Chic Shout Out - all the fun of Fashion Love Affairs

This week I was going about my usual DIY blogging business of solving the world's fashion problems the crafty way when I happened upon Erickson Beamon's fabulous neon-charmed cuff and necklace.

Erickson Beamon Colour Me Crazy silver-plated Swarovski crystal necklace (see more Erickson Beamon)

Erickson Beamon Colour Me Crazy silver-plated Swarovski crystal cuff (see more erickson beamon bracelets)

As charming as these items were, with asking prices of £650 and £715 respectively, I - justifiably - couldn't be asked with the real McCoy. Imagine, then, my excitement when I fortuitously happened upon a DIY fashion solution, courtesy of  the Fashion Love Affairs blog. It's great to see DIY fashion growing as a fashion followers' shared interest and as a blogging genre. Turning fashion's audience from consumerist to creative is a way of life I'm proud to be part of, and it's heartening to see other bloggers share that vision. It also proved that a lot can happen in the space of just one week - even when you're working for 45 hours of it - how I love the wonder of modern technology!

Gigi Danielle of Fashion Love Affairs made the prestigious cut for International Fashion Bloggers' "Links à la mode" list with her DIY jewellery entry "In all my glittery goodness" (Envious much - wardrobe envy, that is. Whatever did you think I meant?) She gave a diamante and ribbon necklace some fashion resuscitation with a slick of neon acrylic paint and a sprinkle of glitter with gold stars to add a bit of sparkle and texture.



To find out how and what to get, here's the link again - you know what to do!

It's so easy to get the Erickson Beamon look with this method and a diamante necklace. Mix your neon painted stones with glitter-covered ones. Throw some silver chains into the mix. Give your accessory a right royal finish by adding some diamantés. Have fun, experiment and, of course, save yourself a fortune. Your wardrobe will thank you for it - you know it makes sense!

Oh Miu Miu's Stars!

Another brief D.I.Y. fashion bite for you this week, this entry's come somewhat later in the day than I would have liked. This is partially down to personal laziness and for that I'm giving myself a token slap on the back of the hand as we speak (as it were - or, perchance, as you read?). However, it was also a relatively late inspiration that spurred me on to attempt Miu Miu's painted snakeskin shoulder bag. The reason? As we all know, big prints are back. What's more, this baby grabbed me because it had an essence of handicrafts, itself, with hand-painted stars and a thin slick of blood red paint on choppy black snakeskin material.

Image: Net-a-porter

High fashion looked to craft in the 1970s, or the "me decade" as it was dubbed by Tom Wolfe. Zandra Rhodes and Ossie Clark were featured prominently in British Vogue, as well as Barbara Hulanicki's appliquéd works for her iconic Biba boutique. At the start of the decade, Bill Gibb, a designer known for his leather work, appliqué and elaborate knits, won the coveted 1970 designer of the year title. The do-it-yourself ethos  resonated at all fashion levels as a sartorial embodiment of self-expression. I've drawn this comparison in earlier entries with the subtly different paradigm of economising that D.I.Y. fashion signifies today. It's not to say that artistic expression - the free reign you have of knowing how to make anything you set your heart on - isn't another factor in the current popularity of crafty fashion projects. The aforementioned handbag I took on in this entry appeared to be a nod to fashion handicrafts of yesteryear, if only in the choice of medium - an incitement to be independent and create a look on a home-made personal level. Well, it was Vogue magazine's former editor-in-chief, Edna Woolman Chase who said "Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess" I like to think of said style as a second-hand faux snakeskin bag, a few fabric pains, a paintbrush, a palette knife and the merest smidgeon of creative ingenuity!

You will need

A dark-coloured snakeskin shoulder bag - mine cost £4.21 with postage and packing from Ebay.

Dylon fabric paint at £3/bottle at John Lewis and Hobbycraft in red (dark fabrics paint), white and black

Paint brush

Palette knife

Three simple steps to a stylish snakeskin statement piece

Use your paintbrush to cover your bag relatively thinly in red fabric paint - by that I mean with the  snakeskin texture clearly showing through and with dark background masked by a red tint but still visibly dark.

Use your palette knife to construct the straight shapes of your stars and to fill them in.

Go around the edges of your stars with your white fabric paint and palette knife. My tip would be to make sure your paint is as runny as possible, dip your palette knife ensuring that you coat the edges generously with paint and wipe the sides on the edge of your pain pot, so that you've only got paint on the edge of your knife. That's the best way to avoid smudging and unwanted mess. Also, if your white line runs slightly thin, as you streak along the edge of your star, so much the better - if you look closely, you'll see this happens on the original.

... and there you have it!

Day 5 with... me!

So, today it's my turn to take over on the DIY Bloggers Fashion Week with my creative ode to the Spring/Summer 2012 shows. The fashion statement in question? Like Carly, I chose to sartorially say it with flowers, as it were, and looked to London Fashion Week for my inspiration. My entry is a hand-crafted version of Matthew Williamson's floral printed blouse:

Image: Style.com

You will need

A white top or blouse (mine was a converted muumuu - £7, charity shop buy)

Screen printing kit (mine was by Artrain and cost about £3 from Ebay)

Iron and ironing board

Lots of plastic carrier bags

Sewing pins

Computer - with Photoshop installed - and a printer

Tissues

Water for rinsing brushes, also a tub of water for soaking and washing screens after use

Paintbrushes - ideally with a small, fine tip

Metal 30cm ruler

Palette knife

Fabric paints in the following colours(I recommend Pebeo opaque fabric paints, £3.99 at Hobbycraft and worth it because they're not runny like many other fabric paints ):

Other fabric paint colours you'll need, included with the screen printing kit, are:

Time

About 1-1.5 hours to trace each screen.

About 12-15 hours for screen printing/ blending/ linear pattern painting

About 30 minutes for ironing and preparation

Difficulty

Very Hard

Don't be put off but I found this a tricky one and I learnt quite a bit on the job. It might have been down to my choice of equipment (the method in my madness was to avoid forking out £50-80 for a professional screen printing kit and not having access to a printing studio - unless you count my bedroom!) A word of warning - screen printing's a very messy business so take extra care to protect clothes and furniture!

The Video Tutorial

Result!