Melted plastic bags styled with lego bowties

Make your t-shirt a changing canvas for your Trashion Plastic Artwork! 10 minute fun with cutting plastic bags and melting them to t-shirts. This technique is not permanent. The plastic will stay on a few uses and should be removed before washing the garment (it will come off in the washing machine). Check out my tutorial on Fusing plastic bags to t-shirts and knitwear. This will look great with my lego-bowties! I´m planning to make a few of these bowties for sale in my Etsy shop.

The Leanimal in you

Leanimal is a sustainable fashion brand designed by Leanne Marshall. I find her fashions very inspirational. She uses loads of draped fabric to form beautiful details on clothing. Leanimal has a shop at Etsy. Too bad almost all of her clothes are sold out at the moment, but I hope she will have new available soon.. Meanwhile you can check out the "sold" section and get inspired!

Nice and Shiny fashion home projects

Nice and Shiny is a street fashion blogger from Winnipeg Canada that also bloggs about her DIY projects. Her latest project is the measuring tape belt in true Jeremy Scott vibe. I´m totally taken by all her DIY fashion projects. Love the cartoon heeled wedges, Pocahontas fringe top and Pleat tee.

Yes, the zipper necklace is unisex.

Unisex, what an outdated word. But unfortunately it´s the only one I have do descride that something suits both genders. Soo, my zipper necklaces are unisex. I didn´t think they were until a photographer (guy) friend of mine saw my necklace, tired it on and wanted his own. Of cource I had to make him one. He makes it look good. Susie Bubble, a London girl whom I recently made one necklace to, noticed this also when his boyfriend tried it on. Sorry Susie, it seems this piece has to be shared :) I love the way it looks with guy-cardigan though! I might have to try it myself...

Shopping indie fashions online at Smashing Darling

Etsy is a great site for handmade goods, but I unfortunately it does not offer a quality range of goods in clothes. Smashing Darling is the perfect site when shopping for a unique dress or other DIY/indie fashions online. All of the goods fetured on the site are for sale. It´s like "net-a-porter" of indie labels! Here are some of my favorites.

The 615 Project Fiona dress.


Laura Dawson Gallerist jacket.


Ena Daro Couture plaid couture dress.


Kahri Sweetheart Belted Circle Dress.


Angela Johnson T-shirt Ballgown

FadMashion emerging designer network

FadMashion is a new site for designers who want their works and brand noticed. “At FadMashion we make it easier for retailers to find fresh, quality talent in a marketplace overrun by outdated, scattered resources and we make it easier for designers to present their wares through our streamlined profile management interface. It has never been easier.“ I found loads of inspirational new talents with just an hour surfing. The site is still in Beta - that promises to solve the problem that designers and retailers face. The site rquires "fashion enthusiasts" to sign in to view designer details and collection images.

Dimitri Scheblanov fashions. Great look to re-fashion old tees and other clothes with a textile pen for a graphic and childlike artsy (unisex) look. I hope my local craft shops carry textile pens also in different colors so I can do this kind of work in the full rainbow spectrum! This kind of refashioning can be done quickly and in one evening. Definately something I plan to get done this fall when it rains outside :)





Octopi NYC. I love the cuts and material combinations in their FW08 collection.




Found via DIY City Mag blog.

ITS#SEVEN fashion design competition winners

This years International Talent Support competition ITS#SEVEN winners have been announced. This year Finnish Heikki Salonen grabbed the Diesel Award (50 000€) with his graduate collection. Congratulations! There were many zippers seen in the winning collections and no wonder because YKK was one of the event sponsors. See all the winners and their collection images HERE. I recommend clicking to the high-res images so you can see the details better. All of these collections are filled with stunning details. There´s also plenty of event photos available about the show and all the other desgners and collections in the competition.

FASHION COLLECTION OF THE YEAR - David Steinhorst. Zippers galore. Click to the high-res images for a closer look at the zipperwork.





DIESEL AWARD - Heikki Salonen. I loved the cropped unisex suit jacket, patched pants, blanket jacket and shoulder pearl beading.





