Mar 6, 2012 | DIY
Woohoo!
March is here! Portland is beginning to pull itself out of a long, dreary Winter (hellllloooooo daily hailstorms!) and things are happening over here in this corner of the world! I’m feeling more like myself than in ages – and have even gotten back to more frequent DIY’ing! So let’s all shrug off those cobwebs of Winter, throw our shoulders back, and head straight-on into Spring and all the beauty and promise that it brings. And what better way to celebrate the changing seasons than a little DIY??;-) 
For the bold DIY’er: how about a DIY Spring Wedding…DRESS, that is, made out of t-shirts? How fabulous is this??? From CRAFT Magazine’s blog.
Smashion’s blog came up with a cute DIY leather tassel necklace, inspired by a piece from Jewelmint. It’s a great way to use up some old leather scraps! (And believe me, I have a ton of those leftover from various projects throughout the years.;-)
Stripes and Sequins made these beautiful Springy polka-dotted DIY Loeffler Randall-Inspired Shoes! Different treatments on your shoe’s platforms are so in right now…and you could do pretty polka dots, stripes, flowers…anything that strikes your fancy.
This sweet Boho Maxi Dress from Sweet Verbena is super-easy, bright, and fun! Looks like I now have my go-to Summer lounging dress!
Use quilling to create rolled floral paper beads – and glue onto a cuff! This Modern Bouquet Cuff Bracelet from Michael’s will look great using a slightly thicker cuff – and some floral scrapbooking paper.
Create a sparkly, sweet DIY Glitter Peter Pan Collar with Made by Geneviève. Just a little bit of Mod Podge and you can attach practically anything to anything! Think how pretty that will look with a little LBD or lightweight Spring sweater. And if you’re needing a pattern for that collar, you can pick up a copy of my DIY Pattern: The Peter Pan Removable Collar from my Etsy store!
How about this GORGEOUS DIY gold-leafed tote – a handbag makeover inspired by MIMCO by Beyond the Open Spaces? It looks so expensive and luxurious now, you’d have a hard time convincing anybody that you didn’t pay a bundle for it!
Soccer Mom Style shared her tutorial for some Neon Detail Painted Wooden Bangles, and I’m dying to makeover my old bangles too! Neon is so perfect for Spring/Summer 2012!!
If your project was featured above, feel free to grab a button and share the DIY!
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If you have a DIY how-to or tutorial that you’d like to see featured on Chic Steals, please email me at carlyjcais at chic-steals dot com – and I’ll try to squeeze it in to one of my Links of the Week posts! (Tutorials/how-to’s with steps and photos included please! So everyone can share in the DIY goodness:-)
xoxox
Carly
-all photos copyright their respective authors; photo array by me-
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Mar 5, 2012 | Fashion
scanned from Vivi Magazine November 2011 (I think). SLY sweater.
Over the weekend I was working on a DIY tutorial for the above SLY-brand sweater. Hey, a sweater covered in puffy spores…I thought it was cute!! I started photographing the steps, placing the craft store pompons onto my thrifted teal sweater with Aleene’s Jewel-It! Embellishing glue.
I put a little too much glue on some of the pompons and it spread out beyond the pompon edges. I thought, “No biggie – it’ll dry clear and won’t be noticeable.” Little did I realize it was QUITE noticeable.
And then I decided I didn’t like the look of the sweater with the pompons after all, regardless of the glue issues. They looked too much like craft store pompons – i.e., krrrrrap glued onto a sweater – rather than the pretty felted wool puffs of the original.
So after gluing pompons onto both the front and right sleeve…AND waiting for them all to dry…I made the snap decision to undo all my work and rip them off to resurrect my sweater. I don’t know why I changed my mind so abruptly. Normally I am very sure when I embark on a DIY project. But it seemed a pity to do this to this pretty sweater. And then…
O.M.G. This Jewel-It! stuff is so permanent, I couldn’t get it off. Hours of peeling, washing, scrubbing, and more peeling ensued. I gave myself a blister on my thumb from all the scraping and peeling. And still I cannot get the glue off.
