DIY Graphic Tee

blah blah blah diy graphic tee | popcosmo

What's one item I could wear with everything? A graphic tee... every time I walk into J.Crew I want another one! But they are breaking the bank, so I turned to my trusty Cricut Explore, which had been getting dusty while we moved and I was away this summer. It's definitely time to start playing with it again since it is so versatile and makes the most complicated craft ridiculously easy! The best part? That's my handwriting. Mhmm. I officially have the coolest shirt around town - my own DIY graphic tee.

tee: Gap | necklace: Ela Design Studio | sunnies: Ray-Ban

Supplies: T-shirt Cricut Iron-on Cricut Iron Ironing board Tea Towel or t-shirt

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Feel free to use our .png file below! Then we can be twinsies with the same shirt ;)

Directions: 1. Cut Cricut Iron-On a little larger than the words you are printing and place it shiny side down on mat. Load into the Cricut and follow directions. 2. Be sure to check the box for "Iron On" so that your words will be backward. (This will make sure that when you actually iron on it will be in the right direction) 3. Peel the extra Iron-On material off of the transfer sheet and make sure that no little "extras" are still on your design. 4. Center the design on your shirt and iron onto shirt with a tea towel in between the iron and the Iron-On material. 5. Sit back and admire... then wear what's sure to become your DIY favorite graphic tee and rake in the compliments.

cute graphic tee

DIY graphic tees

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Disclosure:  We are members of the Cricut Blogger Network and received product in exchange for review but as usual all opinions are 100% our own. 

Try this T-shirt Tie Dye

One of our favorite summer projects is tie-dying and as much as we love tie-dye, you know we like to keep it simple... which is why we are such huge fans of Tulip One-Step Tie-Dyes and have been using them for years for all of our projects (see tie-dye shorts and tie-dye beach sheet). We were ready to jump on the Tie Dye Your Summer bandwagon and once again turned to Tulip because they come with bottles that you simply fill with water and you're ready to go. Even gloves come in the box, plus some ideas. All you need is something to tie-dye and a cool idea!

Striped T-Shirt Tie Dye Prep 1. lay t-shirt flat and get rid of wrinkles 2. pleat the shirt from top to bottom (you can fold it in the middle if it's easier to handle it) 3. fold sleeves in last, pleating them as well, and tucking them under 4. you should have a flat pleated shirt 5. wrap rubber bands around at intervals, making sure the pleats stay intact 6. your t-shirt should look like a centipede when ready to tie-dye

Dotty T-Shirt Tie Dye Prep 1. lay t-shirt flat 2. pinch sections of the t-shirt and wrap the rubber band tightly around. The larger the piece sticking out the top, the larger your circles will be and the more rubber bands you use, the bigger your white space around the circle will be. You could pinch both front and back, but we pinched the front and back together (i.e., the back of the shirt was in the rubber bands you see) and it looked fantastic while saved a bunch of steps.

Once you have your shirt(s) ready, wet them thoroughly. You could definitely do this step first, but we found it was easier to work with dry shirts.

Gather the tie-dye supplies  - most of which will be in your Tulip One-Step Tie-dye kit + protection for whatever area you will be tie-dying in. We suggest tie-dying in the grass, if you can, since the area will be stained.

Add water to the color bottles you choose and you are ready to tie-dye! It couldn't be more simple, then add color to your shirts directly from the bottle.

Once the color has been applied, place them in a bag for 6 or more hours (we left ours in the bag overnight) because we're lazy like that.

Remove the shirts from the bags and rinse them in cold water until the water runs clear. It takes a while, but once the color is out, it's gone and your tee is colorfast. Follow the instructions for washing and drying and then enjoy your new shirts.

Voilà, one old tee that was stained turned into a new tee that looks amazingly cool and a new tee that looks much better than plain white! We might cut the neckline on the blue tie-dye t-shirt, but we really love how it turned out.

Follow I Love To Create for some fab & fun creative inspiration on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and their Blog. Perfect boredom busters! Get creating!

What are you thinking about tie-dying?

xo ~kim & chloe

 Thank you ILTC and Blueprint Social for sponsoring this post. All opinions are our own, as usual! 

Free Downloadable Binder Covers

One of our all time most popular posts is our “Decorating Notebooks” post from a year ago. We thought that, since it’s still crazy popular, we should bring it back with better and bolder designs. I decided to create free downloadable binder covers for y’all and I hope you love them as much as I do. I can’t wait to use them this year for school! These covers can be inserted into any binder with a clear pocket on the cover.

 I’m planning on hopefully coming up with other designs, so if you aren’t head over heels with this set then be on the look out for different styles! Here’s how to create your own: 1.Click the link that says "download" and then download the "blank canvases” to your desktop 2.Upload them into Word, Pages, Photoshop, etc. 3.Use your favorite font to write your class name on the white part of the cover. (I used Antonio from Font Squirrel!) 4. Print!

click here to download pink + blue + navy binder cover

click here to download pink + blue + yellow binder cover

click here to download pink + pink + pink binder cover

Really! It’s that simple. Let me know what other patterns and color combos you would like to see… polka dots? watercolor inspired stripes? pink and green? yellow and mint green?

If you do happen to use these free downloadable binder covers, we’d love to see how they look! Tag us on Instagram or Twitter (@popcosmo) and you just might be featured on a blog post!

xox Chloe

DIY Diamond Pinata

We are so excited about our DIY Diamond Piñata that we created. Although we always say our latest DIY is our favorite, we really think this one is since it's big, shiny, packs a statement, is shaped like a diamond, and... can be filled with candy. What more in life could you need than an enormous candy-filled diamond piñata? We happen to like our diamond pinata just for decoration in our office, but the possibilities are endless: cinco de mayo, wedding showers, weddings, bachelorette parties, sweet 16....

