Copycat - Anthropologie

I had another fun day of crafting with my girl Sonya Nimri, and we decided to try to remake Anthropologie's Looped Buds Cardigan...

...because we had the perfect thrifted sweater to use!

The floral print kind of looked similar to this speckled knit sweater (from afar) so we decided to try to make it work!!

We had some canvas ribbon that we decided to paint to make a similar color like the ribbon on the Anthro sweater!

We used Tulip's Fabric Spray Paint...

...and did some mixing and matching.

The color was a bit more orange than melon...

...but we thought it would still work out!  We hung it on a line to dry...

...and then began to affix to the sweater.  Because the color wasn't perfect, we opted to just weave instead of stitch down.  We figured we'd have the sweater ready to shoot after we worked on it and if we weren't into it, we could start it all over again.

We weaved the sleeves...

...and weaved the back of the sweater...

...to have it turn into this!!

The essence of the Anthropologie sweater is here, however I'm totally going to go back and re-dye the ribbon a bit more pink, fold the ribbon in half to make it a little skinnier, then stitch the ribbon down.  This will make it look WAY better!!

We just loved that we found such a great base piece to work off of that we just had to try this project out!!

We totally had a trial and error craft day which is awesome to really find out what works and what doesn't!  Next time you see this piece, it'll look a little bit different :)

Monday Remake

This dress was scored in Charlotte, when I was home for Christmas with my family!  I loved the rhinestone brooch in the center of the dress, the material...

...and the fact that it was a J. Peterman dress!!  I didn't even know J. Peterman was real!!

I thought it was fictional and solely from Seinfeld!  I loved George's hat from the J. Peterman catalog...

...and I loved John O'Hurley playing J. Peterman!!

What I did not love about this dress...

Time to turn this into something fabulous!!

Turning this into fab-dom means a little bit of help from Rit Dye!  I decided to go the emerald route, being it is the Pantone Color of the Year, and all!!

I took the Dark Green dye, some Morton Salt and added these to the washing machine dye bath with the dress (along with a few other pieces that needed a face lift).  Post wash, my pieces were complete!!

I let the dress air dry and this is how it turned out...

Gorge color and NO MORE SPOT!!!  I mean, how fantastic is that?

I paired the dress with my Goodwill'ed embroidered purse I got for $3 and had fun twirling it around my arm while the photo was being shot!

I had a gallery opening to attend and thought this dress would be perfect paired with some black tights and my black brogues!!

I also had on my four leaf clover bracelet and some other assorted silver rings to bring out the silver gems on the dress.

It's so incredible to see a little color adjustment giving a garment a complete 180!!

And I leave you with my version of the Elaine dance from Seinfeld.  I tried to do her thumbs and kicks, however the thumbs didn't turn out as great as I'd like.

Instead, I'll leave you with a clip of Elaine doing Elaine!

Happy Monday, friends!

Julia's NDAD Creation

It's a little San Fran weekend with readers from Northern California getting DIY love!  Yesterday we saw Linda's skirts that she tweaked after bringing them to my book signing at RGB Shop + Gallery and today we're seeing Julia in the dress she upcycled to wear to the event!  There was a little sneak peek yesterday...

...and today you get the full rundown!

I found this Krist Gudnason housecoat/muumuu at a local thrift store for $6.  Pretty sure it's from the '70s - what a great print!  It fit great but I didn't like the neckline and the length was weird.

It had these cool decorative frog closures at the neck and at the top of the side slit.

Let's see how Julia tweaks this puppy into something super fabulous!

I started by removing the frogs and cutting off the mandarin collar.

I first cut a V neck but that looked wrong, so I used chalk to mark a scoop neckline that suited me better. 

I used some black bias tape I had in my stash to finish the neckline.

I shortened the length and even had a misadventure with a puckering hem-stitch, so I decided to just leave the hem as a raw edge.

I created 6" slits on both sides of the skirt and positioned the frogs at the top of each slit.  Yay!  Finished dress ready to go meet Marisa!

(How fab does Julia look???)

We had fun at our little signing party enjoying citrus sips by Strip And Go Bare...

...and amazing art on RGB's fabulously striped walls.

The lovely Faithy who owns RGB was so gracious to host our little party and do a fun little intro before I jumped into the DIY project!

We had fun consulting...

...going over ensemble ideas...

...and checking out the book.

I even had fun taking some solo shots before everyone arrived!

I'm setting up a few more events over the next few months, so stay tuned!!  Julia, thank you SO much for sharing your gorgeous dress with us.  If I lived in SF, I'd be borrowing this from you often!