Remember when I got all excited about American Apparel’s Circle Scarf because you can wear it a million different ways? Well, I’ve always wanted our dear circle scarf, but I never wanted to spend the dough, and since our economy is down the tubes, maybe you don’t either!

As you have probably already deduced, you could make a circle scarf out of any long strip of fabric if you just sew one end to another. Still, I’ve come up with something even more impressive.

A pillowcase!

Cut off one end (or take out the seams), and voila, you are done.

You can spend the rest of your unemployed day creating new costumes. I actually really like the simple scarf configurations. The bestest part of this is the potential for insanely designed scarves (if you have, let’s say, a Mickey Mouse pillow case!).

Yes, that’s seriously the end of the how-to. And, no, I wasn’t feeling very modely (if you want to know the truth — MANGO SKINS CONTAIN POISON THAT HAS REDUCED MY FACE TO AN ITCHING MASS, go to wikipedia if you don’t believe me about that crazy fruit!) so these aren’t my most stunning pictures. Errrr.

Thrilling Tips: (1) If you do have a sewing machine, you can hem the end you cut (I don’t, and my scarf prevailed nonetheless). (2) Use a belt to keep a halter shirt or a skirt from falling down. It’ll work best if you put on the belt and then flap some fabric over the belt after it’s tightened. (3) Add decorative pins. (4) Speaking of pins, the side-halter and the one that goes tight around the neck were created using a strategically placed pin. (5) I used a chopstick to keep together that knot on the bathing suit style top. (6) My pillow was made of stretchy jersey fabric. This made it more flexible for cool configurations.

Finished? Here are my other Unemployment Projects.

I’ve written before about my inspiration binders and inspiration boards, and the resulting outfits such projects inspired. But now that you’re unemployed (see all unemployment projects here!) you have time to go crazy with your inspiration binders and achieve something else equally important — getting rid of all of those magazines I know you’ve been saving.

I had stacks of Print, Oprah, Real Simple, Nylon, Teen Vogue, Good, and ReadyMade (between Oprah & Teen Vogue, try to guess my age!) piling up in my shelves and taking over my life. I am a packrat, so I couldn’t just throw them away.

I made multiple binders with the following categories: Fashion (with tabs for: hair, makeup, professional clothes, socks, and awesome outfits); Recipes (real food, desserts); Crafty Inspiration (Cool Page Layouts, DIY, and Home).

Here are some excerpts from my fashion binder:

Here are some Tips & Tricks for your binder making:

• In my fashion binder, I chose to cutout my fashion inspirations and mix them together on blank white paper under clear sleeves, but because most of the recipes I found took up entire pages, I just hole punched them and put them directly in the binder (with a blank sleeve at the front so I can take one to the kitchen and not ruin it).
• For my fashion binder, I only put in items I could feasibly make with my own wardrobe, this way the binder would be really useful when getting dressed (its purpose!).
• But I was too sad to leave some awesome fashions in the recycling bin, so I labeled one clear sleeve “Love Em” for outfits I loved but couldn’t see making with what I already owned.
• I also made an “Archives” sleeve to stuff in things that started to get old. This way, I can cycle through inspirations as my fancy strikes.
• I actually use my binders for reference! And you should too! Sometimes, I take out something cool and put it on my inspiration board (ie bulletin board hanging in my room reserved for inspiring things).
• If I like something on both sides of a page, I don’t use a white background in my sleeve. If something takes up too much space, but I think I might like to see the whole thing or if there is more info I might want to reference, I fold it instead of cutting it out. Sometimes I’ll tape extra info about a product onto the back of the picture if I think I’ll want to reference it later.
• Yes, you can probably do this project while watching reruns of everything you already watched reruns of on Hulu.

Finally, a crafty reader named Ann sent me the funniest email and an awesome project. While you’re going through your magazines, cut out little squares of solid colors and use them to make or decorate something you need, like a CD rack. I’ll give you her instructions:

“After many rounds of somewhat lame cross-stitch projects, I needed something different to do, so I decided to attack my mysterious Vogue subscription (mysterious because I have no idea why they’re being sent to me because, obviously, I can’t afford anything advertised there) collection. I needed a storage solution for my cds and whatnots, but since I couldn’t find a cool box that i liked from target, I decided to grab my scissors, magazines, and glue and get to gettin.”

“First, I cut down my Quaker Oats jumbo box to about 5″ high. Then I started ripping out pages from my magazine, focusing on those pages that were mainly of one color, or of fun pattern (stripes, plaids, and flowers). Then I started cutting out 2.5″ squares from those sheets of paper. THEN I folded in the four corners, glued, flipped over, folded in the four corners again and glued, to make mini squares. THEN I sorted them into ROYGBIV order, then glued them onto the box. I cheated a bit on the long sides, but I like the finished product well enough.”

With both of these projects in hand, you should be busy for at least two days!

First of all, YES I made a Catcher in the Rye wallpaper / desktop background! YES I am still painting books. What are you going to do?! I read, write, and paint books. I can’t help it!!! (If you don’t like books, you can check out some various other Unemployment Projects here.)

Second of all, you can click on the above picture and you’ll get a much larger version, that YES would be *especially* perfect as a desktop background if you happen to have a 15″ Mac Book Pro, though I am sure it can be usable in other formats, especially if you just use the all-over design below.

Or, if you are unemployed, you can just go off and make your very own wallpaper, like me. The best part is you can tailor your paper to your exact needs and likes! For example, I started with the overall print (below) and then realized I HATE OVERALL PRINTS because all of my icons, which I keep on the right half of the screen, get visually lost. So, I made a new version (above) which has a clear side for my personal convenience.

Here is a larger version of the above wallpaper in case you need larger (just clicky):

Anyway, here’s a How To if you want to make your own book wallpaper like mine. As usual, I will stress that you can have very little drawing / painting ability to get something cool. For example, I have this brush which mightaswell be a collection of twenty bristly dog hairs. It’s horrible. And stumpy. No one should ever paint with it. Yet I do. Because I do not have another little brush. I actually cut it all up with scissors to make it smaller. It’s awful. Moral: Professionals need not apply.

You will need:

• Photoshop or other some-such program
• Scanner or possibly a camera
• Paint or artsy supplies
• Book you are obsessed with (must have simple background if you want it to be easy, dirty and creased is acceptable!)
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1. Paint a picture of your book. Ugly and miss-sized is okay. It will most likely look cute later. Let dry, then scan.
2. Scan the real book.
3. Use Photoshop to combine covers. For example, this is how I combined my covers. I used the Magic Wand Tool to cutout the background from the painted book, and then I used the Clone Stamp Tool to get rid of the words and designs of the real book. Then I put the painted book on top of the real book. (I did this in pieces, so I could re-size each piece.)
4. Fashion your layout. Make a page the same pixel size as your desktop. Group your combined book together (but save copies of it ungrouped!) and lay it out as you will, using different elements to spice it up as you like. For example, I used my rainbow in the upper corner of my first wallpaper and I also used the Eyedrop Tool to take the slightly-yellowed book-background for my wallpaper background. As I was doing this, I thought about all the awesome book screens in the Royal Tenenbaums movie:
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Unemployment Projects

(As you can see, I am playing with headings.) If you just happened on this page, my Unemployment Projects have only two requirements: they must take plenty of time and almost no money. This particular project involves those free tote bags that you probably have piled in your closet with pictures of baby kittens and bank logos. As you will see, this is a very, very loose DIY. Why? Because I recommend you work with whatever products you happen to have on hand!

(1) Find a Bag

My grandmother gave me my bag, which was a plastic tote with a big fuzzy blue sky that said something about saving something or other. She obviously got it from donating money to an organization. Since everyone gets totes for donating money, and most people can’t do with all of their totes, then you will find any thrift store (ie Salvation Army) will have piles of $1 bags such as this. I recommend a plastic tote bag, but I am sure if you are cool enough you can figure out how to paint a canvas one successfully.

(2) Set the Stage

I put a big piece of paper inside my bag just in case the paint would go through (it didn’t) and then I coated the front in white acrylic paint.

(3) Cut out Designs

I used scrap paper to cut out different designs. I did these really simple explosions, and because I am COMPLETELY impatient, I didn’t spend too much time getting anything perfect. I also used a hair dryer in between colors so that I could do the next layer right away. If you are patient or have lots of time, let it air dry! And, you can make more exact templates out of heavy cardboard or thin black electrical tape might work.

(4) Outline in Black!

I outlined my designs with black paint just so that you couldn’t see my messy edges. You could even use, again, black electrical tape if you want really straight outlines. But since this is an “unemployment project” I completely recommend you work with whatever products you already have!

(1) Get a free sample of a swatchbook (a paper sample book from a paper company). The crazier the swatchbook, the more creative you need to be with your photos. I got my swatchbook free from Mohawk papers (paper -> order samples).

(2) Order your pictures. I use winkflash. Pictures are only 12 cents a piece, and usually there is a coupon code on the front page for 6 cent photos. That’s a lot of photos!

(4) Gather other supplies. Besides pictures you might want to use scraps like programs, tickets, labels of favorite foods, the weirdest thing you drew in Pictionary that night, etc. You’ll also want to see what scrap-ish supplies you have, ie: pens, markers, stickers, tape or glue (I do use scrapbooking glue), colored or printed paper, scissors, rulers, etc.

(3) GET CREATIVE!!! Since my sample book had tabs, I split my photos into piles that could work in each tab (so, some pre-planning is beneficial). Your final product will be a bit bulky & flimsy, but pretty much the coolest, cheapest scrapbook ever. I like the cascading pages the best (see a sample of my scrapbook below using my new favorite magazine-making source, Issuu).

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When you are unemployed, or just trying to go green, it’s important to remember to the second of the 3 R’s: Reuse. In order to use up some scraps I had lying around my “studio,” I decided to make them into a sketchbook and thought I’d share with everyone how I did it.

Materials:

1. Scissors or X-acto Knife/Ruler
2. 10-12 sheets of Letter-sized paper (I used paper from my recycling bin that had only been printed on one side.)
3. Scraps of chip board or matboard
4. Old file-folders or card stock
5. Spray-mount or rubber cement
6. Old wrapping paper or wallpaper, etc for the cover

Step 1: Fold Your Paper
If using paper with printing/writing on one side like I did, fold it in half like a hamburger so that the clean side is to the outside. Stack all of your sheets together with the folded edges to the same side.

Step 2: Cut Your Covers
I used old matboard that I had lying around, but you could also use something flimsier. (If you go thicker, it will be too hard to bind…) Since my inside pages were 5.5 x 8.5″, I cut my covers to be 5.75 x 8.75″ to give 1/8″ border on the top/bottom edges when bound.

Step 3: Cover Your Cover
Laying your front cover down on your decorative paper (I used left-over Adhesive Wrapping Paper I had lying around from a press kit I developed for Hallmark), trace the cover of your book and leave about 1/4″ to wrap around the edges. Cut it out. Then, with your heavy cover centered on your decorative paper, cut a triangle off at each corner like so:

Spray adhesive to one side of your heavy cover and to the reverse side of your decorative paper. Center the two adhesive sides together and wrap the decorative paper’s edges around the cover as such:

Step 4: Cut Out and Adhere the Endpaper
Use your back cover to trace out an endpaper on the old file folder.

Spray with spray adhesive and mount on inside of front cover. This should ensure your decorative paper doesn’t come unattached.

Step 5: Bind Your Notebook/Sketchbook
Stack your book pieces together in this order: back cover, folded paper, front cover. The open ends of the folded paper should all line up on the edge that is spiral bound. Either take to Kinko’s or bind by hand: I prefer a wire coil as such:

Step 5: Use Your Book
Not sure what to do with it? Might I suggest referring to UE Project 1 and 3 (Make a Portrait of a Portrait and Make a Portrait of Your Bookshelf) for starting points?

