided we needed a puppy addition and looked to petfinder to find our perfect dog. It didn’t take long, we found a beautiful Shiba Inu who was rescued from a hoarder situation in a neighboring county. She was one of hundreds of animals kept in a one room school house. The majority, including her, had mange and horribly malnourished. She had been at the humane society for several months to become healthy, she was finally ready adopt, but she’s such a sweetie and so good natured they didn’t want to let her go. The day we picked her up was a bittersweet day for all the humane society workers, but we promised to send pictures and updates and that made them all happy. She’s very damaged but she’s so good natured and loving that everyone who mets her instantly falls in love with this precious face. The Mister really wanted to call her Molly and the name was very fitting. Molly’s teeth were in such bad shape they guessed her age to be 4 years old, but she is so fragile and arthritic that we think she is older than that.
Molly Sue
Molly in her new home, with her new brothers
The last addition was another surprise. We went to an awards banquet held by the Mister’s then employer and sat with his good professional acquaintance, I’ll call her Nita. Nita was being recognized and brought her family to enjoy the banquet as well. Nita’s daughter is a veterinarian in another state and fosters several animals until homes can be found. Some how before we left the banquet we had another puppy, the vet had had this puppy for several month, couldn’t keep him, but grew to love him very much, so to let him go to a friend who could keep in contact made her very happy. We wanted to keep him in the M name family with Molly, and brainstormed until we came up with Malcolm, and he just seems like a Malcolm to us! What a handsome little dummy, he’s coming up on his 1st birthday!
Malcolm's first bath
Malcolm all handsom
