Re-Sizing and Dressing Up a Goodwill Sweater

I owe a huge hug of gratitude to Kathleen at Grosgrain Fabulous. She posted 30 days of sweater embellishments on her blog. In those tutorials she took the most ho-hum sweaters from Goodwill and turned them into Cinderella-worthy tops. 

Because of her inspiring transformations, I was able to re-vamp two sweaters for the Blissdom conference, saving my bank account some precious pennies. (I used the savings to buy two pairs of cute PJs. Apparently PJs are mandatory after conference hours.)

And now, on to the transformation!

I started by resizing the sweater per Kathleen's tutorial HERE.

Put the sweater on inside out and pin excess starting under the arm and ending at the hip.

 

Carefully (very carefully unless you want to become a pin cushion) remove the sweater. Stitch along the pinned line. 

Put the sweater back on to check the fit. 

If it looks good, go ahead and trim off the excess. (This reminds me of a nip and tuck surgery. {Sigh} If only trimming fat was this easy.)

Next, grab some of those adorable felt roses we made the other day. (Rose tutorial HERE)  Lay them onto the sweater and play with the placements.

When you are happy with the roses, pin them on with safety pins.

Sew on the roses with needle and thread.
And remove the safety pin once the rose is secure.

That's it. Beautiful new cardigan from a $3 Goodwill sweater!

I added a knit belt that I sewed some roses and a hook and eye clasp on.

Poor Buddy (aka Pretty Handy Dog), he's not so sure about me leaving for Blissdom tomorrow.

Check out some more Goodwill and thrift store fashionista outfits at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam.

Ballard Pear Knockoffs

Have you seen these deliciously rustic pears from Ballard Designs?

They are really adorable until you see the price tag: $49 each! What?! Obviously I'm not the only one who thinks that price is outrageous, because when I googled "Ballard Pear" to find the above photo for you, I stumbled across Thrifty Decor Chic's own version of the pear.

As fate would have it, I happened to come across a pear that I found at my local Goodwill a few weeks ago. I bought this pear and gourd. They were quite an ugly pair (hee, hee.)

But, the price was irresistible at $2.49 a piece.

I started by sanding the surface of the pear and gourd lightly.

Then I sprayed them with white primer.

And finished them off with Rustoleum's Heirloom White Satin finish.

And that is how they sat for several weeks while I tried to decide what to do to them next. Until I happened upon those adorable pears in the recent Ballard Designs catalog. Then I knew exactly what to do with my pear and gourd.

Starting with the gourd, I mixed some acrylic paint, using raw sienna (dark brown), burnt sienna (red brown) and yellow ochre until I had a nice golden brown antiquing color. After pouring out a small circle of acrylic matte medium (you can use glazing medium or modge podge if you like), I used a coarse fan brush to dip my brush in the medium and the paint, creating instant custom tinted glaze!

Working in small areas, I began painting on the glaze dry brush style (wipe off almost all the paint so you see streaks). My strokes were in random directions and brushing back and forth a few times to blend the color out (being careful to leave the brush strokes for visual interest.)

I also used a rag to dab around the gourd until I liked the results. Once the gourd was painted I used some raw sienna on a smaller brush to paint the stem.

For the pear, I squeezed out some acrylic paint in dark green, off white, and a creamy yellow. I mixed them until I got a nice apple green color. I purposely wanted a vibrant color because I knew they would lose some punch after adding the brown antiquing glaze.

 

To paint the pear's leaf, I used a dark brown (raw sienna) and a yellow ochre for the highlights. Acrylic paint is really forgiving because if you don't like it you can paint over it. The leaf consists of about four layers of playing and blending before I got the look I liked.

After the green had dried, I used the same technique with the fan brush in the brown glaze until the whole pear was covered.

I couldn't be happier with the results! $5 was my total cost. I saved myself about $95 for two decor items (not to mention shipping costs.) Luckily, I already had the paints and brushes on hand.

Did you see that ladder above? Yes, it is the other half of this ladder! I'm still working on it and will show you the results when I'm done.

The project today is another one of the T-shirt Diaries Stashbusting September Challenge projects. You can see more bloggers who are taking Robin's challenge here or here.

And, so you want to see more Ballard Design knockoffs? Check them out here: