Guest Post: Skirt to Dress DIY

So today I have my very first guest post! Berenisse has been one of my best friends for the past two years and is seriously one of the most awesome people I've ever met. Not only is she originally from Peru, but she's also like quadlingual (working on languages five through 30 as we speak), a wonderful painter and artist, and a fellow DIY'er! She also leaves today for a six month journey through Hindu temples across four continents, which she'll be blogging about in English and Spanish over on Between Two Worlds.


In honor of her departure, I asked her to write a guest post about a recent lace skirt-to-dress DIY she did. And here it is!

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I started with a long flowy white skirt that was given to me by a person who loved the fabric but was too short to wear it as a skirt. Before making any alterations I attempted to used the skirt as it was as a dress by adding a belt.

However, I was not happy with the length or way the bust looked, so I took off a few inches of the bottom of the skirt and decided to reuse the part that was "cut off" from the skirt.

The cutting part was easy peacy! All I did was carefully pull the thread that attached the "excess" from my skirt and boom!

Carefully taking the bottom tier off the dress

Detached!

With the remaining part I decided to attach it to the top part so that it could be more flowy, and so that it could cover up part of the bust line I was not happy with. After a few minutes of hand sewing this top part, and adding a belt, I got a nice white dress to sport during the summer.

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Oh yeah, did I mention she's also be-a-utiful?? I love the lace and love what you did with the skirt, Bere! Thanks so much for sharing this with me, and I'll be following your every move on your blog! Safe travels love <3

All images provided by Bere

Day 3: Stunna Cum Laude

Soooo apparently I deleted all the photos I took of yesterday's outfit (hence no post), which means I'll just have to re-take them at some point. Whoops. In the meantime, here's today's outfit in two parts.

This is the outfit I thought I was going to wear today.

hat and shoes, Target

pink underdress, Urban Outfitters

black lace dress, DIY

It was just too uncomfortable though (see how short that skirt is?). Plus, it ended up being 90 degrees outside today (I repeat, 90 degrees in mid-April. We had a foot of snow on the ground this time last year), so I changed into this outfit by like 10:30am.

Yes, I know I said I wouldn't do any "jeans and closest clean t-shirt" outfits, but I'm calling this one fair since I made this shirt! I'll put a tutorial up eventually. In any case, I also put on these sweet earrings and shoes, and kept the hat.

hat and earrings, Target

shoes and shorts, Urban Outfitters

shirt, DIY

belt, thrifted

Day 1: Stunna Cum Laude

I decided to go easy on my first day and wear my go-to casual dressy outfit. I did blowdry my hair using a diffuser for the first time ever today though and I'm totally sold - I love how it makes my wavy/frizzy hair so curly! It also occurred to me that I should try taking close up shots in the future, like of my jewelry or shoes, to spice up my routine-ish photos. We'll see what happens tomorrow!

I did a messy DIY today so my hands were all dirty, thought I should share the sentiment.

dress, F21 - boots, thrifted - blazer, Urban Outfitters - necklace, DIY

DIY: Galaxy Dress (or, the art of persistence)

What do you do when you have a DIY method that you've tried twice and hasn't turned out how you wanted (i.e. bleach), and a dress that you've tried to alter three times and still hasn't turned out how you wanted (see below)? Throw them both together into one beautiful mess of a project, of course!

It seems every blogger ever has their own method of DIY'ing Christopher Kane's galaxy print from his resort 2011 collection. And remember this dress?

I mean, come on! How could you not want a print like this??

Here's mine, adapted from all the tutorials listed above.

What you need:
Black dress
Bleach in a spray bottle
Fabric/acrylic paint in various colors
Something to flick and sponge paint with

What you do:
1) Lay your dress out flat, and spritz it with bleach in a fairly random pattern, concentrating on some areas more than others, etc. Cheeze alert: the point here isn't to be orderly, but to embrace the entropy of the galaxy!

Kinda too short, kinda too doll-esque dress I picked up on a whim at Forever21 a few years back.

2) After a few minutes, scrunch the dress up and spritz once more.

3) Once the colors are to your satisfaction, wash your dress and dry it.

I only wanted one part of the skirt and some of the bodice to be galaxy, but don't be afraid to go crazy on the whole dress!

4) Flick, splatter, sponge, squish, and drag paint over the dress. Again, move towards chaos!

5) Fly yourself to the moon.

 Still a bit short to wear with just tights, but with leggings or black jeans underneath I love it!!

DIY: Ombre Dress

Alright, so you've seen it a million times at this point: ombre is fashion's lady of the week. Dresses, shirts, skirts, pants, you name it, it's been ombre'd, and that includes hair (I'm really trying to convince myself that I shouldn't follow this trend...).

via Etsy

via Tuula

This last image inspired me to try my hand at ombre'ing (or dip dying) a dress I originally got for an Alice in Wonderland costume. Great for the costume, not so great for anything else.

Super pale, super snoozeville.

Boil some water, add some Navy Blue dye, and dip it in! I wanted most of the dress to be a darker color, so dipped almost all of the dress in. The dye stains linen and cotton really quickly though, so your lightest "layer" should only be in the dye for a second or two.

I left the second level in the dye for about 3 minutes. 

The last "level" of dye took about 10 minutes to deepen to the color I wanted.

