Skinny Jeans to Bootcut - re-fashion due to necessity. AKA I ripped my jeans :)

This re-fashion was more out of necessity rather than as an idea.

I was at a festival (fairly worse for wear) complaining that my skinny jeans wouldn't tuck into my boots, when a friend of mine put me out of my misery & ripped them there & then to make them boot-cut.

It was a great idea at the time, however the next morning I realised I now had a great pair of rough 'boot-cut' festival jeans, but now there was no way I could wear them to work (yes, my wardrobe choices are that limited).

I trawled the internet for ideas on how to fix them and found plenty of tutorials showing you how to make boot-cut to skinny, but none showing you how to make skinny into boot-cut.

Now I was fairly limited on fabric so had to do my fix very carefully & by hand. If I ever did this again I would take my time & unpick the hem rather than cut or rip it.

Here's an image showing my fix:

I found some fabric I liked & cut them to generous rectangles & bought a couple of small closed ended zips about the length of my rips.

Then I pressed the edges of the fabric under to make them as neat as possible for the visible edges.

As I hope you can see I tacked around where it connected to the jean & enclosed the ripped edge by attaching the zip behind so only the teeth of the zip would show.

It was fiddly stuff, and there is now a fair amount of my DNA soaked into this material from all the pin pricking blood loss.

Once I was happy the zip & material was attached firmly I ran a line of thread through the new fabric so it would bunch towards the end the zip opened too. I then tacked this to the zip itself to secure it & also to stop the zip from completely disappearing back underneath the jeans.

Also my zipped edges are on the inside of my ankles. But I quite like this as it's a little more subtle :)

This was a fix I did towards the end of 2013 & I've had plenty of wear out of them since. However I don't seem to have a picture of me wearing them. Next time I do I'll upload it for you.

Flip Flop SOS

 

My flip flops snapped the other day :( A week before my holiday with friends. I'm on a tight budget at the minute so despite them only costing £2 from tesco last summer, I just couldn't justify buying new ones when the bases for these are perfectly fine.

So I searched the internet for a solution. There are tonnes of flip flop fixes, in the end I went with this one:

http://www.themotherhuddle.com/tutorial-the-knot-so-hard-flip-flop-diy/

Only issue I had with mine was there were no holes to pass the fabric through. So I turned to power tools, which ordinarily I shouldn't be trusted with ;)

I had to snip off the remaining straps as close to the base as possible. It seemed that despite the toe section on one of them being held together by a wing & a prayer all the others were held on by strongest glue in the world. I pulled at them a little, but was worried I'd destroy the bases as they in themselves were two glued layers of foam, with the ends of the straps glued between them.

I used just a 4mm drill bit, as I didn't want the hole to be too big, just enough to pass the material through.

I found an old top in my projects pile with a nice pattern which I thought would compliment the purple:

I set to cutting out the strips. The tutorial says you need 4 24 inch by 4 1/2 inch strips. After snipping away the seams from the top I had just that amount.

I decided to run my strips through the sewing machine, as I wanted a neater edge, but the tutorial did say you could leave them rough too. So I folded mine over & made them with a pointed end as requested to make it easier to pass through the holes:

A double knot later & they were secured :)

I just followed the tutorial for the next steps so follow this link http://www.themotherhuddle.com/tutorial-the-knot-so-hard-flip-flop-diy/  for the full how-to :)

I made sure I tied the knots extra tight. Only thing is I didn't have any glue. They feel pretty secure though, so I'm going to risk it. Also because mine were glued from the start they didn't have the little divots for the knots to sit in. However after walking round the house in them for a few hours I'm finding the knots are sinking into the foam naturally & I don't notice them when I walk.

I figure, if they at least last my France holiday I'll be very happy 😊

My boots re-made for walking & that's just what we'll do

I truly love my purple patent Dr Martens. So you can imagine my dismay when the colour started to wear away. I didn't mind so much that they weren't shiny any more, they're supposed to be my stomping boots & when you stomp as much as I do you've got to expect some kind of wear & tear :)

So I looked around on the internet for ideas about fixing/revamping my boots. My first idea was to glitter them up. If you type glitter boots DIY into google you get a tonne of ideas.

I read that the patent sheen on the boots can mean that whatever you spray or paint on the surface of the boot can easily flake or chip off, unless you treat them first. Most sites recommend acetone. So I thought if clean them, sand them down & then used some nail polish remover to clean them again & remove any dusty particles I'd be in business :)

Here's stage one:

 

I made my glitter paint by mixing 50/50 water & PVA glue & then proceeded to paint them in lots of thin layers. I probably spent around 2 days working on them, slowly building up the layers until I was happy & then I painted them with a water based clear varnish. Which was the BIGGEST mistake I made. I go so carried away with getting them finished so I could wear them, I may have been high on purple glitter ;) I painted the varnish on without watering it down :( after just a few hours of stomping this happened:

 In an attempt to salvage them I tried to sand off the now rock hard varnish, & then paint them with just a couple of more thin coats of glitter, but to no avail :( I wasn't happy with the finish. So I set to picking all the glitter off. 

Now to attempt number two :)

This time I did some more research & i found that some people recommended painting them with an acrylic based spray paint. So here we go again:

I was so pleased with the finish this time, it was exactly what I wanted to achieve :) they looked good as new :)

Now there is a part three to come. Sadly The acrylic paint suffered a similar fate. The natural creases in the leather from just general everyday wear also caused the paint to flake off in the same places. So it was back to the drawing board I went.

This time I've sanded them down again to try & give a better surface for the paint to bond to. I got some 100% pure acetone to really take off those tops layers of paint & patent & on the recommendation of a friend at a festival I got hold of some clear acrylic based spray lacquer. The kind of stuff you use on cars. Both items you can get on ebay &/or Amazon. 

Pictures will follow. They're so shiny, even more than the above. I left 24 hours between painting them & lacquering them in the hopes that this will give them a chance to dry off. I've left them several days before wearing them too, so keep your fingers crossed for me. I'll update this blog entry with how they go soon :)