MARIA LUISA AWARD - Alithia Spuri Zampetti. Stunning paper sculpture clothing.




Accessories Collection of the Year - Valentim Quaresma Unbeliavable steampunk / cyberpunk inspired metal scrap bodyjewelry collection.




YKK Award - Benjamin Shun Lai Ng. Very clever detailing and design ideas on mens footwear.

Clothing reconstruction inspiration from Eyola

There´s a new talent in London - Eyola! Her first collection is a remarkable mix of inventive and extraordinary shapes, cuts and details. Very inspirational collection when planning clothes reconstructions. My favorite is the suit-skirt and fringle dress. This is truly a new "name" to look out for in the future.






Via StyleBubble blog.

Third zipper necklace finished!

My third zipper necklace finished! This one will be sent to London to Susie Bubble who writes StyleBubble fashion blog. This piece is made from 12 jacket zippers handswen together. As you can see The necklace can be worn in many ways. Detail in front, back, under one arm and so on. There really is no "right way" to wear it. My necklaces are very adaptable to different kinds of outfits. The best way to wear them is attach them to the garment with safety pins to keep it in place. In the last picture you can see my best Agyness Deyn impression :))

This necklace is heavy for a piece of jewelry, 525 g (= 1,15 lb / 18,5 ounces). But after you attach it to your garment with safetypins (so it does not move) you can hardly notice it because the weight is distrbuted evenly around your shoulders. I´ve worn these with t-shirts and ball gown dresses. The zippes are layered so that the reverse side is all canvas (see necklace tutorial). This way it does not itch or irritate your skin because no metal areas touch it. It does not heat up in sunlight It´s actally very cool to wear outdoors.

Click to my Zipper necklace tutorial to see how I make these. If you want me to make you one, send me mail. I make custom orders!

Discarded to Devine 2008 runway show pics

Discarded to Devine 2008 recycled fashion show was held in SF in April (previous post HERE). The organization has now released some runway and entry images of this fantastic event on their site. Click to "Design & Designers" and 2008 images. Definately worth checking out! Also keep in mind that Discarded to Devine 2009 is coming, so check back to the site for more info. Maybe some of your designs will make it to the 2009 show!

Thight fashion - Päivän sukkahousuvinkki

Pantyhose or thights are a big no-no for the eco-concious fashionista since they are made nylon (= polymere plastic). They brake easily and therefore are often thrown away after just few uses. I prefer to use only fish-net thights because I have noticed them to be more durable and therefore I buy maybe 5 pairs a year. Maria Lau makes jewelry and other werables from thights and other recycled material by braiding and binding them together with beads and luxurious pearls. She has worked with fashion houses like Michiko Koshino and DKNY to name a few.






In case you did not know, re-using pantyhose in new ways is a bit of a joke in Finland. A local food market chain K-Kauppa used to publish "today´s pantyhose tips" (Finnish "sukkahousuvinkki") in their magazine Pirkka. Hilarious stuff like "Slip a champagne bottle in a pair of pantyhose when popping the cork. This way the cork will not fly to anyones head and hurt them". People claimed to use thights for almost anything and I do not doubt that some meant what they wrote in. The magazine actually paid for good tips... Anyway, if you do make something from recycled thights and want to wear them in Finland, make them so well that people don´t realize them being thights and don´t advertise the original material... Some people just wouldn´t get the trashion aspect. I´m sure this is not the case in the rest of the world. We are a funny nation sometimes.

How to make a thights necklace, a tutorial by Smaggle Style. Made from thicker winter thights.


Thight dress in Discarded to Devine fashion show in San Francisco.




I remebered seeing this dress in the inside cover of Destenys Child´s album. Look at the middle dress. I think it looks exactly the kind of design I would go for when using recycled thights. Although nylon can be a very "hot" material to wear, since it´s plastic, the dress has to be lined with jersey. Even the pearls are not a problem! I have a box full of wooden beads at home. The beads were salvaged from a dumster, a thrown away driver´s wood bead seat cover. They have been waiting for a project like this. I think the worn down wood beads and skincolored granny thights would get a major facelift on this kind of a project. Now I wonder what metal zippers (canvas part cut out) would look like mixed and bound up with thights....? My friends will propably think I´ve gone insane if I ask them to give me their cast off thights...? Have to think of a diplomatic approach.

Maria Lau´s link found via Style Bubble fashion blog.

Shoulder pad fashions

Shoulder pads are one of those little things in fashion that continue to devide peoples opinions. Some cannot stand them and some do. I´m one of those who love them. A lot of the clothes I buy from secondhand stores have shoulder pads. I usually cut them out but I have saved them all since I think they have exellent trashion potential.

Last month I blogged a lot about hats, millinery and fascinators. I cannot do any proper millinery myself, but I started to think about using my collection of shoulder pads (cut out of secondhand 80´s clothes) as fascinator-bases a few months ago.. Jennine from The Coveted blog has done just this. She has made some rad looking hats from shoulder pads. Red hot trashion! It´s funny how some people think about the same thing at the same time. I suppose it´s how trends are born. I´m hoping she will make a few for sale in The Coveted Shoppe in Etsy.

I have planned to make a Martin Margiela styled dress with the entire bodice or dress covered with shoulder pads. The other design would be a Grace Jones inspired mega-shoulder-pieces with at least 20 pads per side. You know the kind that would make a american football player in full gear look small.. Both of these projects would be a nightmare to those still refusing to think shoulder pads are anything more then a horrible fashion mistake from the 80´s. But not me. Maybe Roisin Murphy could appreciate them!




Images via The Coveted blog.

Cut and paste inspiration

DIY City Mag featured a few pages of my inspiration scrapbooks in their latest issue. Below the story. Click to MY INSPIRATION BOOK GALLERY if you want to see all the pages.

"It began with a problem...

I was first introduced to inspiration boards and books nine years ago when I was doing my thesis in fashion college. For it I interviewd designers on the process of fashion design. Each one of them started with an inspiration board collage that defined colors, theme, form, materials and the overall look of the collection. They said it was the most important part of the process and they defined the frames of the whole project. I had collected inspiring magazine clippings in office folders for seasons and at some point my shelf space just ran out. My husband was also tired of the huge fashion magazine piles in the corner of our livingroon and was threadning me to through them all out... Something more compact had to be invented. That´s when I remembered my thesis designer interviews. I bought blanc illustration books and started cutting. After a few evenings my inspiration folders had shrunk to one tenth of their original weight.



More than just a picturebook.
Inpiration scrapbooks are not just fun to make (to me it´s a form of scissor therapy), I found them to be handy in a whole lot of ways. I´m finally able to organize all my clippings as I wanted; by detail, material, designer or styling. Scrapbooks are magazine size so I can to have them in my bag every day. I usually take them with me when I go out to look for materials to a new project. Kind of an illustrated picture-shopping list! I can add drawings and notes on the pages right beside the pictures so all the ideas are stored in one place. I mostly concentrate on magazine clippings in my inspiration books but they can contain so much more. It can be anything you can paste on a book; a movie ticket, candy wrapper, an old photo, a piece of fabric or thread, a pressed flower, anything that you want to come back to. If you want to add 3D items, I suggest making inspiration boards.



Scrapbooking for perfectionists.
Usually I have one inspirationbook in the making. When I have cut all the clippings I organize them (by theme) between the pages but do not paste them until the whole book is organized, so I´m able to adjust the picture size and order to the last minute. My goal is to have every page filled with as much details as possible, an intresting look and a beautiful visual presenation. I really put a lot of time in the editing and thingking the pages through. I prefer to think of them as artwork with a practical function. If some clippings don´t seem to fit the theme or they just don´t look as inspiring as they did before, they are dismissed from my book.



Finding inspiration.
I browse through hundreds of fashion shows in a season and try to come up with ways to transform the catwalk-trends and designer details in to trashion reconstructions. If you browse through my books you can see that I adore humoristic details, special cuts, handmade treatments and anything fashionable can be transformed and made from recycled and secondhand materials. After collecting and sorting all the clippings the themes just seem to pop up. Runway designers have often surprising and intresting material, color combinations and forms in their collections. Most of them never make it to fashion magazine editorials, so I pick the ones I can apply to my clothing reconstructions and paste them into my book. I also read many fashion and interior blogs to find inspiring images and local streetfashion-micro-trends. Looking out for ideas I have not seen done before in crafts help me to keep my designs fresh and intresting.



