DIY Denim Cutoffs, with Tips for Getting Bloodstains out of Clothes

Warning: if period talk makes you uncomfortable, turn back now.  I have 298 non-period related posts that you might enjoy more.  Also, there are pictures of bloodstained clothes, so if the sight of (dried) blood bothers you, this is not the post for you.

Warning: The bloodstain removal tips are intended to remove visible blood from periods and minor accidents like scraped knees.  It is not intended to be a method to remove all traces of DNA from clothing.  If you have murdered someone and are looking for ways to get their blood out of your clothes, leave this page and turn yourself into the police immediately.

     I was initially hesitant to write this post because I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that even though I've been  dealing with periods for fifteen years, I still bleed through from time to time.  This most recent incident was particularly messy because it began as I was about to teach a two hour lab section, so I didn't have the opportunity to clean up until I was back at home.  Usually I'll throw a little OxyClean into the wash and it'll come right out, but this time it didn't work.  I didn't bother to check them until the jeans were already dry because OxyClean is usually effective, and by then it was too late.  I had set-in bloodstains not just on the crotch of my jeans, but also by the knee?

     I'd been wanting to try making rainbow cutoffs, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.  I cut the legs off my jeans to make them into cutoffs.  I know you can sand them and whatnot to make them fray more and give them more of a worn look, but I figured that if I wear them a few times, they'll eventually fray on their own, so I literally just cut the legs off and wound up with this:

     My next step was bleaching the shorts.  I put them in some water and Brian threw in some bleach.  Bleach is a harsh base which can damage fabrics and Brian was insistent that we err on the side of caution, so we started out with only two capfuls of bleach mixed in with the water.  We let the shorts sit and nothing happened.  We added more bleach and a little more, eventually reaching a concentration of maybe 1 part bleach to 3 or 4 parts water.  I let that sit for half an hour.  I still wasn't seeing any changes, but I decided to put them through the wash to see if maybe the washing process would remove some of the color.  The dye did not come out, but the bloodstain did, leaving me with a nice pair of denim cutoffs.

Bloodstain Removal Tools

*Hydrogen peroxide - works well for fresh bloodstains.  Put stained clothes in a tub of cold water (hot water helps set the stains) and add a few capfuls of hydrogen peroxide.  Alternately, you could put the clothes in the wash and throw a little peroxide in with them.

*OxyClean - works well for fresh bloodstains.  The active ingredient in OxyClean is hydrogen peroxide, but I've had better luck removing stains with OxyClean than with hydrogen peroxide on its own.  Add some to the wash and your clothes will most likely come out clean, as long as the blood is fresh and there isn't too much of it.

*Bleach - works for set in stains.  Bleach really should be used as a last resort because of the potential it has to damage your clothes.  Start out using only a small concentration of bleach, probably no more than 1 part bleach to 4 parts water.  Let set for half an hour and then wash immediately.  Denim is a fairly rugged material, so if you're cleaning something less robust, start with even more dilute concentrations of bleach and keep them in the bleach water for an even shorter amount of time.  No matter how cautious you are, you are risking bleaching out the fabric and perhaps even damaging the fibers of the item, so be aware of that.

DIY Fringed Crop Top

     Wanting something new to wear this summer?  Look no further than your wardrobe.  With a little time and effort, you can transform existing clothes that have become worn or damaged (the hem of this shirt had unraveled and the bottom of the shirt had gotten stretched out) into something that you'll want to wear.

Materials:
*Shirt that you want to turn into a crop top
*Scissors
*Metallic marker or chalk

Directions:
*Cut off the bottom hem of the shirt.  If you know you want relatively short fringes, you can cut off a bit more of the bottom of the shirt too, but if you're not sure you can always keep the length at the outset and crop it more later.

*Put on the shirt inside out and draw a line going across the shirt marking where you want the fringes to end.

*Cut the lower portion of the fabric into thin, vertical strips.

*Knot neighboring strips together in pairs, going all the way around the shirt.

*Knot neighboring strips in pairs, tying together neighbors that you did not tie together the previous time.

*Trim fringes to desired length, if necessary.

Morse Code Earrings

     These asymmetric earrings make a statement - literally!  I used the seed beads to denote the dots and the tube-shaped beads for the dashes.  The big beads at the center of each earring are also dots, made larger to distinguish them as a new letter.  See if you can figure out what these ones say (there's a typo in the first earring; there should be one fewer dots in the first letter), and have fun coding your own jewelry.

Materials:

*Two different types of beads, one to denote dots and the other dashes

*Head pins

*Ear wires

*Round nosed pliers

*Needle nosed pliers

*Wire cutters

Directions:

*Pick a short message to encode.  Each of the earrings I made spells out one three-letter word.

*Translate your message into Morse code.

*Add beads to a head pin to spell out your message.  If you want your message to read vertically from top to bottom, you'll have to put the beads on in the reverse order in which you would read them.  For example, if your message ends with the letter "A," which is dot dash, you'll want to put the dash bead on first and then the dot.

*Cut off all but about 1/4" of excess pin.  Curl the tops of the head pins using round nosed pliers and clamp onto the ear wires using needle nosed pliers.

DIY Vanilla Lip Balm

     This lip balm is fast and easy to make and requires only three ingredients: coconut oil, vanilla extract, and beeswax (you could probably also use a different type of wax if you want to make it vegan).

Materials:
*Coconut oil
*Beeswax
*Vanilla extract
*Clean, empty makeup container
*Tablespoon measure
*Glass measuring cup
*Spoon

Directions:
*Combine 3 tbsp of beeswax and 5 tbsp of coconut oil in a glass measuring cup.
*Place measuring cup in the microwave and set for 2 minutes.  Every 30 seconds, take the cup out and mix it.  By the end of the 2 minutes, the wax and oil should be completely liquefied, although depending on the power of your microwave, this may or may not be the case.  If not, continue melting and mixing in 30 second increments until it is completely liquefied.
*Add a small amount of vanilla extract (I used 2 "splashes" from the rather wide necked container) to the measuring cup and mix.  The vanilla extract won't want to mix completely with the oil and wax, so it will form these little brown bubbles.  The more you mix, the smaller they'll become and the more uniformly they will be distributed.
*Pour the mixture into clean, empty makeup containers and let harden.

Quick and Easy Card Scrapbook

     For me, cards have long posed a storage challenge.  If you've been following my blog for some time, you've probably seen my various card scrapbooking attempts.  Each one has its charm, but I needed something fast and easy that would work for oversized and musical cards.  I have some antique family photo albums on which my ancestors glued photos to black paper and I decided to use the same idea here.

Materials:
*Cardstock in a color of your choice
*All purpose adhesive
*3-ring binder
*3-hole punch
*Cards

Directions:
*Take a sheet of cardstock and punch one of the long edges so that it will fit into your binder.
*Glue on cards and other mementos.  My dad rarely signs his cards, so I included envelope pieces as well on many of the pages.
*If you have cards that you can't glue down or don't want to glue down, stick them in the pockets of the binder.

Mason Jar Pencil Holder

     Okay, so I don't know if this technically counts as a Mason jar.  It's a Zhena's tea jar, but you could craft a similar container from a Mason jar, albeit without the nice little pencil sharpener attachment (which is where the tea's wooden measuring spoon was stored).  That loop where I have my pencil sharpener also works well as a space to set the colored pencil you're working with if you want to put it down for a second.

Materials:
*Zhena's tea jar (or other glass jar)
*Jump ring
*Pencil sharpener with loop at the end
*Two pairs of pliers

Directions:
*Open up the jump ring and loop it through both the loop on the tea container and the loop on the pencil sharpener.  Close the jump ring.
*Add some pencils.  That's it!

Mini Easter Basket

     Transform an old medicine cup into an adorable mini basket.

Materials:
*Plastic medicine cup
*Twine
*All purpose adhesive
*Green tissue paper
*Mini foam eggs
*Ribbon rose
*Scissors

Directions:
*Cut three lengths of twine long enough that they could reach from the bottom of the medicine cup, loop up to form a handle, and reach down to the bottom on the other side.
*Braid the three pieces of twine together and then glue on to form the handle.
*Wrap twine around the medicine cup, gluing down as you go.  Let dry.
*Once you've finished gluing down the twine, embellish with a ribbon rose or other decoration of your choice.
*Wad up some paper (tissue paper would work fine, but you could also use scrap paper) and stuff it in the bottom of the medicine cup.
*Cut very thin strips of green tissue paper to create the Easter "grass."  Layer it atop the paper,
*Add a few teeny eggs and you're ready for your very own mini egg hunt.

Happy egg hunting!