The Skinny

It's Saturday night, this week has been insane. I've been in and out of town, I started a new business, I lost $50.00 and then figured out that doing business sometimes doesn't couple well with ethical practices. That made me sad. 

On a happier note...this was a fun, fun day. Reason #1...today was the 30 day mark of my whole campaign against Rae becoming a chunky-butt which means I had $30.00 in my motivational jar <awkward wave> yes, in case you missed that post, I have a motivational jar. This naturally led to a thrift store run and today I got to go with my darling sister-in-law, Bethany. Let me tell you some things about Bethany...

1. She is cute, seriously cute. She wears a ballerina bun like a boss.

2. She is brave, she lets me cut her bangs.

3. She is the mommy to a sweet little boy (he's seriously cute too)  

4. She has another little munchkin on the way. Yes. This is Bethany's blog 

This meant that some maternity clothes shopping was in order, to anyone following me on Pinterest -  this explains the plethora of maternity pins. Pregnant ladies can pull off some cute stuff.

Anyway, we had a blast finding a fall wardrobe conducive to the ever expanding bun in Bethany's oven. Since it might be bordering on creepy to share photos of someone else's clothes on my blog I decided to stick with my own...suffice to say that Bethany got some ridiculously cute things.

Note: These images are painfully blurry, it's sad.   

INC long sleeved shirt $3.95 >>> retail $35.99 

Sonoma Cardigan $4.00 >>> retail $36.00 

Forever 21 Ruffle Tank $2.92 >>> retail $19.00

Forever 21 Red Cardigan $4.95 >>> retail $22.80

Gap Jeans $4.95

(Got really excited about these...jeans are never long enough for me and I typically have that awkward ankle peep show thing going when I take a seat, I actually had to hem these. Amen.) 

>>> Retail $69.95

White House Black Market Skinny Jeans $4.50 >>> Retail $69.95

These didn't get a full length picture because they're awfully long. More on these farther down.... 

Total Savings....$228.42

Moment of silence. 

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I promised a DIY last post, hopefully one a bit easier to follow than the last installment of the wing-back chair redo. I have a few things cooking but the easiest one is what I'll be sharing tonight...

I have been looking for maroon or red skinny jeans literally for months and months and months. Remember that time I wrote that if you hold off buying and settling for something what you want will eventually turn up? Yeah. Sometimes that doesn't happen. I cannot find these things, so I resorted to tweaking what I have.

I started off with a pair of normal boot cut medium wash jeans, and proceeded to bleach the living tar out of them. This is after one round of bleach...

I used a one to one ratio of gallons of water to cups of bleach. Clear as mud?

I left the jeans in for hours on end...and after each round I washed the jeans with some detergent and then put 'em back in for another go.

Submerged jeans chilling in a large Rubbermaid tub. I'm wondering if the paint stains on the sides of the tub had anything to do with uneven bleaching? Maybe that's a stretch.

This is what I got after about 16 hours of bleaching

It's sort of a yellowed white, I was happy with it and since I planned to dye it dark I wasn't worried.
Next step, dye the suckers. I also happened to dye the palms of my hands a lovely scarlet color,  gloves would be a good idea.

This stuff is actually not the color I used, I'm using this dye on another pair of jeans. The dye color I used was Wine and it ended up giving me more of a dark pink jean. I wasn't thrilled since I really really wanted a deep maroon, but since it was round one I'll go with it. The dye also didn't take in a few spots as evenly as I wanted it to. Life is a learning process, I'm cool with it. I considered following the instructions on the bottle but ended up leaving the jeans to soak in the dye overnight since I wanted to color to be very  dark. 

So in this picture you can sort of see the color I ended up with, what i'd like for you to lock onto though - is the fact that these jeans have been sewn into skinnies. WOOT! The black jeans from White House Black Market went through the same process.

The only thing you have to do to accomplish this, is to lay your favorite pair of skinnies on top of the larger jeans and stencil and sew your way to pegged legs, easy peasy. 

In this picture, you can see the way the jeans didn't take the dye evenly (even with a lot of stirring and babysitting).

Up at the top you can see the uneven dye job, but y'know what? I don't mind it, it adds character. Can you tell I'm a glass half-full kinda girl? Yes. Sometimes. 

The black skinny jeans I mentioned were gray when I bought them, and even though I liked them I was really looking for some black pants. For some reason I had never considered the fact that I'm allowed to dye my clothes, it struck me as something that was probably against the rules. Not so! The black dye worked out great and the process started me thinking about all of my faded jeans that could use a little freshening up, pretty sure the blue dye would do the trick. 

I have one more thing to add...

This is my grandfather, also known as Papa Jack. He was a band director and obviously had quite a fashion sense. I come by it honestly. Would you please get a load of those pants? You're welcome.

xoxo, 

Rachael