DIY of the Tiger - How to craft a Kenzo tiger-embroidered sweater

Easy tiger - well easy when you know how - with inspiration courtesy of Kenzo.

Image: Coolspotters.com

You will need

A sweatshirt (mine was £6 from Primark)

Soft fabric interfacing

A4 printer and paper

Iron and ironing board

Differently coloured marker pens

Scalpel

Small all-purpose scissors

Pins

Sewing machine (make sure it can do a basic zigzag stitch)

About 4 differently coloured threads (I chose bright yellow, lime green, dark purple and lilac)

Felt in 4 different colours (I chose orange, pink, purple and navy)

Gemstone and fabric glue (£2.99 from Hobbycraft)

Difficulty

Medium 

This turned out slightly more challenging than I expected, purely from trying to get the sewing neat.

Time

8 hours - I think. I didn't time this one too fantastically. My schedule was such that the whole process was a bit stop-start (also, when you're filming and editing video tutorials the process always takes much longer) so it was hard to tell.



Here's a printable copy of the template I drafted up:

Trendy Wensdy: All There in Black and white

All There in Black and white by chiccheat featuring activewear jackets

Take your pixels - How to DIY Orla Kiely's pixellated galleon designand Topshop's geometric jewellery

90s retro pixel designs, graph paper... you do the math.

Always Fashion, never ordinary. (clipped to polyvore.com)

Orla Kiely sweater (see more button back sweaters)

Left image: Asos.com

You will need

Graph paper ( with 5mm x 5mm squares)

For the jewellery

Fimo clay

Fluorescent nail polishes (available in a pack of 4, costing £2 from Primark)

Scalpel

Pencil

Clear car body lacquer (£3.99 at Elliots)

For the Galleon top

Black cardigan

Pins and a sewing machine (for taking in the sides)

Neon yellow and white jersey (in my case, cut off old clothes)

Scalpel

Sharp thread scissors

Pencil

Iron and ironing board

Time

About an hour for each one, not including baking time in the case of the jewellery.

Difficulty

Pretty Easy

Modelling the clay for the jewellery takes quite a bit of patience but thankfully it's not technically taxing. Just take your time.

To make the jewellery...

Draw your shapes onto your graph paper using the grid-like layout as a guide to get your jagged, pixellated edges.

Use your scalpel to cut out your shapes, zigzagging along the edges and using the sharp edge to gouge out the middle once you have cut an outline.

Bake your clay shapes in the oven closely following the instructions provided (if it's Fimo, it will probably be half an hour on a low heat but don't take my word for it, refer closely to the specifications on the packaging!). Paint your nail polish onto both sides and glaze your pieces with an all-over spray of clear lacquer.

Glue in place any attachments and fastenings for your jewellery, whether they be for brooches, earrings or pendants.

For the top...

Using your graph paper as a guide, draw out your ship design, which includes the yellow backdrop. Cut all your pieces out with a scalpel.

Glue them to your bondaweb and iron it onto your clothes.

Cut out your bondaweb and fabric pieces with your sharp thread scissors.

Peel away your bondaweb backing (the paper stuff on the back) and iron your pieces in place.

Pick your DIY collaboration

7 DIY bloggers

A  50-picture-strong (and counting) Pinterest board of SS 2013 fashion with...

2 weeks of voting time:

YOU, DEAR READERS, will decide how to make us busy!

pin, like or re-pin the pictures on this board and the ideas with the highest number of pins will be realized!!

The DIY bloggers joining me are:

Alessia from Matter of Style

Carly from Chic Steals

Donatella from Inspiration & Realisation

Cat from Cut Out & Keep

Sylvia from Dare to DIY

Auna from La Vie En Rose



Make sure it's your must-haves that come into DIY fruition - and happy voting!

DIY Digest: On Target

My quick. quirky quandary-solver was inspired by the marbled bangles from Prabal Gurung's recent collection for Target...

...and also those awkward occasions when you unwittingly treat yourself to a fabulous nail varnish, only to find you never wear it, be it for work or spare-time related reasons (let's be honest, is there really such a thing as adequately quick-drying nail polish on a 5-minute time budget when you're always late by default?). Worse still is when you find yourself repeating the error enough times to find yourself with a mountain of unused, semi-congealed nail polishes you can't find time to use or bear to throw away, like I did! While they do make fabulous dressing table ornaments - especially if you arrange them in rainbow-spectrum-style - it's always more satisfying to put them to good use, and to a find a way to slip them on in the space of two seconds!

You will need

5-8 differently coloured nail varnishes. (it helps if they work as colour combinations)

Bangles, ideally silver but any colour will do, metal or plastic. I picked mine up for £2 on the sale from H & M

Clear car lacquer

Difficulty

Very easy

...Granted it's even easier to make a mess if you're not careful but picky, picky!

Time 

10 minutes

Nailing it!