And who says a piñata has to be filled with candy?? Why not confetti or tiaras? Dream big, we say, dream big.

Our guest post on Best Friends for Frosting has the directions for our DIY Diamond Piñata. Go check it out!

Milk & Cookie Shot Recipe

The rage with cronuts by Dominique Ansel's Bakery are are being followed up by his hugely popular milk and cookie shot. Recreating his cookie shot is right up there at the top of our list of favorite recipe posts (along with how to make glitter lollipops and the best cake pops) we've brought y'all, because somebody (us!) had to taste test every single chocolate chip shot to make sure it was up to par. And we now have a signature dessert to bring to book club, Kentucky Derby parties, wedding showers, well… just about any party. And clean up is a snap: just down the milk and eat the shot glass. Couldn't be easier. Although there are a variety of recipes we tested, we're sharing our winner: the most simple one that didn't leak and didn't involve an extra layer of glaze to seal the cookie. (But there are glazes below.)

DIY Cookie Shot recipe on Popcosmo.com

Ingredients: chocolate chip cookie mix mini popover pan tinfoil corks shot glass flour milk

Directions: Follow the directions of your cookie mix or use your own chocolate chip cookie recipe. However, add flour to your mix after you have completely mixed yours together. We added between 1/4 - 1/2 cup to ours in order to create a dense cookie mix. Then mix in the flour.

Roll out some of the dough about 1/4" thick and use the shot glass to cut circles. Place the circles on the bottom of each popover mold.

Take pieces of dough and roll into a ball, then a log shape, then flatten and place in a the popover mold being certain to attach it to the circle on the bottom so that no milk will leak through the seam. You'll see that our cookie shots are rather thick. This is intentional! They are thick and dense (and yummy!) and why no glaze is required.

Take your cork and roll it in tinfoil, then place it in the center of each cookie shot. This will prevent the cookie shot from falling into the center.

Bake until brown, or like us - the maximum time suggested, and let cool.

If you would rather have a thinner "shot" wall, then you might need a glaze. Whichever you choose, be sure to coat the inside of the "shot" well so that there are no cracks and pour off any excess. You can use:

• dark chocolate and melt it. Pour and coat bottom and sides, then chill.
• magic shell for ice cream. Coat all sides and bottom, let harden
• confectioner's glaze: a little bit of confectioner's sugar + a small amount milk + vanilla. It should have the consistency of thick paint. Paint it on the inside with a clean paintbrush. Chill overnight, then bake for 5 minutes (so you might want to initially bake your shot for the minimum amount of time or until just barely brown).

Add milk (or kahlua or...) and enjoy!

FYI:  we let our chocolate chip cookie shot hold milk for 4 hours in the refrigerator for the sake of testing. We couldn't wait any longer in our taste testing gorge-fest to see how long these would last. They were far and away the best cookie shot glass recipe we made: no leaks, fabulous consistency & no need for a glaze. Plus, we realized that if the milk sits a while, it makes them taste like chocolate chip cookie cake. Yum.

Enjoy and let us know how your shots taste!

Cupcake Toppers

Cupcakes are the cutest of desserts: a mini cake that you don’t have to share. Because when it comes to dessert, sharing isn’t fun, it’s stealing. One thing I love seeing lately are cake toppers. They are such a cute way to add a little extra something special to a cake. A cherry on top, if you will.

However, I haven’t really been seeing anything that goes on top of cupcakes. I mean there are those cheap plastic rings that grocery stores put on top of their cupcakes, but those don’t really count. So I thought to myself, “wouldn’t it be fun to make a little something for the top of cupcakes.” And because this thought seemed rather rational compared to my other ones (ie “is a banana still edible if you spray paint the outer peel and then eat the inside?” or “if the sun was black would the sky be black or just a darker blue?”) I decided that I should make a few cupcake toppers!

The star is a classic shape, & when you make the star gold you can channel your inner Rachel Berry, from Glee, because she puts a gold star on everything she likes. Plus, I’m assuming she likes cupcakes, so we’re actually just helping the Rachel Berry cause. I also thought we could get more intricate and make a trendy leaf heart shape.

And aren’t these cupcakes just absolutely gorgeous? We partnered on this post with our fab friend Hunter, of Vivian & Me, who writes a blog about allergy-friendly food recipes. I can not wait to try out these insanely gorgeous basil infused pink grapefruit cupcakes that have a vegan buttercream frosting and candied grapefruit on top! So be sure to stop by her blog for the cupcake recipe &  more amazing, mouthwatering, insanely yummy recipes (buffalo chicken dip, anyone?). And tell her we said "hi!"

Directions for toppers:

With the brand new, awesome Cricut Explore (it's on sale right now!): 1. Insert a picture of a star to your Cricut Design Space (we drew our own in Photoshop so it would look kind of rustic and imperfect). If you would like to create our heart & leaf shape, we’ve attached the file below so that you can upload it to your Design Space 2. Print it out on your paper of choice - of course we chose glittery gold! 3. Hot glue the shape to a toothpick 4. Let it dry 5. Then decorate your cupcake until it looks like a masterpiece - maybe Hunter at Vivian & Me has some tips on piping icing that we'll share soon ;)

xo ~chloe