Sharing the idea.
Today I have about six books that contain inspiration from hundreds of fashion magazines (yes, I buy a lot of them..), fashion collections and websites. My books have grown way bigger than my ability to execute the ideas and projects featured in them so I while back I desided to share them online for everyone to read. I scanned my favorite pages and dumped them to my blog and wed inspiration picture gallery. Since scrapbooks are collages, they are copyright-free and you are able to publish them where ever you want! My hope is that someone else can find new ideas from my books and incorporate them to their crafts and works."

INTRO
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Stylish peplums and fashion terminology

Queen Michelle from Kindom Of Syle blog created this wonderful and very stylish peplum to complete her wardrobe. What is a peplum, you may ask? According to Encyclopedia.com "peplum is a a short flared, gathered, or pleated strip of fabric attached at the waist of a woman's jacket, dress, or blouse to create a hanging frill or flounce".

Prada had some lightly padded versions in their Fall 2008 collection. Sounds intresting, looks stylish and is easy to make for yourself! I have a stack of shoulder pads in my craft supplies closet (cut out from secondhand 80´s clothes) that would work great in this project. I´d cover the pads up with lace, trim the edges and sew together onto a elastic waistband. Or you could use some of those fabric scaps left over from your latest dress/skirt sewing project. I know you have them! :) Quick trashion and an instant facelift for any pencil skirt or straight cuctail dress you have in your closet.

Peplums at Prada Fall 2008 collection:




I have learned so many new fashion related words (in English) since I started this blog. I´ve studied fashion terminology in Finnish and felt really frustrated in the beginning of my writing when I could not express myself correctly. But as I have browsed through hundreds of fashion blog posts, I have picked a few words on the way. I´m still a looong way from being an A student so I thought getting some proper fashion dictionaries might help. I found two from Amazon: Fairchild Dictionary of Fashion and The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Fashion and Fashion Designers (World of Art).

Inspiration: Human anatomy

I have an obsession with anatomy inspired art and craft. Skulls and bones (the real ones), jewelry made from anatomy text book images, clothes with anatomy prints.. Lets just say that cute pastel things with flower prints don´t do it for me. Some of my friends did not enjoy my post on Katharina Ludvig organ bottles and even thought the anatomy necklaces I recently bought from Paraphernalia were too much. Too "real" they said. Funny people. Human anatomy has inspired people from the times of ancient greeks so I suppose it should count as a classic trend. :)

Toolgrrl aka Rachel Wright is an artist I found from Etsy that reconstructs secondhand slips with appliques to create dramatic in-your-face anatomy inspired fashions. The buys all supplies from thrift stores and sews by hand. Check out her website www.rachelwright.net for images galleries. Some people might find them odd when I find them fascinating and beautiful. We can´t all like the same things.. That just wouldn´t be right. I love these dresses since it reminds me that we of the fragile and very personal eco-system of your own bodies. It´s a "respecting life and death" thing I suppose. For more anatomy inspired fashions, I recommend Undercover SS2005 collection and collection details.




Undercover SS2005 collection. Can you see the teeth, eye-balls and guts?



Eyeball necklace by alteredeleanors


Anatomy pillow by CrowsCloth


Anatomica collection necklaces by Paraphernalia



Spine neckties by Toybreaker


Heart earrings and skull necklace by Holly Modine

Clothing reconstruction ideas from Viktor & Rolf Fall 2008 collection

I spent a good part of my weekend browsing through Firstview.com fall 2008 fashion collections. Every fashion blog is posting about the next fall trend so there´s propably no point of me doing the same. I concentrate on finding ideas from them that you fellow DIYers can aply in your projects. And boy did I hit the motherload!

