Aug 13, 2010 | Life, Score!
Yes, friends and faithful readers…you voted, and I listened. Back in April, I asked all of you what you wanted to see here on Chic Steals in the coming months. And out of those who responded, over 66% of you said you wanted a DIY Contest!
Well here it is…it’s been over 2 months in the making but I am pleased to finally announce…
I am so excited to be partnering with CutOutandKeep.net to bring all of this worldwide competition, open to everyone over the age of 18! Here’s a little teaser:
The Ultimate DIY Competition
Do you live and breathe fashion – and how to get it for less? Do you often find yourself crafting the looks you see on the runway, in street style photos, and in stores? Do you have creative ways of cutting corners and re-creating, modifying, upcycling, re-fashioning, embellishing, and distressing pieces to create items all with your own personal style? If so, we want to see what YOU can do!
Enter an original DIY project – made entirely by you – in The Ultimate DIY Competition! The theme is “Inspired DIY” – and you need to submit a photo of your inspiration (a designer garment, an item you’ve seen on someone, a beautiful photograph of nature, an illustration or piece of artwork etc.) AND create something based on this photograph. Submit at least 2 photos of your project during the creation process, write the step-by-step tutorial to share with all, and finish off with at least 2 photos of your final DIY piece! Make a Wearable (item of clothing), piece of Jewelry, or an Accessory, for anyone, any age. Five fashion Bloggers at the forefront of the online DIY style movement serve as the Judging panel: Carly J. Cais from Chic Steals, Suzannah from Adventures in Dressmaking, Tessa Stephensen from Apparellel, Maegan Tintari from …love, Maegan, and Outi Pyy from Outsapop. One Winner in each category will be chosen – and we’ve got some FABULOUS sponsors offering up gift certificates to online craft and DIY materials stores as prizes! Encourage your friends and family to “Heart” or “Like” your project too – the project with the most “Hearts” + “Likes” also wins a prize!
so get those glue guns out and get crackin’!
Submissions close Sept. 5. Winners announced September 15, 2010. Competition open worldwide, to anyone over the age of 18.
Check out The Ultimate DIY Competition homepage for the Official Rules, Like us on Facebook, and Follow us on Twitter to stay in the know. In the meantime, start DIY’ing and getting those projects ready for submission!
Prizes up for grabs: Gift Certificates to M&J Trimming, FireMountainGems.com, and New York Design Shop; a BurdaStyle t-shirt; a Gift Subscription to VenusZine.
Tempting, right? I can’t wait to see what all you guys come up with!!
xoxox
Carly
Aug 11, 2010 | Life
Not particularly eloquent at the moment…
I think I sent a similar Tweet out because I was just FLOORED with the announcement…
But it looks like I WON THE CREATE COUTURE CHALLENGE! (Click to read the recap on the NYDS Blog)
In fact, I had the NYDS Blog open in a Forefox tab for a while this evening, and had been refreshing it in-between writing my previous post. I figured the NYDS staff wouldn’t post anything until tomorrow anyway, what with it being the middle of the night and all.
But then I saw their teaser post, so I clicked on “Continue Reading…“, heart pounding in my chest, steeling myself for the name “FVNCY” or “…love, Maegan” because I was sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that either blog would be declared the winner. (In fact, I was utterly sure the moment I saw the participating blogs announced. I’m somewhat of a pessimist, can you tell??)
All I can say is that I’m so shocked to have won – so amazed and humbled by the outpouring of support and all your voting…it means so much to me, it really and truly does!
I really wanted that magazine interview – I’ve been designing a couple new pieces I was thinking of stocking my Etsy store with (and giving the store a nice overhaul), in the case that I actually won and could mention that in the interview. But I was hesitating, wondering if it was worth it ordering all the components and purchasing fabrics and making prototypes, if I would not be able to promote them effectively, or if there was no one who wanted them. I made the mistake before of making the pieces before I had tested them, and before I truly had a market for them – and ended up burned financially, with a lot of stock on my hands. It was a big setback. So I’ve learned to be cautious!
Thank you so much to all who voted (it was such a close margin, every single vote counted!!!) – you’ve helped me that much closer to my dreams and I can’t thank you enough. And to Style Sample Magazine, and New York Design Shop, for sponsoring this amazing competition – I couldn’t be more happy or grateful! You’ll all be seeing some new jewelry and accessories from me very, very soon!
Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart!
xoxox
Carly
Aug 9, 2010 | Life, Score!
Today’s the last day to vote in NYDS/Style Sample Magazine Create Couture DIY Challenge! I would love it if I could have your vote.:-) I also want you guys to win a Chic Steals original – so head on over there and comment too!!
and
Sorry to keep pushing this but I really, really want to win! Thank you all for so much support and kindness:-)
xoxo
Carly
Aug 9, 2010 | Life
Office Before. Blech!
Sorry for that brief hiatus – I took a mini-vacation from the blogosphere for the weekend.
I’ve been cleaning up and redoing my office – or at least the room in my house where we keep the computers and I have my sewing machines and do a lot of my DIY.
It was a mess. An utter, utter mess.
The room has pretty much no storage, piles of fabrics and clothes and tools and papers everywhere, and my childhood desk that I had installed in there was made in the 80’s and thus, much lower than the standard height of 29.5″ of the desks nowadays, which are made to accommodate a computer workstation. That 26″ high desk had me hunching over my computer and giving me back pains, and the mess was totally non-conducive to doing anything. I couldn’t find any papers or important things, couldn’t make headway on any projects…in fact, the only place I could work was outside of this room because it was so clogged with stuff.
So we bought a bookshelf, desk attachment, and some storage boxes from IKEA, and I’ve been sorting and cleaning up (though I’m far from done). My computer has been pretty much unplugged for the whole weekend.
The hiatus was really nice too – just spending some family time without me stuck on the computer all day was fun.
Though the office is definitely still not clean, it’s a vast improvement to what it was. I’m not taking pics until it actually looks clean!
Why is it that order and organization are so much more conducive to being creative??
Hope everybody had a great weekend!
xoxox
Carly
Jul 28, 2010 | DIY, Life, Score!
Voting is now OPEN for the NYDS/Style Sample Magazine Create Couture DIY Challenge! I would love it if I could have your vote.:-) I also want you guys to win a Chic Steals original – so head on over there and comment too!!
and
I’ll be sharing all the tutorials on this blog too once the contest is over.:-)
Crossing my fingers for that magazine interview – it would be such a help for my design dreams!! Hope you guys like the DIYs I made!
xoxo
Carly
Jul 25, 2010 | DIY, From You, Life
from formspring.me:
Hey I wondered if you could help me with making one of these “bralets”, do you know how to make a pettern for them? http://api.ning.com/files/zcwHPg1VgsLUzsS1e99DsdD4ZlRqQdct0bCSs9*1rseLJIAKirKx55a0ARHDEJCLVDBdi8fpp9Gn0zIw37Jm5Vb-jsk5K1bz/bralet.jpg
