Trendy Office Accessories

This year for my sister Kyra's birthday, my other sister, Kahly, and I decided to give her a whole bunch of hand made office accessories.  We knew we wanted the main present to be a laptop case (since Kyra had been drooling over the other ones we made) and then we had a lot of fun blog surfing for additional gift ideas.  Delving into the world of Mod Podge was an absolute must. The question was where to start? And equally important, where to stop?  Once you start Mod Podging it's almost impossible to quit.

So here's the breakdown of what we settled on:

• The laptop case from Sew Mama Sew
• The Mod Podge clips from Make It and Love It
• The Mod Podge notebooks from Make It and Love It
• The keyboard and mouse slugs (no tutorial used, wahoo for us!)
• The mouse pad makeover from Make It and Love It

We had one heck of a time picking out just the right color scheme and finding coordinating fabrics to match.  We spent THREE hours in JoAnn Fabric one Friday night, trying to buy fabric.  It's so hard to pick out colors for someone else, especially when you know they'll be using the things you make them on a daily basis.  It was touch and go at points during that evening.  At one point we were so hungry and so cranky that Kahly went outside the store and bought a box of Girl Scout cookies.  We ate the entire box right there in the store.  Once on a complete sugar high, we were able to find the right fabrics and high tale it out of there.  What an adventure, torture, fun time, interesting experience. :)

Laptop case, front and back.  We pieced together the exterior panels with an espresso brown zebra print and did the flannel lining out of a pale pink.  Obviously our color palette we settled on was pink and brown.

Aren't these clippies the cutest thing ever?  Kahly and I will be making some of these (and some of the slugs and mouse pads) for ourselves next. 

 The slugs were made out of the same pink flannel from the laptop case and filled with flax seeds so that they can be warmed up in the microwave.  We thought this was a nice touch for Kyra, since she's ALWAYS freezing cold at work.

And finally the notebooks.  We used the Microsoft company wide notebooks for this project which Kyra got a kick out of. 

Most of the projects, with the exception of the laptop case, were easy and fun to do.  Mod Podge is the best stuff ever invented and has become my new best friend.  The accessories were a bit hit and Kyra's on her way to having the most trendy and cute office in all of So. Cal.  Love you Kyra, Happy Birthday!

Laptop Sleeves

A couple of weeks ago my sister Kahly asked me if I would do her a favor and help her make some laptop sleeves for her and her boyfriend Jason.  I'm always up for something new in the sewing world, so I did some research on tutorials out there and found this one on Sew Mama Sew.  It looked a bit tricky since I don't have a walking foot (and the fabric would get really thick towards the end of the project), but I figured we'd give it a try anyway.
 
They both turned out awesome!  It was so fun to go shopping at the fabric store with Kahly and find the perfect "look" for their bags.  We spent all Saturday night cutting, pinning and sewing and finished Jason's bag at about 12:15 am.  Once you get going you just can't stop!  And then Kahly came back over tonight to finish up hers, which only took a couple of hours since all the prep work had been done Saturday.  It was a strange feeling to be teaching her how to sew, when I myself have only been doing it for 3 months. Student turned teacher prematurely! 

I love trying something new and having such great success at it.  And I get to add laptop sleeves to my sewing repertoire now!  Actually, the concept could be extended to any type of electronic device, big or small, that you wanted to protect.  It's a great multipurpose kind of pattern.

She'll be showing it off at work tomorrow and we'll see what kind of response it gets.  My guess is that they'll be asking her to make them one too. :)

Kahly's Fabric (it has a cream and olive green undertone that you can't see in the pictueres)

Jason's Fabric (Seahawks colors)

 

They turned out so great!  And I love the fabric that we chose for Kahly.  I want an arm chair or pillow made out of it now. :)

Wellness Bag

I made my Mom a Wellness Bag for Christmas. It included a Heat Therapy Bag, a Cold Therapy Bag and an Eye Pillow.  I put all three bags into a drawstring bag I made as well.  I partially used the tutorial from Sew, Mama, Sew! for the therapy bags, except that I didn't use rice or flax or any of the fillings that she recommended.

I did quite a bit of research on what the best fillings were to put into heat therapy bags and found this site to have the best information.  So I went with corn feed for the filling and I was very happy with how it turned out. I also added some dried rose petals, dried lavender and dried eucalyptus into the bags.  I avoided the essential oils based on the information the site above gave about potential hazzards when microwaving.

The hardest part about this project for me was stuffing the bags with the filler.  If I make more of these in the future I'm going to think that part through a little more and come up with a better method.  I had corn and dried flowers everywhere when I was done and it took way too long.

The "Ahh" Bag and the "BooBoo" bag both have washable covers, so you can see the inserts in the last picture below.  I made tags for each of the bags as well. If anyone ever wants the templates I can make them available.

What made this project kind of neat was that I used fabrics my Mom gave me that she had been hanging onto for years.  She bought them way back when and never found a use for them.  When she opened the gift she was so excited that I had put them to use.  I think I'm going to make some of the cold "BooBoo" bags for my kids when they get owies.  Much cleaner and easier to pull one of them out of the freezer instead of getting a ziplock bag of ice.