From the advice of the company’s customer service line, I have spent most of today applying Goo Gone! to all the glue spots, and further rubbing and scrubbing and peeling and blotting.
I want to cry just looking at what I’ve done to this soft, pretty sweater that I was so thrilled about when I scored it at Goodwill. In just the perfect on-trend teal, too! In a nice, roomy, comfy size!! Ugggggghhhh…
I managed to get one spot off (mostly)…so now I have 16 or so to go…
And my whole sweater reeks of petroleum now…
Theoretically, my black-spore-sweater-DIY would work OK on maybe a different kind of sweater, maybe one that doesn’t have any cabling and is stiffer like the one in the photo. Totally DIY-able by gluing craft store pompons onto it, people! And be careful with Jewel-It! cuz you just can’t get it out once it’s applied!! Lesson learned.
Do any of you have any spectacular DIY FAILS like this one??? Do share! I’m just heartbroken over what I’ve done to this poor, innocent little sweater…:-(
xoxox
Carly
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Mar 4, 2012 | DIY
Removable collars have been the must-have-it accessory for the past year now, and I honestly didn’t think there were any more varieties I hadn’t seen. Bejeweled! Neon! Flowered! Pearl-encrusted! Leather!
But this metal collar necklace from a Romwe.com newsletter (above) caught my eye – and I was heartbroken to find it was sold out. (Here’s a similar one if you’re interested.) “I can make that,” I reasoned, and set about doing it. (No soldering involved!!) With just some foam, embossing metal, and jewelry supplies, you too can make your very own chic metallic accessory! Here’s how:
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Mar 3, 2012 | Fashion
I’ve got a bad cold so am heading to bed early…but hopefully a full night of Nyquil-induced sleep will have me back behind the computer and get this tutorial up for you guys!
Hope you like it! Til tomorrow then…
xoxox
Carly
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Mar 1, 2012 | Beauty
I’ve been enjoying Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Polish Strips for awhile (mostly in the pretty glitters they offer!) – and was pleased to see that they’ve come up with some great new patterns, just in time for Spring!
I picked up the pink polka dot pattern (“Pink-A-Dot“) the other day – and as soon as my fluorescent yellow mani needs replacing, I’ll be trying this one out! (which will probably be soon…ahem)
photo from my January review last year
The review I posted of them when the original colors came out last year garnered a lot of interest; if you’d like to check out the post to see the step-by-step, you’ll find it here!
What do you guys think? Any pattern/color strike your fancy?
…And if you’re looking to buy them, you can find them at Walgreens, Target, CVS, and other drugstores nationwide…as well as online at Ulta.com!
xoxox
Carly
flower texture source; product collage by me.
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Feb 27, 2012 | Beauty, Fashion
Do you use a flat iron to straighten your hair?
For the longest time, I didn’t…not until my late twenties, at least. In fact, I was mostly just a get-out-of-bed-pull-my-hair-into-a-ponytail kinda gal. It’s only as I’ve gotten older – and begun to look at myself and how I look as a complete picture, that I finally realized that the make-it-or-break-it component to any stylish outfit is what you wear on your head. Yes folks (as probably everybody else already knows;-) it’s your hairstyle (or lack thereof) that truly ties everything together and makes your look chic…or not. So I’ve added flat ironing into my repertoire of hair styling techniques, and as my hair’s growing out longer, there’s a lot more to play with. So awhile ago I bought myself a $29 iron (a national, well-known brand) from my local discount store, thinking that there was no reason to spend money on what was the equivalent of just a couple of hotplates stuck on a pair of tongs. Boy was I wrong. (more…)
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Feb 25, 2012 | Fashion
I just love it when a company takes something fairly entrenched in our culture – and makes a design improvement upon it. Case in point: these Goody DoubleWear hair elastics and headbands I recently spied at my local Target.
I’ve been growing my hair out for awhile, and it seems almost every day I’m wandering around with a hair elastic around my wrist and a headband on, since I just like having my hair up and off my face most of the time (but I’m determined to wear it down since I went to all the trouble of growing it out). But yes, the elastic around my wrist looks like precisely that…a boring black bit of elastic…and my headband often hurts my head after awhile but I can’t just slip it off when I’m out and about and stick it in my pocket or something. (I go through plastic headbands like candy because I always misplace them somewhere and then sit on them or snap them in half somehow.)
