Here’s a great way to get your holiday shopping started (don’t tell me you’re done already!): a festive sale from Tresors de Luxe! You can thank me later. ; )
Hello to all our fashionistas and lovers of affordable accessories! Being that we are only 9 days away Thanksgiving, and just 41 days to Christmas we’ve decided to throw all caution to the wind and start our Holiday Sale now!!! We hope you start your shopping now, get the pieces you want for your friends, family and maybe even something special for yourself! We’ve added new pieces to our hottest collections, and are jazzed that we can bring such high quality to you at even lower prices! Since we’re an exclusive online boutique, we carry only a few of each item, we want our unique pieces to shine and have people wondering, “Where’d she get that?!” Shop now before these amazing deals are gone!
Remember, we offer FREE shipping on select items each week and a beautiful FREE jewelry bag with every purchase!
After writing my last post about evening coats (Warm Evenings: Dress Up Your Coat!), I got to thinking: what is that makes a coat “evening”, anyway? Sure, there are the duchesse-satin numbers, the velvet wraps, even some occasional cape drama— but how many of us own any of these, or want to? Since I’m not on the socialite circuit, let alone on the red carpet (yet), where’s the use value? Even with all the financial doom-and-gloominess, we still want to buy new clothes— we just expect more versatility. As I suggested in the previous post, why can’t one coat work for everyday use, as well as for dressier occasions?
To get into that day-coat-for-evening concept a little more, I thought I’d let you in on my getting-ready-for-the-museum-party (mentioned in the previous post) thought process.
Step 1: Pick a dress. I narrowed my choices down to 3 possibilities: the favorite, the pinch-hitter, and the in-case-of-emergency. And here’s where I ran into my problem. As I was trying on my favorite (a 1950s fit-and-flare-silhouette dress that I made with pale aqua silk noil to which I added an overlay of dark brown metallic lace), I suddenly realized it’s November, this dress is sleeveless — I have to wear a coat. Or something of that ilk. Problem: I have no coat/wrap/cape that’s the right combination of color and look to work with this dress.
So I ended up wearing my pinch-hitter dress: a bias-cut print silk georgette, one of my favorites; I got this from Anthropologie over 6 years ago, and I love it just as much now, but it’s quite definitely a summer dress. (Anthropologie called it the “Surrealist Dress”, which made it seem all the more appropriate for a night at the museum.) Here it is:
Okay, we now have no excuses left for looking sloppy on the weekends! Refinery29 has put together 5 outfits, each comprised of the following pieces:
1. Jeans
2. T-shirt
3. Flats
4. Sweater
5. Accessories (handbags, jewelry)
Example:
Easy weekend outfits, courtesy of Refinery29. Each is based on jeans, T-shirt, sweater, and flats, with handbags and a little jewelry thrown in. Continue reading →
In addition to zipper pulls (for just $2.50!!), Gwen makes beautiful jewelry, and stitch markers for knitting and crochet. And she can make your zipper pull in the color of your choice! Go and visit her on Etsy!
(And if you’d like to try your hand at making your own zipper pulls, check out my super-new tutorial!)
In the short amount of time I spent getting ready this morning for my great DIY zipper pull experiment, I learned several things:
1. I have relatively few clothes with zippers.
2. The ones with zippers are almost all invisible zippers. (This is probably due to my preference when making clothes— I find invisible zippers the easiest to install.)
3. The pulls on invisible zippers vary considerably from those of regular zippers.
Why are these facts important? Well, if you look at the following 2 photos, you’ll see that the available places where you can connect a new zipper pull are quite different:
Example of a regular zipper. Note the nice, big, obvious hole in the zipper pull.
Example of invisible zipper. Unlike the regular zipper, the pull on this one doesn’t have a hole; the new zipper pull will have to attach to the horseshoe-shaped piece above the pull shown here. Continue reading →
This is the first part of my follow-up on yesterday’s post on fixing a broken/missing zipper pull (Zip It: The Lost-Pull Fix). The next part will include full instructions for making a zipper pull (hurrah!).
When I needed pliers to open my replacement zipper pull, I grabbed the first ones I could lay my hands on, which happened to be in my jewelry-making supply box. They were right next to a package of lobster-claw clasps, and even though I was in a hurry to get that blog post going, it did occur to me at the time to wonder if those clasps would fit on an ordinary zipper pull. Hmm…
This morning, I took a closer look at my jewelry materials. Here’s the result of a quick rummage through my supplies:
Possible make-your-own-zipper-pull materials, clockwise starting with the package of lobster-claw clasps: a fancier brass lobster-claw clasp, a jeweled pendant, faux peridot pendant, faux sapphire pendant, and an old necklace with a pendant that could be repurposed as a zipper-pull ornament.
Zippers are such utilitarian things, why not dress them up a bit? (For all we know, they suffer from a perpetual sense of inferiority, considering the beautiful buttons, frogs, laces, and other closure types that compete with zippers. A lot of zippers are actually invisible! Honestly… how would you feel?)
As promised: Santa Fe Wardrobe, the shopping edition!
I like to start by “shopping my closet”. I know, I know, it’s much more fun to go out and get new stuff, but hey, it can also be rewarding to unearth something you haven’t worn in (she said with a blush) over 2 years, and find that it works perfectly with your travel wardrobe color palette! So into the closet I go, and find all these pieces that fit not only the color palette but my actual clothing needs for my trip to Santa Fe:
Lightweight Silk/Mohair Sweater (hand-knitted by yours truly) Continue reading →
Changing Your Clothes 