Hello, I blog!
I share all my sporadic and toilet thoughts in here, because I am random like that.
Hair ye, hair ye!
I think it is ridiculous that I hadn’t written a word for a month. Things have been pretty interesting offline, yet I can’t quite find the time to sit down to pen it down properly. There are loads of little knick-knacks I’ve been wanting to photograph as well but couldn’t find the time. Oh well. Soon, I guess.
I’ve recently acquired a short, boyish haircut. For months, I’ve been mulling over it. Until I eventually felt “enough thinking, some action please”, and got it all chopped off.
Mirror reflection in the lift.
It isn’t very obvious in this photo, but my hair is heavily layered – especially at the back. I’m really fond of it and my head feels so much lighter now. My only gripe is that I can’t tie a decent ponytail with it. (And people who know me would be fully aware that a ponytail is my trademark ‘do.)
Needless to say, mum wasn’t impressed about how her already tomboyish daughter is looking even more tomboyish now. (Which was my intention. (;)
How was how my hair looked before.
Captured, pre-haircut.
Still pretty much undecided whether it looks better before or after, although it doesn’t matter anyway. What’s done is done. I have short hair now. Wheeeee! Better embrace it for now, because my hair grows at an exponential rate and it would no longer look like this in about a month or so.
Tee-painting in progress
I’ve been wanting to do this since forever but have been holding out for years. One, because I had little or no faith in my painting abilities – especially when it comes to fabrics. Two, I didn’t have any good-quality plain tees on hand and was too lazy to head out to source for one.
So, when a plain white tee (of very decent cotton quality) landed on my lap (thanks to the sample t-shirt sourcing done by my work company a coupla’ months ago), it was a painting opportunity screaming for my attention.
Additionally, when I spotted a giant ‘Sales!’ banner at Spotlight – Singapore’s largest fabric and craft store – the opportunity began screaming even louder. I managed to get DYLON black fabric paint at 20% off. Whee.
I began by manually drawing out letters using a blunt pencil. (Yes, manually. No stencils were involved here because I had none. I measured the dimensions of the tee like crazy to ascertain where exactly I wanted the letters and that they were positioned symmetrically. I’m that anal. :P)
Drawing out the letters.
If you intend to do a similar tee but is too lazy to draw out the letters manually, you can create your own stencils by printing out letters on light cardboard and cutting them out.
And yeah, I know your eyes are boggling right now at the choice of letters on the t-shirt. I’ve been wanting a t-shirt with “WTF” printed on it since forever and I can’t seem to find them anywhere. So I decided to make my own.
Painting in the letters with fabric paint.
Following which, I filled in the letters with a soft brush dipped in the fabric paint. Because I wasn’t using stencils, this was pretty tricky especially when it came to ensuring the edges of the letters were perfectly straight. (Well, they weren’t in the end. But the very slight jaggedness was not very noticeable unless you looked very closely.)
Thankfully, I had decently steady hands so the outcome turned out pretty well.
Leaving the tee out to dry.
I left the tee out to dry for approximately three hours. Actually, the required drying time was much less than that but I just wanted to be sure. (First time painting a t-shirt, remember? Plus, I was really worried I might screw up something – although everything was pretty smooth thus far.)
After drying, iron over the letters (to set the paint permanently) with an electric iron on the highest possible heat setting, and a cloth placed over the letters (no direct heat contact here – the last thing you’d want is a t-shirt on fire!). The instructions on the bottle of fabric paint called for 1-2 minutes, but I did this for 4-5 minutes. (Weeeell. Just wanted to be sure again.)
Thus, behold!
The end product!
Oops, pardon that magazine placed beneath the words. I wanted to separate the painted side from the back of the tee for a while more … just to be sure. (Yes, again. Hahaha.)
Now that the tee painting is complete, it’s time for the last crucial step – putting the tee through its first wash.
I really hope the fabric paint behaves the way it is expected to and stays on the t-shirt.
I do not want to end up with a blackish stained, pseudo tie-dyed shirt to account for the amount of (extremely anal) work I’d put in!
All the colours of the rainbow
So I got myself a box of wooden colour pencils from Daiso – not because I needed them, but purely because they looked so pretty.
Wooden colour pencils.
I usually consider myself a practical person. But it is on rare occasions like this one where I end up buying stuff that I don’t really need just so that I can admire them. And yeah, they are really awesome to photograph too. It helps that everything at Daiso is only 2 buckeroos apiece.
I bought got a plain silver metal tin (from the same place) so that I can store the colour pencils. The pencils actually came in a nondescript brown box, but I thought they would look much nicer in the tin. Uh, oops. There I go again.
Mmmmm.
I really should stop stepping into Daiso. I usually end up walking out with stuff I don’t need.
Many apologies for the recent silence! I’ve recently started full-time work and it’s been nothing short of hectic. But I’m loving it much and as a result, unwittingly transformed myself back to the workaholic I am pretty much well-known for being, just because I like what I’m doing. (;
I promise myself to write more, because we still need to escape once in a while, don’t we?
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