Pencilled Velvet

I bought this pencil skirt a while ago from a charity shop in Reading, I fell in love with the colour and although I knew I'd never wear it as it was who can say no to another bodycon skirt right? So last weekend I finally got round to customising it and for once I didn't completely ruin it/ cut it too short :)

I used the slit at the back to judge what length to make it (a little longer than I wanted it) and marked on where to cut, I then cut all the way around and pinned it up. Originally I planned to use hemming web to do this but it was actually just as easy to put a few stitches in- I tried to make sure minimal stitching was visible on the outside. 

I can't wait to wear it out properly, here's the finished result: 

Starry Eyed

My friend came up with the idea of star-studding a pair of black levis after seeing the ones Coal n Terry Vintage are selling here, their site has some amazing pieces (I really want the Stars n Stripes tube top!) and is brilliant for inspiration if you don't have the money and like a little DIY. After buying a pack of 50 star studs for roughly £2 (you can get them here) she got me over to help her. We positioned the studs beforehand to check they looked right and then I studded away. Some of the studs didn't end up in the right place to start off with, but I didn't bend the spikes over until we were completely happy with the way they looked and then used some scissors secure them.

Here's the finished look! I absolutely love them and am gutted they're not mine aha, although my friend has promised that I can borrow them soon and I can't wait :) the best thing is that they cost less than a £10er! Next time I'm in Bristol I think we're going to fray the edges- cheese grater at the ready...

Studded Dreams

I picked up these brilliantly hideous jeans from a charity shop on the weekend for £4, first thing that came to mind, 'yay new high waisted shorts'. I tend to always wear Levis and thought these would be a bit different, they're a darker denim than all my other shorts too. Originally I was going to leave them plain but I was a little bored this evening and decided to stud them, had just enough studs left to go all the way round. Successfully transformed! Can't wait to wear them :) 

Apologies for my gross carpet, it makes the pictures look horrible!

  

Cross.+

A while back you might remember I completely ruined my entire white wardrobe by sticking my purple Levis in the same wash... so I tried to recover this tee here, by dying it in this post here... and finally I ordered some studs to go round the outline of the cross. I picked up the studs from eBay really cheaply and sat catching up on 90210 whilst poking the studs through the outline of the cross and pushing the prongs down with a butter knife. Even though there's a lot of studs it didn't take too long- studding things is really simple and has completely revamped my top that almost went in the bin. I just need to think of more things to stud now!

The lovely Lauryn from bracelets and bangles awarded me the liebster blog award, thank you Lauryn :)  go and check out her blog guys it's one of my favs x

Patch

I have an unhealthy obsession with shorts and I've banned myself from buying any more- so what I've done is found a way to temporarily customise my own and change it as and when :) I bought a pair of black Levis from Motel's boutique on Park Street with leopard print in the pockets and it made me think of adding material myself to other shorts, the best part is you only need to undo the stitches to get them back to normal or do something new. It's really simple and so easy but it really changes the way the shorts look, I tried it on my £1.99 charity shop shorts...

I bought the material from Oxfam it was £4.99 for a pack of patches with loads of different designs to choose from, the patch I used I didn't think I liked but when I put it next to the shorts I changed my mind. Sewing this didn't take long and my sewing is rubbish so I do apologise, this is when I need my little sisters sewing machine.

   

Think I'm going to wear these on Saturday night for Shit The Bed, it's a night at Motion of course, Sub Focus (my all time ever favourite), Scratch Perverts and Grooverider all under one roof? Yes please. The best part is that I have to work in Bristol Thurs and Fri for an event so travel is paid for :) lovely.

Velveteen

I went charity shopping in Stroud with a couple of the girls yesterday, bought a few lovely bits and it was so nice to catch up- we then bought a 1.5l bottle of red wine and drank the lot. This morning I quoted 'right, now I'm not drinking till new years'... famous last words? I'm going out in Cheltenham tonight ha!

I've wanted a velvet skirt like the one from this post for a while but unfortunately Yayer have sold out- so I bought a size 12 velvet dress from a charity shop for £4.99 and fashioned my own. I used elastic to draw in the waistline and my little sister got a mini sewing machine for christmas which is brilliant so I used that too.

It ended up being a tad shorter than planned and the sewing is not straight at all (first time on a sewing machine) but seeing as it only took about half an hour I'm pretty impressed :)

Marbling

 At the 90s night my friend had done marbling on her nails, I hadn't seen it before and it's so cool so me and my little sister gave it a go- it's pretty time consuming but fairly easy. Here's what you do (I would suggest watching a YouTube tutorial too!)

Firstly tape around your fingers so only your nail is showing, apparently it works better if you use a white base coat too which I completely forgot about, so do that too.

Then fill up a container with room temperature water, drop the colours you want to use one by one (you have to do it fairly quickly because they dry super fast) then use a cocktail stick or some kind of substitute- mine was a plastic fork ha- to swirl the polish around to make a cool pattern.

Dip your finger into the design where you want it to print onto your nail and scrape away the excess.

Take the tape of when your nails are dry, remove any polish from around the cuticle, apply a top coat and you're done :). Some of my nails came out really good and some weren't so great but I'm definitely going to try it again, using a white base too! I think you need to make sure the design is really small so you can get all of it on the nail.

Dyeing

A while back I put my purple Levi's in the wash (completely dull moment because obviously they're plain denim and dyed), and trashed my entire white wardrobe. The pictures don't do it justice to how bad they actually looked. I'd never done this before but decided to try and dye them darker to save them!

I bought Dylon 'velvet black' for £2.99 in Wilkinsons (you can get it in most craft shops too for the same price), it's one of the hand dye's rather than a machine one- you just add warm water and salt to the mixture and stir regularly for about an hour.

You then rinse the clothes and put them through a wash, now the clothes didn't exactly come out black and even though I put them in the same bowl the dye came out completely different on both tops. But I'm really happy with the outcome, I thought the cross and stripes were going to be covered and no longer exist and make the tops plain and boring but you can still see them. I think I might add some studs to the outside of the cross to make it more prominent, the stitching has also stayed white which is quite cool.

Overall I'm really happy with the outcome and it cost me £2.99 to save two £20 tops, I feel like I have two new ones :) definitely better than throwing them away, but I did use the black dye and my clothes came out grey so I don't know what would happen with the other colours. I have a few other things I need to try and salvage so I might try out a different colour to see.