Make sure to dry your newly dyed article of clothing on a towel that you don't care too much about. It will get dyed too! I have a specific "dye-drying" towel that I use. Here's the final product! Of course I took these pictures plenty past midnight, so the photoshoot devolved pretty quickly...

Pretty normal so far

I really like how the back turned out - the line of color is much straighter.

This is where I start getting a bit delusional... "OMG LOOK I finished something!!"

 "I wonder what shoes I should wear with this dress? I guess these are okay!"

You get the idea. Super easy DIY that I definitely need to try on a pair of jeans or two. Or three.

DIY Inspiration: Lace Dress

YES, YES, YES, YES, and YES. I'M DOING THIS ASAP.

Lover Lacetail dress (images via A Pair & A Spare)

Golden Globes Inspiration

I didn't actually realize the Golden Globes were last night until my Facebook and Twitter blew up about it this morning. Oops. Note to self: keep up to date on fashion and its major nights.

Anyways, here's a few of my favorite dresses, a few of which I may attempt to recreate (in more humble terms) somewhere down the road. Nude colors with delicate, lacy materials ruled the runway, with some bright flashes, and even my favorite black and gold combo! Close-fitting dresses with fishtail/mermaid cuts, and LOTS of sheer fabric (not panels anymore - SO five minutes ago apparently). Also, I think I'm in love with Gucci now. Even in spite of this song. (Or maybe partially because of it?)

Diana Agron (not a huge fan of the cut, but I love the idea of laser cut lace cut-outs - Giles Deacon)

Selma Hayek (gold and black! kind of too armageddon for me, but still awesome - Gucci)

Kristen Wiig (so casual yet beautiful - Bill Blass)

Kate Beckinsale (intense! I love the hem though - Roberto Cavalli)

Sarah Hyland (just gorgeous. hard to believe she plays a high schooler on TV - D&G)

Jessica Alba (UH-MAZING - Gucci)

Julie Bowen (I really just love her, and am super jealous of her ability to pull off a dress the exact same color as her skin)

Taissa Farmiga (cool Grecian vibes here - Vera Wang)

And finally, my favorite dress!! I adore the sheer paneling! So gracefully sexy - Emma Stone

Photos via mtv.com

DIY: Catching Up

I began DIYing seriously last summer (2011) while I was in Boston for a summer internship. It was really a self-preservation thing as I didn't have a whole lot else to do... I started this blog towards the end of the summer, but didn't really "commit" to it until December. In the meantime, however, there were several DIY projects I finished. So just to catch you up, here's some that I think are worth showing (besides the usual "hem a thrifted skirt" thing):

A plain (thrifted) Anne Taylor dress. Formerly very conservative, now with deep U back. It's a super daring cut so I've actually only ever worn this dress out once and kept a shawl on the whole time. But I took in the dress so it fits me perfectly (rare for a non-stretch dress since I'm so curvy) and I LOVE it. So I really do need to find an excuse to wear it somewhere. And more often.

This was a dress I bought in high school at a boutique back home, for way more than I probably should have been spending at that point in my life. I adore the neck and cut of the dress, but it was originally a really weird beige color. So I dipped it in some black dye! Turns out I didn't leave it in long enough so came out a kind of dark/musty purple, but it was really pretty so I just left it.

A ridic easy dress (yes, dress - I know it looks like a long shirt... it's stretchy!) I whipped up one night before going out. I have a blue bodycon tank dress that fits me super well, so I traced it onto this stretchy black lace I had laying around, stitched it up, and viola! Easy peasy.

A necklace that I made one night while procrastinating work. Copied a design I saw online (can't remember where though). I've been in love with the black and gold combo recently. Maybe because of this song?

More gold, this time in the form of obnoxiously sparkly shoes. Super cheap (thrifted) flats, originally this hideous blue jeans color (you can still see it on the inside of the shoe), now an amazing gold. I love the rounded point toe, just the perfect shape. It's an awesome way to spice up the otherwise relatively simple/boring going out go-to outfit (say that five times fast) of skinny jeans and black tank top.

DIY: Shoulder Cut-out Dress

Cut-out dresses and shirts have been popping up everywhere since this summer.

Love the color and shape of this top

Pretty typical dress with cutout sides - still gorgeous!

Long sleeved shirts with the backs slashed, shoulders peeping through button down tops, dresses with waists peeking through... And then I saw this beauty in an ad on the side of a page actually.

I absolutely adore the gold rimmed shoulders! It kind of looks like metal, but I think that'd make moving your arms a little difficult...

I didn't even look at the price tag, because I knew that it would be so easy to do it myself (I guess advertising does work, though the outcome was probably not what they hoped for)! So I tucked it away in my ever-growing "Make this!" folder on my desktop. I thought no more of it until I was rummaging through my donate bin and found this ill-fitting, oversized black Old Navy shift I wore once for a play (in which I played a dowdy 30-year-old woman).

Again, sorry it's such a crappy photo... Old camera still... Dress awkwardly displayed on top of another one of my recent DIY projects, my rug!

I immediately ran to Joann's to get gold trim, cut the shoulders off the dress (eyeballed it, no science here!), took up the hem, and baste-stitched the trim on! Et voila!

I actually got a round of applause when wearing this dress. Yay!

First two photos via asos.com