DIY Spiral Lanyard Ribbon Lei

For this year's graduation season, I wanted to try out a new ribbon lei type - the lanyard lei. Like most of the leis I've tried, this was also inspired by a lei from Sak's mom.

Now, I thought this would be easy, seeing as I've made plastic lanyard keychains every single summer camp as a kid (shoutout to Mt. Hermon!). This lei uses the spiral lanyard method exactly as you would with the plastic lanyard.

The only thing is - ribbon is a little more unwieldy than stiff plastic! And it tangles easily. So this took me like a week to finish :P

To start, unravel two entire spools of ribbon in the two colors you would like. (I used 1/4 inch 50 cent ribbon from Michaels, 10 yards per spool.) Fold each 10 yard ribbon in half, and knot both ribbons together, for a total of 4, 5 yard sections. Two of each color.

Now starting the chain is hard. There's really no easy way to do it, but just try your best! Take two of the same colored ribbon, and make loops in opposite directions.  Try to envision making a box.

Take the yellow ribbons and weave them over and under the blue loops, working in a diagonal direction.

Pull all ribbons to form your first "box".

Makes no sense, does it? Let me try with a diagram? If not, try youtube?

So if we have a box:

I'd fold ribbon 2 over to ribbon 3's position, and ribbon 3 over to ribbon 2's position.

two to three

three to two

Now take ribbon 4 and go over ribbon 2 and under ribbon 3 to get to position 1.

Then take ribbon 1, go over ribbon 3 and under ribbon 2 to get to position 4.

Pull all (loosely) to form the box.

Continue weaving the ribbons in diagonals until you run out of ribbon. It may take a while. Watch TV or something while working :P

But eventually a pattern will start to emerge!

And then you'll run out of ribbon and be finished!

Looks small though yeah?

No worries, because it stretches A TON.

This is a very durable lei as well, it can't be easily torn apart or anything.

The blue and yellow lei was for my uncle, who is now Dr. Uncle after having received his Phd from UC Davis! The red and black one was supposed to be for my San Diego grad cousin..but I didn't finish it in time for the ceremony T_T"  Maybe she will get her doctorate too. Then I'll be ready, haha.

(Want to make other ribbon leis? Check out the DIY Project tab for more!)

New Windows

For our very first major-home-improvement, we had our windows replaced.  All 19 of them!

The old windows were single-pane, cracked and warped and leaky.

Melted glass

Warped doors that wouldn't shut.

Cracks.

Anyway, we got three quotes, two which my dad facilitated and one that Sak did. I was too scared to meet with any contractors myself!  In the end we went with one that a friend had referred.  The cost was about $8.5k for 19 window retrofits, three of the windows being fairly large sized.

What's a retrofit?  I didn't know either. But apparently they cut the old window out, and insert a new window over the old framing. This method is about half the cost of a full re-framed window, and is pretty much just as good as a completely re-done window.  We chose retrofits since our exterior is stucco, and a new frame would have involved cutting and re-patching.  You can never perfectly re-patch stucco!

The drawbacks to retrofits is that you end up losing some window sill space, as well as some glass size since there's a lot of vinyl siding to cover up the old frame.

Old window:

New window (siding not finished yet):

See the gaps where the window fits into the old frame?

They put expanding foam in the cracks!

Kinda creepy looking.

And then the next day they finished with the siding.

Final window:

Bathroom window, some window sill room lost, but enough space for small trinkets still :)

Front window, I chose to have some lines in it for curbside visual interest:

Anyway, I really love the new windows! It makes the house SO MUCH quieter. Can't say I miss the crazy blue jay screeching or never-ending neighborhood construction noises.  I'm not sure how much it effects the heating/cooling of the house since it's been fairly normal weather lately, but we'll see once winter comes!

I also love how easy it is to open and close windows now.  Before it was nearly impossible!

Now, I just need to figure out window treatments. Two years later and I still don't know what to do with them. >.>"

White Mage Casual Cosplay

Almost done with these Fanime posts, promise ;)

For our second, much more casual cosplay, we dressed as white mages.

(source)

Easy, yeah? Just white clothes and red triangles!

I used this tutorial to turn a t-shirt into a bolero.

Simply cut the shirt open down the front, cut off the collar and sew the edges into a tube. Insert a ribbon and pull!

Neat, eh? Great for hiding the arm flab~

For triangles I took some red fabric scraps, used fray check on the edges, and fabric glued them to the shirt.

Not the greatest looking. Friend E used iron-on transfers for his and I think it came out better, but from far away you can't really tell.

To accessorize, my kupo felty hair clip (upper left),

and a necklace Sak made from two strands of beads (from Joanns) and a chocobo keychain I had.

That's it! Super simple, a perfect last-minute casual cosplay.  And there were a ton of other white mages at the con, so I'm guessing a lot of people had the same idea!