The First Post

So welcome to the HipScraps blog.

Yeah...I really don't know what on earth I should say. Like it says in the sidebar to the left, I'm just a gal who, when trying to find a tassel belt online to purchase, couldn't find what she was looking for. I wanted a tassel belt, but I either didn't like what I found online or simply couldn't afford the ones I found that I liked ( and I didn't find much that I liked!)

So one day after another day of feeling seriously under dressed in belly dance class, I was digging around in my chest of drawers, looking for something, anything to wrap around my hips. I came across a bandanna I'd bought years earlier with the intention of making a cushion cover of it. It was not quite big enough to wrap around my hips (which are, sadly, far too wide at the moment,) but it did look pretty nifty when folded in half diagonally. I was struck with inspiration.

Why not make my own tassel belt, and use this bandanna as a base? So I hit up the fabric stores, and spent way too much money on tassel fringe, and upholstery tassels, and beaded trim, and sequins, and iridescent faceted beads, and embroidery floss, and plastic silver beads, and canvas and bias tape and grosgrain ribbon.

Quite some time later, after some almost ruinous mistakes when cutting the fabric, and two days of hand-beading I ended up with an encrusted, tasseled hip scarf.

Everyone: Skully1, Skully1: Everyone.

Those silver beads around every other skull took two days to complete. Each beaded skull has bead eyes and a silver sequin bindi on its forehead.

Did I mention it was covered in skulls? And because of my post-baby slobbery, it's a plus-sized hip scarf.
It fits, and I am super happy with it. I immediately went to work on another one, for a dancer-friend of mine, and in far less time I'd produced a second, normal sized hipscarf out of the other half of the original bandanna.
She loves it. In fact, we finally managed to attend class at the same time this morning, and I got to see her dance in it, and I was just tickled pink to see it shimmy! Specter did it - and me- proud.

Since making the two originals, I have made myself busy making more, and will be launching a store to sell them in on Etsy in the very near future.

So in my little world, the kids are finally sleeping, and I have just sat here and posted this ridiculously long post instead of re-dying my hair or doing the dishes or any of the mountain of laundry I need to be doing. So I think I will go to bed, and procrastinate all of that off until tomorrow.