Friday, December 30, 2011

Friday Favorites - Woosie's My Little Pony mods

This week for Friday Favorites I want to introduce you to Woosie's My Little Pony modifications. Woosie takes My Little Ponies, re-roots their hair, and adds details (like emblems, corsets, boots, wings, etc.) on them using clay.

You can find more of Woosie's wonderful work in her DeviantART gallery. If you would like to buy some of her work, you can add her Ebay page to your "Favorite Sellers" list, so that you can keep track of her auctions.

Here are some of my favorite My Little Pony modifications by Woosie:




Sunday, December 25, 2011

What I Wore - Santa's Helper

Between my candy cane striped shirt and my green cardigan, I know this outfit is over-the-top Christmas (hence the title of this post); however, this is one of those times, I'm dressing purely for me... I don't care if I look loony, because this outfit makes me smile :).


Saturday, December 24, 2011

My favorite Shabby Apple skirts

A few weeks ago I won the Too Darn Hot dress from Shabby Apple on Dressed Up Like A Lady's blog. I had a fitting issue with the size I picked out, and they were sweet enough to let me exchange it for a different size! Not only that, they were super helpful about helping me figure out which size would work best with my measurements. I got the new sized dress back yesterday, so, hopefully I can get some good photos of me in it to post within the next couple weeks. I'd like to get some nicer photos of it than I usually post of outfits (IE photos not taken by the door in my kitchen).

Anyways, I wanted to share some of my favorite Shabby Apple pieces, however, I realized I have too many, so, I'm going to start with my favorite Shabby Apple skirts (click the photos to view larger/more photos on Shabby Apple's web-site).

Tinsel Town Skirt
Academy Award Skirt
(The back has cute ruffles!)
All Ruffled
Co-Ed Skirt
Francine
Hollywood Boulevard Skirt
Lost at Sea Skirt
Scholar Skirt

Through December 31st Shabby Apple is offering free shipping and a free necklace on orders over $50 with the following coupon code:
OUR GIFT

Friday, December 23, 2011

Friday Favorites - Noel Cruz doll repaints

This week for Friday Favorites I would like to introduce you to the work of Noel Cruz.



I came across Noel's work a few years ago on DeviantART. Noel is skilled in many artforms, however, what I am most drawn to is his repaints of dolls and action figures. He takes generic-looking dolls that are supposed to look like celebrities and completely repaints them so they actually DO!

Noel's personal web-site is ncruz.com. You can also view Noel's work in his DeviantART gallery, which is my favorite way to browse his art. Below are a couple of my favorite repaints by Noel.


Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn


Cher


Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie as in "The Tourist"


Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swann


Daniel Craig as James Bond


Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman

Sunday, December 18, 2011

FREE holiday printables

For those of you who like to make goodies for people for the holidays, Shabby Princess has a cute collection of FREE Holiday printables to help you with the finishing touches for food gifts. Click here to go to the collection's page to download the printables you see below.



ShabbyPrincess also has a lot of other really cute graphics (all free); while most are geared towards digital scrapbooking, there are so many other potential uses for them (just be sure to read the terms of use!).

Pulled pork tacos

Last week my boyfriend made some pulled pork, and we had tacos that I am still dreaming about.

Pulled pork + reduced fat colby jack cheese + Trader Joe's ah-maz-ing corn salsa + taco salsa




P.S. the side dish is cilantro-lime rice with more taco salsa.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Friday Favorites - Electra Designs Corsetry

For the third edition of Friday Favorites, I want to introduce you to Electra Designs Corsetry, the work of Alexis Black. I discovered Electra Designs five or six years ago on LiveJournal. I was immediately blown away by Alexis' talent. I have always had a love of corsets, but I had never seen the level of talent Alexis possesses. While all her corsets are simply stunning, the first corset below is the one that really blew me away. Her attention to detail is really incredible; never have I seen patterned fabric so masterfully aligned at a seam (and certainly not on such complicated fabric on such a complicated garment!). In addition to corsets, Alexis also makes neck corsets, corset skirts, bras, and more.

If you would like more information on ordering a corset from Electra Designs, check out Alexis' personal web-site, http://electradesigns.net. To view more photos of her incredible work, head on over to her Facebook page. You can even follow her on Twitter.

Here are twelve of my favorite Electra Designs corsets...


(Photo by Electra Designs)


(Models: Shien Lee and Lucus Lanthier, Photographer: Andrea Hausmann)


(Model: Winter Kelly, Photographer: Winter Wolf Studios)


(Model: Kitten Von Mew, Photographer: Kate Donovan of 21st Century Goddess)


(Model: Dena Massque, Photographer: Eline Spek)


Thursday, December 15, 2011

DIY: Your Digital Closet

I'm come up with an idea that while really, really simple, I think is pretty ingenious (but that's just me being humble). I'm sure plenty of other people have done it before, but none that I've read about. I was inspired by sites likes Polyvore that let you create what I'll call outfit idea boards. The problem with Polyvore, and similar sites, from what I can tell (I'm not actually a member of any) is that they have a huge selection of clothing. While that makes for a lot of fun and inspiration, sites like that, as well as fashion blogs, Pinterest, etc. just "inspire" me to want to buy a lot more clothes. Not only do I not have unlimited pools of cash or space to own different outfits for every day of the year, but I'm not exactly sure how I feel about personal consumerism and waste on that large of scale.

