A shoe refashion

This weekend, I refashioned another pair of shoes. I started with some cream pumps that I'd gotten at the dollar-a-pound quite a while ago...I'd worn them once or twice, but cream wasn't proving a really wearable shoe color for me. Also, as they were fairly old, they were already scuffed and had some dark smudges on them. Worthy of a renovation!


So I grabbed some nail polish...


Covered the trim and soles with masking tape, and painted away with the tiny nail polish brush:


After some detail work and a couple of coats in a few places, I had pink shoes with cream trim:



I wore them yesterday with a black-and-white floral dress for a bold bit of color (no pictures, sorry!). Definitely a lot of fun!

And, for the IFB Challenge #2, a brief haiku:

Refashioning time:
Old cream shoes plus nail polish...
Presto! New pink heels!

What else? I've been keeping up with my goals for Me-Made June of wearing at least one refashioned or self-made piece every day, but I haven't really been documenting the process this time around. I'm also going through a major decluttering phase...am completely hooked on decluttering and organization and home design blogs right now! However, this desire to clean up and streamline my closet and my apartment doesn't play so well with my pack-rat/magpie/lover of collecting beautiful things tendencies. For example, I read the forum posts on Unclutterer about things people are giving away/trashing/donating/getting out of their homes, and I find myself both inspired to clean out more myself and wishing that I lived near their thrift store so I could pick myself up some of those rejected items!

So, last weekend, I worked on cleaning out the wardrobe where I store my dresses (of which I have a ridiculous number...my style has swung very heavily to thrifted dresses in the past few years). I wanted it to look like this, with a small assortment of my favorite carefully-chosen pieces:

However, while my wardrobe looked like that, my bed, covered in the rest of the contents of the wardrobe, looked like this:


Reorganized and after some dresses that just don't fit me/look good on me/end up getting worn were given to Goodwill, the closet looked like this (a major improvement from before):


And here's what I'm wearing today, now that it's finally back to summer in Boston (after a week of rain, clouds, and temperatures in the 60s)...cleaning out my closet has reminded me of some pieces that will work well this season!


Dress: thrifted. Tank top: Express. Shoes: Nordstrom, thrifted. Earrings: Me-made.

Hope everyone is having a good last week of June! Can't believe it's almost July...

Patterned Shoe DIY

So I promised you all a shoe DIY this weekend! I started with this pair of navy Mossimo pumps...had gotten them free, but never had worn them because they were just a bit plain (though perfectly nice!)


I've also been seeing lots of amazing pictures of Jeffrey Campbell patterned shoes, like these Tick shoes in Tribal (image from stylediggers.com:


Gorgeous shoes, but far too expensive for me! So with the pattern elements of the Ticks as inspiration, and armed with a silver Sharpie, I started drawing freehand patterns on the pumps. The silver stood out well against the dark blue, though I had to be careful not to smudge it while still wet. I didn't try to make the patterns on the two shoes match, as I decided I preferred the "deliberately different" look more than the otherwise inevitable "close, but not quite a match" look. Here's the final result:



The backs:

From above:

What do you think? I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out and how simple it was! (Granted, we'll have to see how the Sharpie holds up once I've worn them a few times.) I should come up with a fun outfit to show these off. Now for the snow to melt so I can actually wear nice shoes outside...

A Little Pop of Color

Today was a quiet day, finally a little warmer and sunnier after the gray spell that hit the Northeast most of this week. It's funny, this first taste of fall... Saturday was beautiful, crisp and sunny, reminding me what I love about fall in New England. Then the rain and chill and unlifting gray started on Sunday, reminding me what fall in New England is actually like. I've been slogging around in tights and rainboots the last few days. But with today's sun, I went with an easy outfit combo I've done a lot: this little lace dress worn as a top (as it's scandalously short on me), a black skirt, and some sort of belt for a little color and more shaping.


Dress (worn as top): All That Jazz, thrifted something like 10 years ago. Skirt: Old Navy, thrifted. Shoes: Miz Mooz "Hazel" sandals, thrifted. Belt: thrifted. Earrings: handmade.


These Miz Mooz sandals are a new thrifted favorite, which I'd originally looked at due to their faint resemblance to those amazing Jeffery Campbell sandals that have been saturating the style blogs and striking desire in the hearts of many other bloggers. These have some of the same elements (wooden-ish base, ankle strap, black leather, studded trim, chunky heel), while also being really comfortable and actually being within my price range (I picked them up for $6, with only a little crack in the sole)!

Also, I'm interested to see that Miz Mooz still is selling these sandals. How long have they been selling this style, I wonder? Or how quick was their journey from newly purchased sandals to Goodwill secondhand shoes to me? The quick turnover of fashion...

Florida!

So, as I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm in Florida this week with the boyfriend and his family on a quick vacation. This was the cue for Florida to be ten degrees cooler than usual and Massachusetts to hit the upper sixties yesterday. But there is an ocean here, which is always quite exciting for me! I grew up in Colorado, so I'm used to dry and landlocked.

An outfit, from a couple of days before we left for Florida:

This was Friday for work and then an evening out (dinner and hanging out afterward) with the cast of my thesis performance. It was really nice to have a fun time with them and be reminded that there were good things about this performance.


I forgot to take a closeup of these shoes...I promise I'll do that when I get back, as they are pretty fabulous. Black wedges with little studs/jewels covering the toe. I saw these at my favorite clothing-by-the-pound and was really thrilled when it turned out they actually fit me!

This trip has been very nice so far. We went on a boat ride through part of the Everglades on Tuesday. Everyone was wondering if we'd see any alligators. That question was put to rest when we stepped out of the car at the boat place and saw this in the canal ten feet away:

And another alligator! We saw six on the trip and then dozens more in the water on the side of the road driving home, after we'd learned what to look for. Remind me not to ever have my car break down in the Everglades.

And some mangroves!


I don't have the picture of me holding a baby alligator because my camera battery died right before that, but hopefully I can get a copy of the ones the boy's family had taken.

It's been nice to have a bit of time away from the lab to refresh my mind. And Florida is fun, even if not too warm! It was a bit of a struggle getting here, though; we were scheduled to fly through Charlotte on a flight leaving Boston at 9:40AM, requiring the boy and I to get up at about 6AM. Now, this was Sunday, so we'd just lost the hour of daylight savings...so make that 5AM. First thing I do is check the flight status...all well. Ten minutes later, we get a call saying the flight to Charlotte has been canceled. So we rush to the airport to see if we can get on an earlier flight, while the boy is on hold with the airlines for half an hour...eventually they get us on a flight through DC leaving at 2PM and getting into Florida at 10PM. It was then 7:30AM, and we're already at the airport. So...long time of waiting in airports and writing parts of my thesis! But we made it here safely. Perhaps I'll get a couple of outfit shots in before we leave on Saturday!