Last week I began my “Unemployment Project of the Week” post series with a showcase of my great ability to make portraits of portraits. And, though no one emailed me their beautiful renditions of, say, Shakespeare (since we now have a real portrait of him, by the way), I am sure you all got right down to the “job” (let’s call it a “job” to make ourselves feel better) and are ready for a new challenge.

So, next up: Make Something Useful and Fashionable from Scraps (if it wasn’t clear, scraps = whatever you don’t need and will never use). This will force you to use your: (1) creative facilities, (2) time, (3) shit lying around. Perfect.

The sub-title to this project could be: Make a Dashing Loop Necklace from Old T-shirts. But if you don’t have old T-shirts lying around, don’t go out and buy them! Invent your own project! This is essential. We’re saving money here. We’re unemployed.

The most exciting part of my example is that despite my non-access to a sewing machine (and my limited patience) I was able to convert a size medium white Hanes men’s undershirt into a headband, necklace, and scarf (not all at once, though, you have to choose one at a time). Lucky for me, I also had some boxes of dye lying around, so I made my white into a nice brilliant yellow and navy, but you probably have some colorful thirft store shirts you can cut up, if you so choose.

What I did, was cut the shirt into “strips” (which are actually loops) by just snipping from one side of the T-shirt to the other until I got to the armpits themselves. Each one was about two inches thick and rather jagged and imperfect. I died half the loops blue and half yellow, because that’s the colors I had lying around. After they were sort-of dried (as I said, impatient), I played with the loops, until I found some fashionable looks, such as:

Headbands:

But that seemed too boring, despite all the various ways I could combine my loops. So, I tried simple necklaces:

Unarguably handsome, for a crappy white T-shirt, but I knew they could be more. I finally landed on double-looping my scraps together in chain to create a scarf or a very high-fashion necklace (we all know high-fashion is actually glamorized low-fashion, everything starts on the streetz, as they say):

Finally, I apologize that I’ve forced you to see my face and my silly PJs and my messy room and everything else that comes with crappy photos from the little lens in your mac notebook. Nonetheless, I think you have the idea and cheapness is part of the charm of Unemployment Project of the Week, isn’t it?

If you really can’t think of anything to do with the useless things you have lying around, try Craftster.org. You are bound to find something to do over there. And, if you are employed, check out these spring fashions that you can actually purchase in a real store.

I know several of my readers (and writers. and self.) are unemployed, and have wondered what to do with their new found time (besides, of course, looking for nonexist jobs, completely changing their future plans, and/or questioning the meaning of life). Well, how is this for a new column: Unemployment Project of the Week.

This week’s project: make a portrait of a portrait. This especially good for those of you, like myself, who have limited artistic ability. A portrait is hard, but if a portrait has already been made, an artist has already showed you the portrait-sitter’s most prominent and important features.

I am no artistic genius, but you can see I had fun with the above Frida paintings, took artistic liberties, and still managed to get something that is identifiable as the artist herself. To make these, I looked at a portrait of Frida Kahlo (far left, by Frida herself) and made two very different versions, the one in the middle is about 8×10 and in acrylic, and the one on the right is a little moleskin notebook sketch with watercolor.

You also don’t have to make a painting of a painting, you can make a painting of a photo, or any-which-way you choose. As you can see, I ruined this little cartoonish-painting (I suppose I could try and fix that left side of his face) I did on a business card-sized artist trading card. Nonetheless, you can tell who it is because it’s a famous portrait, so I was still pretty satisfied (expectations are low for the unemployed, alas).

And, finally, one of the most fun ways to re-create a black and white portrait is by making a linoleum print (pictured here hanging on my bulletin board with a nice little sharpie covering it). I think these are very eye-catching. Check out my sort-of old, but-still-completely-relevant linoleum print tutorial here.

Have fun with your portraits!