So, that brings me to my "ingenious" idea. I set up a digital closet of MY OWN clothes on my computer with the basic idea similar to sites like Polyvore that let you create digital outfits. The best part is, although it can be somewhat time consuming to create, it is fairly easy to do, and maintain. You don't even need any fancy programs, while I usually view my closet in Paint Shop Pro 7, you can get a similar view out of Windows Explorer/My Computer (if your folder does not show thumbnails, simply right click any blank space in your folder, go down to "View" and select one of the icon/thumbnail options).

I love this idea for so many reasons. It will encourage me to make better use out of the clothes that I already own. Before buying any clothes on-line, I can easily see how it will fit into my wardrobe (IE whether I will get much wear out of it). It will also help me love and appreciate the clothes I already have more. Here is how to make your own digital closet:


Step 1) Go Windows Explorer/My Computer and create a new folder called "My Closet."


Step 2) Create whatever subfolders you would like. Here are the folders I created:
"My clothes" - If you have a lot of clothes, or would like it more organized, you may want to break it down even further into "Tops," "Bottoms," "Shoes," "Accessories," etc. Personally I prefer it all to be in the same folder because I feel that it gives me more inspiration being able to see everything together (however, I may change my mind once I get more of my clothes added).

"Ideas" - Use for photos you find that give you ideas on how to wear YOUR pieces. Keep in mind, it doesn't have to be the same exact pieces you own, as long as you can create a similar look with your own pieces.

"Outfits" - Use to keep the collages of outfits you put together, so, you can have a go-to set of outfits.

"Work Clothes" - If you have to wear a specific type of clothes at work that you are likely not to wear in your normal life, you may choose to create a separate folder for these clothes. Of course, if you don't care about getting more innovative with your work clothes, and you are sure you can't work any of the pieces into your regular wardrobe, than there really is no reason to even add these pieces to your digital closet.

Step 3) Start saving/taking photos of your clothes. It is easiest to start with the clothes you have purchased recently; chances are you will still be able to find photos of those pieces on the web-site for the store where you bought it, and simply right click to save the images into your "My clothes" folder. For clothes I could not find anymore on the store web-sites, I simply did a Google Image Search for the items (For example: "'Old Navy' leopard cardigan"), because chances are, someone, somewhere on the web reposted the image before it was removed from the store's web-site. Yahoo Image Search can work well too. Polyvore is also good for searching for images of the pieces, because they often still have photos up of pieces after they become out of stock. For any pieces you can no longer find photos of on-line, you can take your own photos of them, or save photos on-line of pieces that are similar. Here is how the "My Clothes" folder of my closet is coming along:




Step 4) Save outfit inspiration ideas. This step is completely optional, however, I like to find outfit photos on-line to give me new ideas of how to wear my pieces. Pinterest and Lookbook.nu are good sites for this. Simply type in a general description of whatever piece you want inspiration for. For example, for my shirt below, I could try searching for "pink chevron shirt," "pink chevron top," etc. If you can't find many results, trying leaving the color of the piece off (try searching for just "chevron top"), or using slightly different description terms (for example: top, shirt, blouse) and you'll come up with different results.



Fashion blogs can be helpful for ideas, although as I mentioned above, they often have such generic results that they won't be a lot of help in giving you ideas of how to wear YOUR clothes. That said, I like the setup that Girl With Curves' has to her blog, because on the side of her blog she has a section when you can "Browse By Category." While not as specific to your clothes as the search method on sites like Pinterest and Lookbook, you can still browse for all outfits with cardigans, skinny jeans, booties, etc. for ideas.


Step 5) Create your digital outfits. I use Paint Shop Pro for this step, however, you could easily use MS Paint for this (which comes free with most computers). All you do is create a new blank image, and copy and paste whatever pieces you want to wear together, and save the image. For example, here is an outfit I created on my computer with my own clothes (you may remember it from my Wear It Wednesday: Graphic T-shirts post:

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Wear It Wednesday - Leather jacket

"Wear It Wednesday" was started by Rachel of For The Birds. Each week someone picks an item of clothing to center an outfit around, and bloggers share their outfits. I love the idea (even though I'm not a very stylish person!), however, with my work schedule changing again, this will likely be my second and last Wear It Wednesday outfit for a while. I encourage you all to check out Rachel's blog so you can follow along, and participate if you like.

This week's "Wear It Wednesday" was hosted by The Daily Dani and the item she picked was leather jackets. Here is my outfit:




Friday, December 9, 2011

Shabby Apple coupon code

Free shipping and necklace with $50 order from Shabby Apple.

OUR GIFT


You may remember remember Shabby Apple from my post two weeks ago when I mentioned that I won the "Too Darn Hot" dress.

Friday Favorites - Lipgloss and Black

Welcome to the second edition of Friday Favorites where I feature some of the coolest and most talented people I've met on-line.

This week I want to tell you about Syl and Sam of Lipgloss and Black.



Syl and Sam are sisters who own an on-line shop called Lipgloss and Black. Lipgloss and Black features Syl and Sam's handmade creations and reconstructions. I envy these girls' creativity and drive. Seeing all they accomplish together ALMOST makes me wish that I had a sister :).

While you are at Lipgloss and Black, take a peak at their blog to get to know these lovely ladies a bit better. (Psttt, they regularly post fun nail art tutorials!)


Here are some of my favorite pieces from Syl and Sam's Lipgloss and Black: