DIY is it taking so long?

This post by Susie Bubble on Johnny Loves Rosie has just reminded me of all the DIY projects that I've got brewing that I've still not got round to.

Johnny Loves Rosie - if you didn't know - do these quirky, totally DIY-able accessories, which are not exactly expensive but not really that cheap either. Seeing their bows and things just made me itch to get to work on some stuff.

However, between the work life and the social life and the blog life and the life life, I just can't seem to find the time to squeeze in my projects. To recap, I want to:

• Make a ruff and a large corsage out of a child's dress
  
• Make a playsuit out of some African print material that I brought back from my trip home
  
• Make some harem pants out of an old sweatshirt(well, actually it turned out to be a dress but that's another story)
  
• Make some pretty summer skirts out of the material I found at my local-ish charity shop
  
• Do something with my motherload of buttons
  

In addition to these, I want to:

• Make some cute hair accessories from my bits and pieces of ribbon, felt and random other found and habberdashed things
• Make a summer dress - I found the perfect ditsy-print material with yellow, red and green flowers, for £1 during a recent thrifting expedition. It is currently draped around my tailor's dummy in the hall and everytime I see it my palms itch with anticipation.
• Try my hand at transfers - I bought some Dylon product called Image Maker, which apparently transfers pictures onto fabric "in three easy stages"! I simply must try it out. I'm thinking a collage from fash-mag images onto a t-shirt would look totally cool. If anyone's ever used this stuff, I'd really appreciate some tips!

So, anyway, this weekend's already looking like a bust as I've got friends and fam cropping up everywhere but I will get started soon and then you can see the sweet - or possibly rancid - rewards of my labour.

The opposite of Koumpounophobia

Koumpounophobia is the fear of buttons. Apparently, one in 75,000 people suffers from it. I'm glad to say that I am not one of them. If anything, I'd say I'm a koumpounophilliac (but hopefully not in a kinky way). Which is lucky because this weekend I scored the motherload of buttons courtesy of my local-ish charity shop (above).

Almost a large sweet tin's worth of buttons for £3, I am over the moon. As you can see, they come a variety of colours, sizes and shapes.

My favourites right now are the heavy metal buttons with New York Paris Milan etched on them. I think they will make cute accessories with some ribbon or felt. And I can't wait to start decorating items of clothing of mine with some colourful and mismatched button action.

Other finds included:

• a pretty shift dress with drawings of pin-up girls all over it by Betty Barclay, £3! I wore it today with my thin, mint blue, double-buckled belt and my mint peeptoe flats and here's a photo. Yes, I know, not an everyday occurence round here. And I still suck at taking photos, so sorry if it's a little blurry. Click to enlarge.
• two different bundles of material, £1 for both. As the bloke pointed out, they look like curtains at the moment -ones an abstract garish print and the other a sweet, pale yellow floral - but I have high hopes for them becoming a pretty summer skirt and something else that I'm not quite sure of. We'll see.

My mind is buzzing with the possibilities. No doubt another DIY marathon is on its way soon.

Just call me Cruella

While doing the shopping for dinner this evening (green Thai curry and rice, mmm-mm good) I found out my one of the local charities is doing a closing down sale - hard to resist when everything is on a 75 per cent mark down.

As is the way with these things, most of the really good stuff was gone but I did find a darling child's ivory smock dress for 75p. It is so cute, all scalloped ruffles and ribbon and domed buttons down the back. Any baby would look even more cute than usual in it.

Coochie, coochie, cut - enjoy the cute while it lasts

But no, I'm not getting broody or with bun in oven. I intend to cannibalise it's pretty ruffles to make a cute ruff for moi a la Susie bubble. The smaller ruffles around the neck and wrists will be turned into a big corsage-ish brooch and I'm sure I'll find uses for the rest of the material.

Like stealing candy from a baby - The bits I'll be using

I feel so evil... I rather like it. It'll be puppies next, I think. *cue evil cackle*

At last, some real bargains

Since I moved to the Nethers and realised that I am never, ever getting out of here, I figured I might as well get acquainted with the area. There are quite a few charity shops that I'd been in a few times and then quickly run out of because they were so ridiculously expensive you just know that they have a fashion student volunteer in there somewhere practising mark-up. Seriously, I don't want to go to a charity shop that thinks it's okay, not only to stock Primark/Peacocks cast offs but also try to sell them for £10!

The "boutiques" here are similarly up their own behinds, full of snotty-nosed wannabes selling brash, raggedy, badly thought out dregs of designers collections for more than any sane human being should be willing to pay (no, really, souls have been sold for less). All in all, it's been rather disappointing.

Until yesterday, when I ventured forth into Deludedville and actually found some quite cool stuff that cost very little. I don't know, maybe the fashion student volunteer was on holiday, or (in my dreams) had died in an horrific accident involving overpriced high street cast offs and a malevolent length of tulle... What?! It could happen. *sigh*

What I got:

• Black Charles Jourdain clutch with red chevron stripe, £2.50 - I liked the look of this clutch already but then I saw the tags, did a double-take and got that sneaky, feral, beady look in my eye. Avarice. It's a deadly sin. Look it up.
  
• Vintage green leather bag with square metal handle, £3.00 - a gorgeous green with pink lining. And it exactly matches a pair of Shellys Mary Janes I have - also lined in pink. I love pink and green as a colour combo. It shouldn't work but it does.
  
• Gorgeous hand-painted chunky bangle, 75p - It actually fits over my giant man-sized hands, bonus.
  
• Ebony and ivory choker, £2 - will look rather spiffy with some safari/tribal gear. Which reminds me, I really must get round to doing something with the African material I brought back from the trip home.

The other good shop I've found in the Nethers is great little haberdasherry which is fantastic for rummaging around and picking up bits of material for DIY. Unfortunately, it's closing down this month - sod's freakin' law. While it's still open I've stocked up on lots of netting, chunky, coloured zips and the like and am currently embarking on a DIY marathon. 

So far, I've made a lovely pouffy (blue net skirt for wearing under skater skirts and over long tops) and I'm doing something clever with zips and a plain blue vest from Primark. Will reveal how-tos and finished products in another post (and as soon as I find my camera, which I know is hiding in one of my bags, darned if I know which one...)

Saturday I went thrifting...

... and normally, this involves trawling through acres of ancient clothing, trying on a load of ridiculous outfits and coming out with nothing but today must have been my lucky day.

At Past Caring on Essex Road in Islington, I picked up this gorgeous black velvet dress with sequin and bead detailing. It's body con *shudder* but it just looks so fabulous I couldn't resist.

It has a touch of strictly come dancing about it. For me, that's not a bad thing. I'll be saving it for christmas party season.

I also got an authentic biker jacket - and by that I mean it's made of that sort of thick leather, that bikers wear to protect them from minor scrapes. The best things about it are that it's blue! And it has badges. Also found a very pretty floral blouse.
The stripey poncho was from a charity shop, where I also picked up a very nice, fully lined pencil skirt.

Chazzing Vs Cheaping

The question of the day is: charity shopping, is it still worth it? I don’t know about you but back in my comparably skint days, the charity shop was my style saviour. It’s amazing what you could do with £5 and a little imagination.

In chazzing’s heyday, it wasn’t uncommon to go into a charity shop with £20 and come out with a couple of new outfits, including a new pair of shoes. In those days, people gave their good stuff away so that other people with less money could have them. Not anymore. With the rise of vintage shopping, ebay and every uptown beastie and celebrity cottoning on to the trend, the pickings have become very slim indeed.

Add to these, the contemporary phenomenon of cheaping. For those who are not familiar with the term, this refers to buying from those high street shops with high turnover, up-to-the-minute fashion for less. The current high flyers in this category are Matalan, Primark and Peacocks, with the supermarkets getting in the act with the likes of George at Asda and Florence and Fred at Tescos.

The obvious appeal of cheaping is, as the name suggests, the sheer silliness of the prices (a pair of shoes at Peacocks averages at less than £15), and their ability to quickly turnover trend after trend. This is the ultimate shopaholic’s dream, throwaway fashion. This is the MacDonalds of clothes shopping. See a trend on the catwalk today, by it for less than the price of two pints of beer tomorrow.

And let’s not forget the sheer convenience of it all. There’s a cheaping opportunity on virtually every high street, selling exactly what you want. Where chazzing involved many fruitless hours of going from shop to shop, trawling through less than pristine clothing racks, trying to find that one bargain that would make it all worthwhile, you can just walk in to your nearest Primark and pick up that “it” coat and nobody else has ever worn it!

It’s a no-brainer really. Chazzing is officially dead and cheaping is a live beast that will just keep growing and growing. The flipside of this of course, is that the imagination and individuality of style that chazzing brought to the table is fast being usurped by a cookie-cutter blandness that might still see us foraging for something different, come the backlash. So, maybe the death of chazzing has been wildly underestimated after all.

Images:
Top right: Matalan metallic ballet pumps, £8
Top left: George at Asda printed ballon sleeved top, £14
Bottom right: Tesco Hotshop ruched print dress, £12