DIY acid washed denim jacket

what you need:

• a piece of denim clothing (I got my jacket at a thriftstore!)
• a sponge (I recommend using one you don't need anymore)
• rubber gloves to protect your hands
• bleach
• a small bowl 
• a plastic bag or something else to protect your working area

what you do:

• cover the working area
• spread your piece of clothing out in front of you
• fill some bleach into the bowl
• tip: in case you never used bleach before or you're not sure how light you want the denim to turn out, mix the bleach with a little water, this will slow down the bleaching process
• dip your sponge into the bleach and go over the denim with it
• you don't need to make it perfect, but try to spread it somewhat equally
• let the bleach sink in and do its work
• if you need to, you can go over the denim a couple more times, if you want the effect to be stronger
• I actually mixed 2/3 bleach and 1/3 water and went over the denim 3 times, my denim was kind of resistant to the bleach. that can happen!
• put your clothing in the washing machine (and dryer)
• voilà!

 

products I used:

Eau de Javel bleach

DIY bow (hair) tie

what you need:

• a hair elastic/scrunchy
• a piece of fabric (color of your choice)
• scissors
• needle and thread (should match the color of the fabric unless you like the contrast :) ) or if you're not a fan of sewing, use fabric glue or hot glue might work too
• pins

what you do:

• cut the fabric into a rectangle, the size of it is completely up to you!
• it should be twize as long as you want it to be and a little wider (mine was about 11cm x 6cm)
• fold in the long sides of the fabric, pin in place or iron over it to keep the folds in place
• now, whenever I say "sew it" keep in mind that you can use fabric or hot glue instead!
• sew the folds in place
• then fold the short sides in so they meet in the middle of the fabric
• pin and sew in place as well
• to save time, I just sewed the corners, not all along the edges and it holds just fine
• now fold a bow and adjust it so it looks the way you like it
• stick one or two pins through the middle to keep it like that
• now cut another strap of fabric, which is going into the middle of the bow
• fold it in half and sew the long sides together
• the next part is a little tricky: remove the pins you stuck in the middle of the bow, hold the bow the way you want it to look, take the elastic and hold it at the back of the bow (horizontally) and then wrap the other strap of fabric around all that and pin in place
• in case that's too much at once, you can glue the elastic at the back of the bow and wait until it's dry and then wrap the strap around it
• let the strap overlap a little at the back of the bow and sew in place, make sure it's really secure because that's going to be it!
• cut off whatever might be sticking out of the strap
• you're done! :)

 

  

 

HOW TO distress denim

what you need:

• a piece of denim clothing: jeans, shorts, skirt, vest/jacket, ...
• scissors
• tweezers
• a fine grater or sandpaper
• a marker/pencil

what you do:

• there are different ways to distress your piece of clothing and I'm going to show you a couple of them, but of course you don't have to do all of them! Just choose whichever you like the best :)
• I bought this denim vest in a second hand shop for a couple of dollars and decided to spruce it up a little
• I started by cutting off the seem of the "arm holes" because they were a little too wide for my petite figure (I actually went back a little later with the tweezers to fray that out a little, so you can do that right after cutting it)
• then I took the scissors to cut some slits into one of the pockets
• when you're doing this on your jeans or something, make sure that you don't accidentally cut into the pocket or you might loose stuff later on!
• take your tweezers and start pulling out the vertical blue strings to fray out the slits (NOT the white horizontal ones!)
• the first one or two might be a little hard to pull out, but after that it gets pretty easy! 
• tip: pull them out a little sideways, that makes it even easier to do as well as cutting the slits pretty close!
• I did that on 3 different spots on my vest: on the front pocket I made kind of a square shape and on the other to spots I changed up the lengths of the slits
• I'm not going to lie to you, pulling out the small blue strings does take some time to do, but you can choose how many you want to do of them and you dont have to pull out all of the strings, that's totally up to you! If you like you can also watch a movie while doing it, that gets it done so much faster :)
• you can also cut a little hole (instead of slits) into the clothing somewhere and fray out the edges with your tweezers
• the last thing I did was using the grater (sandpaper will work, too)
• again I chose different spots to do it
• just take the grater and rub it on your piece of denim: you can choose how large these spots should be and how much you want to distress them
• another tip: you can kind of scrunch up some of the other fabric underneath the spot your rubbing, I find that gives you better and quicker results!
• if you like you can wash your denim now and put it in the dryer after that, to add to the fraying you did :)

 

DIY ombre pleats dress

what you need:

• a white dress
• tie dye in the color of your choice, I used purple
• gloves
• rubber bands
• a bottle with a nozzle
• salt, vinegar (depending on your type of dye)
• something to cover up your working area, like a plastic bag

what you do:

• dampen your fabric and lay it out flat
• I decided to start the pleats underneath that seam under the bosom-area
• I started at the left side of the dress and gathered the fabric in pleats/folds, about 1-2cm high, moving towards the right side
• the bigger the folds, the larger the un-dyed parts will be
• in case you need to see how to gather these pleats, you can see that in my HOW TO tie-dye a fish scales pattern-post; I made a video for this one where I used pretty much the same technique, just in different directions
• I made sure that the pleats reached towards the very bottom of the dress and then sealed them in place with rubber bands, placing them about 3cm apart and wrapping one band twice around the fabric
• how tight you seal the pleats in place also determines how much of the fabric gets dyed
• now you need to mix the dye:

1. I bought a (kind of dark) purple dye but didn't want it to turn out as dark
2. So I put like a teaspoon of dye into the bottle and added salt and vinegar (please check the instructions on the packaging of your dye, they might be different than mine!)
3. then filled up the bottle almost to the top with hot water and shook it really well to dissolve all of the dye

• I used that mixture to cover the entire top of the dress until I reached that first seam
• make sure to dye the dress from both sides!
• I used about half of the dye for that to be sure that I get really good coverage
• then I filled up the bottle with more hot water, again almost to the top, so the dye gets a little lighter
• using this mixture, I dyed about 1/3 of the pleated "bumps" of the dress
• again, I added some more water, to lighten the dye and used the new mixture for about 1/3 of the bumps again
• then I added hot water for one last time and filled the bottle to the very top to get a super light pink-ish color and dyed almost the rest of the dress
• I left the very bottom of the dress white but if you like, you can dye the entire dress
• don't forget to dye the dress from both sides with every new mixture! not only from the front :)
• when I was done dying, I let the whole thing sit for about 30 minutes (again, check the instructions of your dye!)
• after that, I rinsed it under cold water until it ran clear and removed the rubber bands in the process
• if you want to be really sure that the dye won't fade, you can add some more vinegar to the washing machine for the first wash

the products I used:
Marbau EasyColor Tie-Dye, but any other tie-dye should do the job
I also used Jacquard Tie-Dye before and was really happy with it :)

DIY plastic wrap nails

what you need:

• base and top coat
• a light and a darker nail polish
• a piece of plastic wrap
• a cotton swab and nail polish remover

what you do:

• apply base coat and two coats of light nail polish
• let it dry really well
• apply a coat of darker nail polish
• crumple up the plastic wrap and dab it on the sticky nail polish to remove some of it
• dunk cotton swab into nail polish remover and clean up around the edges
• seal it in with a top coat

how to dip-bleach your clothes

what you need:

• a piece of clothing, preferably mainly cotton
• a rubber band
• a bowl
• bleach
• gloves
• sunshine :) (you can do this inside just as well, but the bleach has a really strong smell to it and it might not work just as good as when it can react with sunlight)

what you do:

• determine how far you want to bleach your fabric, if you like, you can tie off the height with a rubber band so you can be sure you don't bleach beyond it
• fill the bowl with bleach
• dunk the part of your fabric you want to bleach into it and let it soak
• then take it out, lay it out flat in the sun and let both the sun and the bleach do their work
• how long you let it sit depends on how light you want the bleached part to be
• the only thing left to do is wash and dry your fabric!

I decided to add some small splashes, just because I like how it looks.

the products I used:
Eau de Javel bleach from my local drugstore, you can use whichever bleach you like or can get