Conus litteratus
She lives and loves by the ocean, carefully choosing her treasures amongst all the pretty things nature has forged with the waves.
Art imitating life ~ Can’t wait to hang up this pretty thing.
DIY Upcycled Tahiti-Inspired 2-Piece Outfit
My best friend was doing a closet clean out, and said I could keep whatever I wanted.
This bright red puletasi skirt, a hand-me-down from her mom, stuck out among the pile, and the color and print reminded me vividly of French Polynesia.
During that amazing trip last year, I actually really wanted to get a lavalava with pretty much this exact color/tropical print, but I couldn’t find it anywhere except on the beautiful dancers at the Heiva i Tahiti.
So I was stoked to get this skirt, and continue its life cycle in slow fashion.
It took me a while to figure out what I should do with it, but I loved the simplicity of what the skirt was before and decided to keep the structure of the skirt, only shortening it to use the rest of the fabric as a stretchy tube top.
It was a quick and easy upcycle project, but I loved the end result!
My website has a new look!
As a very visual and sometimes indecisive person, I play around with new layouts and designs here on my website a lot. It’s taken me ages to design something that I feel is representative of my aesthetic, and even though it’s not all there just yet, I’m happy with what it looks like right now… and so I’m excited to share
my new website design refresh!
I mean, no big deal. It’s actually been live for the last two weeks already. I just haven’t had the energy to write a post about it and share it with friends. I did however, want to share the screenshots of the Home/landing page here—a very different look from the last design. I will likely continue tweaking little things here and there whenever I feel like it, so it’ll keep evolving as I do. I cherish this personal website as a way to share my thoughts, photos, and life work, and it feels so good to have a pretty place on the world wide interwebs that is fully me, you know?
One of my favorite things is the quote randomizer I’ve included on the home page. If you click more, the quote will refresh with another one, and it’s fun to look at and toggle when I need a quick boost of inspo. Other things I’ve updated are my About Me page, a new scroll to top shortcut, new navigation menu layout (which is now a hamburger icon/full-screen menu), and created a new Privacy Policy page(!). It’s not something I originally thought about, but I’ve learned it’s so important to have so I can protect my copyrights, especially as a freelance photographer, and outline the terms of use for my website. I’m still thinking about other ways to refresh my Photography Portfolio and Web + Design Portfolio pages because it’s boring right now, and I’d like to display my work more attractively.
If you have any suggestions, or even any comments or feedback on my website’s new look, I’d love to hear them!
xo, Nerelle
Upcycling scrap fabric for closet portière
Now that our home office is set up, I wanted to hide all the crap that we moved into our closet. I figured the easiest thing to do was to sew a curtain, but didn’t want to buy new fabric, so I gathered up some scrap fabric from old projects and set out to work.
How I made it
The first step was to choose fabric with colors that sort of matched. For me, most of my projects involve a mix of blue, green, and yellow, so I had lots to choose from.
I measured the width of the closet and multiplied it by 1.5 to give the portière a gathering effect that makes it easier to cover the entire space, and measured the height of the closet plus a few inches for the hanging loop.
Then on the fabric, I cut any funny edges so that each scrap was rectangular, and laid out the scraps on the floor to roughly fit the width of my measurement and added more scrap fabric pieces in areas where the mismatched fabrics didn’t align.
Took each scrap bit by bit and sewed them right sides together with any zig zag stitch–I used the shell tuck stitch–on your sewing machine. It took a little while to get all the pieces sewn up, but once that’s done, you’re almost there! The scrap fabric ‘quilt’ should roughly fit the dimensions of the closet frame.
I left my edges raw, but if you want to have clean edges, fold the edges twice with a half inch seam and sew along the entire curtain.
Next, I folded the top of the nearly completed portière twice and sewed a two inch seam to allow space for the string that would be looped through to hang.
My fiancé screwed two nails inside the closet on either side of the frame, then we looped our string and tied it up real tight.
And voilà–the portière is complete!
It definitely gives me country homemaker vibes, but the color and prints of the fabrics are bold, and overall, does the job of hiding our crap in the closet!
Glad to get finally make use of some scraps I’ve been hoarding for far too long. I hope you enjoyed this badly written tutorial hahah, and have a wonderful day or night, wherever in the world you are!
Baking is bananas
Banana coffee cake with streusel topping
I’ve been low-key craving banana coffee crumb cake after trying a slice of a keto version that my office manager baked some time ago. I would’ve loved to make a keto cake but couldn’t figure out good carb-free ingredient substitutes with all these stores running out of supplies. Not that we’re out of supplies or anything… In fact, we’ve been able to get all our necessary groceries consistently since starting quarantine. It’s just always a bit more difficult to find no/low-carb options. Thank goodness for the roadside makeki stands too, for having fresh niu and misiluki bananas for 2 bucks a bunch.
Regardless of the fact that this is my first time baking (or one of the first times, I don’t recall a previous first time), I severely underestimated the time it would take to make this dang cake. I followed this recipe I found on Pinterest, and two hours later—I truly don’t understand why it took me so long when the recipe said it was only 10 mins prep—I popped it in the oven and waited for the magic to happen. Ian braved the uncertainty of my baking abilities with the first taste test…
And the verdict is in…
It’s edible! Not just edible, it was also quite (dare I say) delicious! To prove Ian’s non-bias, I took half the loaf next door and had my best friend Jabs sample a slice… and she said it was equally moist, firm, walnutty, sweet-but-not-too-sweet, and overall better than average! My favorite part is the streusel topping.
As you can see, I’m in no short supply of unbiased taste testers, hahaha.
I’m honestly very pleased with myself, and shooketh, because it makes me wonder, who the heck do I think I am!? Martha Stewart over here, sans the crochet jail poncho.
Made two batches—one last night, and one this morning—because I bought a small 6×6” baking pan, and the recipe called for a 9×6” pan. Both were equally yum, even though one was thinner than the other.
And there you have it folks, she (meaning me) can indeed bake!
Hope you’re all safe and well.
Nerelle
Belt or no belt?
Finally used my JOBY GorillaPod and set my camera on timer for today’s portrait. Didn’t do the best job with the shot composition because I never use tripods so I couldn’t be bothered with
Played around with poses and it’s kinda feeling like a fashion look book lol.
Made this duster dress a few years ago with a couple yards of marigold-colored light jacquard cotton fabric I picked up at Manu’a’s. We don’t have a lot of good cotton fabric for flowy-style clothes here, so I love this dress because I love this fabric. I did a pretty sloppy job on the actual sewing, and there are loose threads everywhere because I don’t have a serger. That’s okay thought. It’s lasted this long in my closet, and I don’t foresee me getting rid of it anytime soon.