Filed under: Fashion, Misc. | Tags: Art Attack, Arts & Crafts, Beanie, Bedazzled, Bejeweled, Bling, Broken, Cat, Club Monaco, Cold, Crafts, DIY, Ears, Eugenia Kim, Fashion, Gems, Huns, J.Crew, Jewelry, Jewels, Knit, Matilda, Mulan, Neil Buchanan, Style, Styling, Sunday, Toque, Weather, Winter
Judging by that title one may deduce that I am lacking creativity, and am Canadian; hopefully no correlation is made between the two. I am slowly (willingly) transforming myself into a cat, because why not, so that plus cold weather spurned a Eugenia Kim purchase. I still felt like partaking in the arts & crafts, though I blame my lack of effort in title-ing due to already being ‘hat-ready’ for winter. I’m saving my ingenious wordplay for the post featuring knit cat ears.
In the first of our DIY Sundays, assuming crafts become a staple hangover cure, the inspiration was a knit beanie with varying gem pieces sewn onto it. While the original hat had a clear design, it would be easier for our purposes and much more on-trend if we approached the bedazzling in a more relaxed way — think accidental bling. A few quick shopping stops to grab a hot glue gun, some plain toques, and cheap junk jewelry to break up and without spending more than $30 each we were set.
Most of craft time was spent staring at our hats, as if Matilda-styles gems would start floating and dancing and landing in place looking sweet, but that didn’t happen so we had a potato chip break. Eventually we all got quiet and down to business and within a couple of hours we had three very different looking hats in front of us — because we were all wearing them all night, inside.
Mine began as an explosion of jewels from one corner, but then I draped an old necklace on it/over my eye and as a huge fan of things I can hide behind, was sold. Christianne’s is definitely an explosion of various bling and she even sewed it all down, so you know she’s legit. And Jacinta, whose idea sparked the evening’s activity, created a kind of traditional zig-zag pattern, only entirely in beads and jewelry — both hers and Christianne’s look like something you would pay $60 for at Club Monaco, or J.Crew. Then mine looks like I wore a hat, then I wore a necklace, but on my forehead. Art!
C.
J.
H.
If you read this blog fairly often (or even don’t) then it’s no secret that I am hugely influenced by Jane Aldridge’s blog Sea of Shoes and beyond that, am totally obsessed with it. (I’m so sorry I ended that sentence with “it”, Niles Crane would have my head.) Anyway last summer I saw her post entitled “‘Charity’-for Branded” in which she and her mother had seen an article in Australian Vogue about a furniture set that had been drawn on by children and they wanted to recreate it for charity. They took one of their old chairs, covered it in canvas, took it to a children’s hospital so they could all colour on it and then the money from the auction of the chair would go back to that hospital. The outcome of that chair:
The second I saw this I knew I wanted one. No, mine won’t be drawn on by children since I don’t know any and I won’t be auctioning it off…okay, I suck and they’re much more noble, I’m sorry, I just want a chair like that! Moving on, I knew it had to be a nice chair or else it wouldn’t look right, and I don’t have gorgeous chairs lying about my house that I can cover in canvas so the search began for a cheap, but workable, chair. That’s where one of my favourite stores comes into play, The Elegant Garage Sale. The title says it all, it’s basically a well put together junk store by Bayview and Eglinton, but they have some real gems there and usually at reasonable to shockingly low prices. I found a chair for $50.00, had the wood painted and it reupholstered with white canvas:
My chair!
This was all done last summer, the reupholstering done by October, and until now it has just been sitting in our living room covered in plastic. Until now because now it has a home! It will be moving out of the living room and into My living room come October (only took a year plus…) So I’ll be posting updates of how the chair is coming along here. It has to be drawn on on the seat, the sides, the back and the actual backside of the chair since the canvas extends that far. So far my sister has helped, my mum has promised to and friends who have been aware of the project since the very beginning either want to help or feel quasi-obligated, which is fine by me.
I’m not sure if a stranger would be able to tell the age of the person who has done the majority of the drawing, but I like to think they would guess a number far lower than 20. My mum says a lot of it looks exactly like the drawings I used to make when I was little which is either a compliment to my little self or an insult to my older self… So much more to draw and therefore more to come!
I wear black 