The happenings of my hectic and eclectic life!

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Copycat

I love reading fashion magazines.

When I was young and before I was married my new magazine would come in the mail and I would declare to anyone around that I didn't want to be bothered for the rest of the evening. I would enjoy sitting down, marking the pages and making a list of the new trends I wanted to try.

Current day I'll settle for reading a magazine for 22 minutes, which is exactly the length of an episode of something on the Disney channel. And now I turn over the pages thinking I'll get back to looking at it at some point. All of this has resulted in pile of magazines a mile high and stack of ripped out photos laying in a heap.

I've always wanted to make a "fashion board." The idea being that I would take all of the ripped out pictures and pin them to a cork board and hang it somewhere in my closet. I suppose like a real life Pinterest board. I would use it as a quick reference to change things up, or just to get a new idea of something to wear. Sometimes I will purchase a trendy item and then I forget how the magazine suggests to wear it.

Alas, the cork board is laying on the floor and the pictures are still in a heap.

Who else thinks sometimes it's just hard to put our good intentions into action?

Thus this project was born!

It's that time of year when the weather in Kansas fluctuates, sometimes severly, and it's hard to know what to put on. I'm usually bored with my winter wardrobe and want to go out shopping for spring things. But I've also had several items hanging in my closet all winter long that I've never worn. So I decided to get out that stack of magazines and 1. Rip out all of the pictures I wanted to keep and 2. THROW AWAY the magazines.

I went through the pictures and picked out 5 outfits that I thought I could re-create with things that were already in my closet. I then took a picture of the original outfit in the magazine and a picture of how I copied it.

Here's what I came up with!




 



One of the best parts of this project was that I ended up wearing several things that I never wear! It also took the guess work out of picking something out in the morning.

When I was telling a friend what I was up to she said, I wouldn't have any of those things you are wearing in my closet! I explained to her that if we were both reading the same magazine, we would rip out different pictures. When I rip pictures out I choose things that I already own or maybe something I'd like to purchase. Just because you don't own a metallic skirt (or something else sort of out of the ordinary) doesn't mean you can't find a picture of a fantastic outfit that combines classic pieces that appear in most closets.

While picking 5 pictures a week isn't practical for every day life, a couple of times since I did this project I've dug through the stack and found a new picture just to change things up. Or flip through all those pictures you have pinned on Pinterest and actually give copying an outfit a try!

And someday I'll get the cork board off the floor and the pictures up on it. Someday.