Pinterest-Style Typography with Stencils

I love crafting and DIY stuff and always have. Ever since I was a little girl I've dreamed of having my own craft studio and still have every intention of having that when I have my own place. However, I usually don't have time to craft or am out of ideas for what to do. 

I recently got DIY Type: 50+ Typographic Stencils Perfect for Decorating, Crafting, Gifting courtesy of Blogging For Books, and I was very excited to try it out. 
Its style is pretty vintage, which is pretty popular among crafters and people on Pinterest. The stencils include the entire alphabet in large, capital letters, capital letters that are shorter and stubbier (but still vintage looking), and some little embellishments that one could use. 
I decided to paint a canvas with my initial, a "K," to see how it would look like, and I was pretty pleased with the finished product for the most part. 
The stencils are made out of cardboard, which makes them pretty good for tracing outlines and stuff, but when my paint got a little watery (partially my fault), the paint went right underneath the stencil. However, I was able to recover from that so it's all good!

I did a pretty simple design for now and hope to add more to it and really make the stencil shine. These stencils are perfect for the upcoming holiday season so I can't wait for that! My only other criticism with this book is the variety of stencils. I think there should've been lowercase letters, script letters, or something more with the variety of the stencils. Other than that, I approve and recommend this book for all the crafters out there! 
Disclosure: I received this book courtesy of Blogging for Books. All opinions are my own.

DIY: Sugar Skull

Halloween is almost here, and while I hate the scary parts of it, I love that this time of year you are able to turn yourself into any character you could imagine and alter the way you look to fit that character. I love doing that with makeup and face paint. My freshman year, I was Mulan, my sophomore year, I was Pocahontas, and this year I am hoping to be Rapunzel post-haircut. But until Halloween actually arrives, I decided to play around with some face paint and this is what I came up with. 

Sugar skulls have become very popular for makeup artists and others who are proud of their Hispanic culture to celebrate the Day of the Dead. These do not happen in the Philippines, but Filipinos do do something similar where they spend time with their deceased relatives on what is called All Souls Day. My family even has wifi in the home where my family is buried at in the cemetery!

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It's almost 1am and I am wide awake. So what do I decide to do? I tell myself I'm going to try painting myself into a sugar skull from Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. I've seen the look recreated many times and I was hesitant to do this for that reason, but I thought to myself that I should just try it out anyway. What I painted on my face was completely spontaneous and I had no previous idea of a design planned out beforehand. 

If you're interested in recreating this look, keep reading!

DIY: Denim Shorts from Dad Jeans

Summer is upon us, and for girls, that means one thing: less clothing.

I don't mean that in a dirty or mean way or anything, but if you think about it, it's true. Shorter shorts, shorter sleeves, even your shoes show more skin (aka sandals haha).

Something that has always been a classic is the denim short. The style of denim shorts that are most commonly worn (and wanted) by women/girls are cut-off shorts, otherwise known as Daisy Dukes. If you didn't know already, Daisy Dukes are basically any kind of cut-off shorts, usually made from jeans.

That brings me to today's DIY: Denim Shorts from Dad Jeans!

My dad is very small, standing only at 5'3", so naturally that would mean that he has a small body frame as well. I was looking through his clothes one day (I wear some of my dad's clothes) and stumbled upon an old pair of Levi's. He said he didn't wear them anymore so I took them for myself to turn into shorts after seeing if they fit me!

Tip #1: So if you want to create cut-offs like these, it's best to start with a pair of old jeans, whether they were your parents' jeans or you found them at a thrift store. You don't want to go out and buy a new pair of pants only to ruin them. That's a waste of money, and if you get the jeans used, there's always that sense of vintage flair that everyone is looking for these days.

Gong Hey Fat Choy!

Today is the start of Chinese New Year! As the president of my school's Asian/Pacific-Islander Club, we decided to celebrate it a few days ago by throwing a New Year's party! I don't have any good quality pictures from the event, but with our limited budget we had to be creative with it!

I couldn't help but post with this Chinese baby decoration I bought at the local Asian market!

Most of this simple Chinese New Year's Eve party that we had involved lots of DIY things--one of them was using this wooden board painted with chalkboard paint to create a backdrop for our photobooth! I wrote Happy New Year in Chinese characters, the spelled out version of it in Cantonese, and the old Chinese version of the word "horse" for year of the Horse! To add more embellishment to the board, I doodled a bit and drew some Chinese coins as well.

We even made Chinese lanterns out of scrapbooking and construction paper! I will definitely keep this simple and easy DIY in mind for future events! I got the idea from Pinterest, but my friend and I learned how to make them through an Australian craft site for kids! 

This post is shorter than my usual posts, but I just wanted to give a short update on my life and say Happy Lunar New Year, year of the horse!