My first big sewing project

 It has been a year since I started sewing learning to sew. I made quite a few purses, but I haven't really moved on from that point for a while and with the beginning of the new school year I felt I should push on.
My goal was an over the top embellished faux leather jacket. Inspiration, Balmain spring 2011

Balmain S/S 2011 photo credit Glamour

The whole process was very long, it took me hours and hours of cutting, sewing, re-cutting, measuring, broken needles, running out of thread, running out of material, written and video tutorials, tutorials in Chinese on youtube, sleepless nights, a mess in my room, needles, pieces of thread and fabric all over the place, not letting my flatmates and my neighbors sleep, countless visits to the closest haberdasher's.

Building a jacket

Sleeveless, Harley, anyone??

Studded converse-like shoes

 
 Wandering through the shops of chinatown, I've found these supper sweet and sooo cheap red converse-like shoes that were begging me to get them and to make good use of them. In another shop I've seen some studs that seemed interesting enough, so I thought I'd give it a try.
 I have to say that I'm not a big fan of intellectual property theft, especially of something as iconic as these shoes are (that's right, for me they are shoes, not sneakers), so I had to think twice. It was, wearing "fake" converse (they don't have a brand tag, but the design is totally stolen), or spending 40 euros (yes, that's the price in Italy) for the original pair. Normally I would opt for the original solution, but since we're talking the 2 seasons trend (the studs), I went for the cheap one!

What you'll need:
- 60 cone studs
- a pair of shoes
- a pair of scissors (or a screwdriver) to press stud closures

Place your studs randomly, I started from the bottom of the shoe

 The whole thing was very easy to make, you just puts studs randomly and you're done. The only part that was a bit tricky was a counter part of the shoe because of the foxing. It was so hard that I literally crashed a couple of studs... but fortunately persistence pays off!

Happy Monday!

Studded ballet flats

 Studs and spikes are an absolute must have this season (next to burgundy (and) leather). In case you still haven't procured yourself this fall's trends, I made a simple DIY to be on trend easily and on the budget.

You'll need:
- a pair of simple plain ballet flats (I got mine at H&M)
- 40 10mm triangle studs (I found them on the Ebay quite cheap, but waited for a month to have them delivered from Hong Kong)
- scissors (I used them to press the studs into the shoe and to close the studs)
- 10 minutes of your precious time

 Place a stud on the front part of the shoe to your liking. Press it well onto the shoe, and close the stud on the inner side of the shoe. Continue placing the studs leaving about 10mm of space in between the two (the size of a stud) until you have the whole line covered.

Go out and show them to the world!
P.S. I love my new shoes!