Clearance Dress from Target

Sometimes I am surprised to find some really nice things on the clearance rack. Lately, I've been having a lot of luck with Target clearance. I highly recommend their clearance section.

I am always skeptical of anything found on the discount rack, and for good reason. You shouldn't buy clearance clothes without trying them on--that's my policy. A reason the item might be on clearance in the first place is because it might have a strange fit or weird fabric. You definitely won't know for sure until you see it on yourself!

So when I grabbed this dress off the rack, I didn't have high hopes but I couldn't resist--look at the price, for crying out loud!

 The dress actually fit quite well! It was definitely worth the price.

I wore my new dress with leggings, boots, a tie at the waist, and a long-sleeve shirt layered underneath. Very cozy!

DIY Add Lace to a Cardigan

For today's trick, I'm going to take an old sweater that has been turned into a cardigan and add lace.

Remember this DIY cardigan made from an old sweater? Well, we're going to take that idea and add some embellishment.

 I cut this old sweater down the front to make it a cardigan. It looked fine left that way, but I was wanting more. I grabbed some scraps from a project I'd done with lacy curtains purchased at the thrift store. I cut strips, then began sewing them along the inside of the cardigan....

 And here's the result! Very easy. I went back and added a little more lace to the neckline to make it looked even nicer:

It sure looks fancier than it did in the first place!

DIY Louise Costume

For Halloween, my sister dressed up as Tina, and I dressed up as Louise from the show Bob's Burgers.

It was a major search to get the components of this costume. I ended up getting fabric and sewing the dress myself. It was a pretty makeshift, but it worked. The fabric was like $6.50.

For the hat, I bought a pink hoodie, cut off the hood, and cut out the ear shapes from the rest of the hoodie. I used pipe cleaners to line the ears so they would stay straight. This didn't work as well as I hoped...

If I did this costume over, I would have bought pink fleece to make the hat and just sew it all from scratch rather than using the hood from the hoodie. I don't feel like it saved that much work, and it was more expensive than buying fabric. 

Clashy Red and Pink

So, I guess there's maybe like some idea floating out there that you shouldn't wear pink and red together. I've always loved these colors together, though.

I got this red skirt and this camel blazer at the thrift store. I got the yellow scarf at Wal-Mart like a year ago. I think it was like $3. 

I got this sweater at Target on clearance for like $11. I couldn't resist the sheep!

Here's a cool post that totally supports my love for pink and red. 

Second Chance Halloween: Tina for $20!

Halloween is a WONDERFUL time to give clothes a second chance. It's great to recycle, and also great to save money on a costume. I mean, to get a cheaply made piece of crap costume that's already made, you'll probably shell out close to $50, and even then it might be missing components. This is one reason I love thrifting and looking for deals around Halloween.

Months ago I decided that I wanted to be Tina from Bob's Burgers this year. Over the coming weeks, I collected the various parts for my costume, and I'm happy to say that this costume can be made for $20. Yeah. For real!

Wig: $6, WalMart
Glasses: $5, WalMart, on clearance
Bow: $1, WalMart, on clearance
Shirt: $2, thrifted
Skirt: $4, thrifted
Socks: $2, Target (painted my own stripes)
(Shoes: already had similar ones I could have used, so I'm not counting this as part of what I purchased for the costume, but I did need some new ones so I spent like $15 on them at WalMart.)

Success!

"Cheri" Red Blazer

I'm not big on blazers, but I've worn my share. And red it my favorite color. So finding this at the thrift store was awesome!

 It's such a vibrant red!

 And it was literally like $2 at the thrift store. That's it! So it simply had to become part of my vintage collection.

 Personal Petites is an 80s brand specializing in career clothes for petite ladies. That's probably why the sleeves are a little short for me...haha. But they look cute rolled up :)

Blue dye fun... with HAIR

OK, OK, this isn't a clothing post. And it isn't even about thrifty finds. It's about hair dye. But... it's about DIY hair dye, and that is something that I LOVE.

So since I love to dye my hair all the time, my friends have started coming to me to dye their hair as well. I've also done some cuts, but I assure you, I always make it clear that I'm totally not a professional...although I might like to be.

My friend called me last night and asked if I could come over and do her hair today. She wanted a chunk on the side to have peacock colors.

We started with piecing out the chunk of hair that we were going to dye and separating it from the other sections of hair.

In order for the funky colors to stick, you've gotta bleach the hair first. Unless you're like already a blonde.

Soooo, I mixed up some bleach powder and peroxide (30 vol--her hair is thick and dark) at a 1:1 ratio and covered the section of hair to be dyed. Very thoroughly.

We let it sit in her hair until the hair was nice and light. Tip: never leave bleach in your hair for more than sixty minutes. It's not really accurate that bleach will make your hair fall out, but it is going to severely damage it. Like super duper fry it to death.

We rinsed out the bleach and had some lunch.

You wanna put the dye on dry hair, so we dried up the bleached portion of hair and slathered on the dye. 

When dying your hair a funky color, you want to leave the dye in your hair as long as possible. Well, that is if your doing a funky color that's sans peroxide, which is practically all of them since it's really rare to find permanent funky colors. Anyway, leave it in as long as you can; it's not going to damage your hair. It's just going to help the dye stick.

We rinsed out the dye after we couldn't stand waiting any longer, and much to our dismay, the color had not taken the way we hoped. 

It might be hard to tell from the above picture, but the dye was basically just a super thin wash of teal over the bleached blonde. My friend bought the dye, and it wasn't a brand I've ever tried before. It was Color Jamz. I won't be buying it. I was quite unimpressed. 

I didn't want her to hate her hair, so I took her to my house and slathered some more dye on it. I used Ion Color Brights in aqua for the top bit of color.

I LOVE Ion Color Brights colors. They are super sticky. We also used N Rage in purple plum for the darker part of her hair. It's also fabulously sticky color.

We let the color sit for a while and then washed it out. We dried it and took some pics of the finished product, which I think is awesome.