I´m sure most of you have seen pics of the unreal 3D slogan jackets in Viktor & Rolf Fall 2008 collection. Quite stunning, but they take a bit of planning and pattern making to pull off. I want to see fast results in my DIY fashion projects (plus my sewing machine is at the repair shop) so that was not the thing that caught my attention... It was the STAPLES!! The entire collection is filled with seams with random staple-details. V&R also used them for gathering volume and combining pieces (sleeves to bodice). The best thing is that this DIY tip is unisex so you can style your mans wardrobe at the same go.






I had to go get my husbands staple gun immediately and try this out. I don´t think this would work so good on my silk party dress, so I´ll start from refashioning old tees, shirts and jeans. The staples need to be shot against a surface that absorbs the hit but allows them to be taken out easily - thick styrofoam. Be carefull when pulling off the garment. The staple is through the fabric but it still needs to be bent underneath to secure the fastening. Hammer the staple ends down to finish the detail. I´m sure V&R have sewed the seams normally before stapling them, but I would not bother if you are in a hurry... In this case "less is more" does not aply. The more the merrier.

I´m not sure if the staples I have are stainless steel, but I´m kinda hoping there not... I want them to rust when the garment is washed!! That would make a cool effect. Looooove rust. If the washing machine does not work in rusting, I´ll try soaking. CheapBoutique at Etsy also gave me a tip to use Boiled egg yolk works, Ammonia or urine for rust-treatments. Ammonia (clorine/bleach) might be easiest. I remember some denim buttons rusting when I soaked a pair of jeans in raw bleach. Ooops.

DIY tutorial: Marc by Marc Jacobs Lego Belt

I´ve done stuff from legos in the past but doing a lego belt buckle?? I´ve tried to figure out the fastening since I saw these in Marc By Marc Jacobs SS08 summer collection. Then I was doing some google searches this evening for something complitely different and stumbled upon Morgan´s lego-belt tutorial. How simple solution! I mean it is always like that isn´t it? Simple just works! Great job girl! Now the only question is how will a make this work for a belt buckle for guys??

Steampunk fashion part 1 - the clothes

Steampunk fashion photography by Kat Bret. Check out also her website.

I have to write more about steampunk and especially the fashion/clothing aspect of it since it´s pretty much the only thing I´ve been thingking about for the past few days. Unlike it´s sister-gendres cyberpunk and goth, steampunk is not dark, gloomy or spooky but innovative, elegant and beautiful. Propably the best online source is Flickr group Steampunk Fashion. Also check out Steampunk Clothing Collective.


Photo. Photography copyright Vorpal Images, 2008.

Steampunk devotees are almost always DIY people. They sew and assemble their own fashions, an imaginative mix of neo-Victorian, Edwardian and military style accented with sometimes crudely mechanized details and accessories like brass goggles, harnesses, clockwork pendants and of course the mandatory decorative steampunk ray gun dangling at the hip. Steampunk style is corseted and high-buttoned with crinolines, waistcoats, high-arced sleeves and top hats, bowler hats or aviator caps. Sort of 1890 "academical-inventor-chic" that you wear to a Jules Verne teaparty or a Time Travellers ball.



Photos by Amanda Scrivener. The green dress is made from charity shop curtains. Steampunk trashion...


Image via Wikipedia


Photo via Erwinevol.com

The thing that I admire most about steampunk fashions, is that as the gendre demands they must do a lot of research to get it right. You know, visit museums and libraries! Unfortunately no brand or webstore covers steampunker´s fashion needs complitely. After three hours of www-surfing all I found was Gypsymoon, Abneypark, Ebay and Etsy. Let me know if you know more links! Few patterns can be bought online (see links below). I would imagine that since "steampunk" gets almost 2,9 million hits in Google someone would set up a shop soon. The consumers are there!


Photo by TheCassettes



Photos by hmschronabelle


Photo by Suzanna


Steampunk corset dress by Scoundrelle


Steampunk corset by Scoundrelle


Steampunk corset by Louise Black


Victorian hat available from Ebay.

Steampunk fashion links:
Dreadnought Designs
Lorimarsha
Ms.Antiorder
Jaborwhalky

Victorian pattern links:
Dover Publications
Farthingales Historic patterns
Oldpatterns.com
Westernersoutfitter