Enter these lovely things – actually chic, affordable (around $4.99 for a set!), surprisingly well-made elastics that sport a thin metal tube. The headbands come in a set of gold and silver – and the hair elastics come in black with silver, black with gold, or shades of blue with silver. (There may be more, I just haven’t found them yet!) They look amazing with a plain white blouse, or even dressy when worn with an LBD. A
nd they look fabulous stacked with other jewelry too! I can easily pull my hair back with them when I want things off my face. And then drop them back onto my neck or my wrist when my hair needs to come down for awhile.
They’re just brilliant. And you can buy them anywhere that Goody is sold. (Like Target!)
I’m just loving their minimalist, chic sleekness!!
xoxox
Carly
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Feb 22, 2012 | DIY
scanned from Lucky Magazine ad, March 2012
This is so reminiscent of all the hardware-inspired necklaces from Fall/Winter 2009…and the hardware necklace I made using plumbing couplings that same year. Though Banana Republic isn’t that expensive to begin with, getting the look requires only a trip to your local hardware store. 
So glad to see chunky metallic necklaces are in for Spring!!
xoxoxo
Carly
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Feb 21, 2012 | DIY
Hope everyone’s been having a great February so far! Already 3/4 over and Spring is hopefully on its heels soon. I’m feeling renewed by a changing in the seasons, and am recently inspired to get my craft on again after combing through the recaps of the NYFW shows. So what has the Internet been up to in these past couple weeks…?
LookUnderHere created a great tutorial on Youtube for transforming any skirt into something lovely, gathered, and asymmetrical.
How about a lovely Painted Leather Geometric Necklace from Oh the Lovely Things? I had to look twice to figure out how it was constructed and what it was made of; the metallic leather shapes are amazing.
If you’re looking to add a pop of color into your life (that’s totally revertable if/when you tire of it, Make It and Fake It has the solution with her DIY Reversible Neon Heels. (Also check out her archive for a number of other great and fashionable DIY projects!!)
DIY Heart Print Tights from The Pineneedle Collective need not just be for Valentine’s Day! Amazingly, acrylic paint will work fairly well on sheer hose. Who knew??
A Beautiful Mess made some fabulous DIY Suspenders for a guy…but you could easily make them girly with the usage of different printed elastics!
Chictopians Lipglossandblack posted their DIY Fishtail-Hem Skirt, which is so on-trend and perfect for those in-between days when it’s neither warm nor cold. Show off some leg and still look demure!
How cute is this Pompon-Edged Scarf from The Purl Bee?? Done up in pretty fabrics, with bright (or pastel) pompon trim, this is such a unique take on the neck-scarf that everyone, from celebs to teens, is sporting lately.
Though I usually don’t post crafts done by Martha Stewart (since craft tutorials from there are re-posted and shared all over the place), I couldn’t help myself with this chunky Dyed Wooden Beads Necklace. I love how you can vary the colors to make this couture-like look all your own!
If your project was featured above, feel free to grab a button and share the DIY!
<a href=”https://chiccreativelife.com/category/links-of-the-week”><img src=”https://chiccreativelife.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/diylotwfeaturedbutton-2.png” /></a>
If you have a DIY how-to or tutorial that you’d like to see featured on Chic Steals, please email me at carlyjcais at chic-steals dot com – and I’ll try to squeeze it in to one of my Links of the Week posts! (Tutorials/how-to’s with steps and photos included please! So everyone can share in the DIY goodness:-)
xoxox
Carly
-all photos copyright their respective authors; photo array by me-
~If you liked this post, please share it!~
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Feb 20, 2012 | DIY
Bib-style and collar-style, multi-tiered, embellished, spiky, organic, tribal necklaces have been all over the runways for a couple seasons, and it’s high time to add one into regular rotation in one’s wardrobe. But it’s so easy to make one out of bits and pieces floating around in your craft drawer!! This particular project utilizes craft foam that, once covered in paint, studs, buttons, and beads – looks high-fashion and “artsy” without the high price tag.
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