Today is a bit of an inspiration-led post based on some amazing shoes that I’ve found online and pinned to my Tuesday Shoesday Pinterest board. All of these cute shoes have been customised to include some of my favourite characters including these spangly Hello Kitty motif heels and Alice in Wonderland soles.
What a great idea to custom-paint a design on the soles of your shoes! It’s like a little secret between yourself and your shoes, and it gives people something to double-take at when you’re walking away from them!
Click on the image to visit the tutorial. I hope these photos have given you ideas for customizing your own shoes and have shown you that you can make the most of an old pair of heels with scuffed soles or messy toes rather than throwing them away! Get thrifting
Pinch, punch, first of the month! And today I am absolutely delighted to be able to bring you an Inspiration Challenge for the month of May! Some of you may have already heard of the (famous) inspiration challenge and some of you might be completely new to it, so I’m going to start at the beginning and see if I can’t encourage you to take part!
The inspiration challenge began on the LucyLovesYa.com blog where ‘inspiration is everything’ (please check out Lucy’s blog, it’s amazing!) and the idea of the challenge is to create something (anything!) in response to an image or item that is the proposed inspiration starting-point. Previously china tea-cups, matroyshka dolls and vintage necklaces have been the inspiration, and over the past few months there have been many amazing contributions from crafters, sewer, cooks, bloggers and artists – here’s some of the amazing items that the contributors have made:
Lucy has very kindly passed the inspiration challenge baton on to me and I’m going to do my best to continue it in the same way. So I will share an image or item each month and challenge you all to get involved and make something, and please also get involved by sending in your suggestions for future inspiration challenges to cassie@cassiefairy.co.uk :) Here are the results of last month’s inspiration challenge, which you’ve probably already seen on the LucyLoveYa blog post. I was amazed by the variety and quality of the items produced based on the matroyshka dolls – keep up the good work!
So, here’s the fun part – the challenge! I am proposing a new theme for the month of May based on my recent experience – my trusty old Jones sewing machine gave up and died last week, so I’ve had to replace it with a new jazzy modern Janome machine (thanks very much to Lucy for the advice on which machine to choose!). As much as I like my whizzy new machine, I can’t help thinking back to how sturdy and well, stylish old sewing machines were, so I’ve snapped a pic of my back-up one-stitch-option Seamstress sewing machine and my good friend Meg has loaned me her grandma’s old hand-powered Singer so that I can use them for this month’s inspiration challenge!
So please have a go a creating something inspired by vintage sewing machines and I can’t wait to see what you’ve made! I know a lot of us rely on (and love!) our sewing machines, so hopefully it’s a challenge that’s close to our hearts Let me know how you get on and if you do rustle something up please email me your photos of your creations by the 28th of May to cassie@cassiefairy.co.uk. I will share everyone’s results at the start of June and I will include your site link if you have one. As Lucy says it doesn’t matter if you’re a novice or experienced and it’s not a competition – the aim is to just have a bit of fun and share your creations with other like-minded people!
I love a McDonalds breakfast wrap (especially the morning after a night out!) and would eat them all day long if I could. However, I live faaaar away from a McDonalds in the countryside so it’s a pretty rare treat (luckily enough for my purse at a price of £2.49 each, not to mention my waistline at 600 calories!). So the only option for me to get my Maccy D’s fix is to try to recreate the wrap myself at home. I’ve just rustled this brunch for our lazy Sunday morning and I thought you’d like to see how I make a bargain version of the famous McDonalds breakfast wrap.
Add burger cheese (these were 64p for a pack of 10 from Lidl so that’s 12.8p) to a tortilla wrap (pack of 8 for £1 at Tesco, so 12.5p per wrap) and zap it in the microwave for about 10 seconds to warm through. Add a cooked sausage cut in half (or I used party sausages that I had in the freezer, which were £1 for 45 and I’ve used 6 in the wrap, so a total of 13.33p for the sausage layer) then layer up two rashers of bacon (£1 for 8 rashers from Family Bargains = 25p) and squirt over ketchup. Next, I added some tomatoes, which aren’t in the traditional McDonalds breakfast wrap, but I’m at home and I want them, so in they go! Finish off your wrap with a fried egg (£1 for half dozen free range eggs from our local farm shop = 16.6p per egg), wrap it up and enjoy your breakfast wrap knowing you’ve saved money. Plus I used ‘lighter’ wraps and cheese, and Fry Light to cook my eggs in, and have grilled my sausages and bacon, so it’s a slightly ‘healthier’ option than the McDonalds wrap, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself as I tuck in!
Let me know if you give it a go for a Sunday morning treat
PS: I’ve been shortlisted in the Company Magazine Style Blogger Awards and I would be eternally grateful if you would stop by their page and cast your vote – I’m in the Thrifty Blog category and I’d love it if you voted for me! Thanks so much
Have you noticed that pockets are everywhere this Spring/Summer? On a recent shopping trip down the high street I spotted pockets on almost every item of clothing and I’m loving the contrasting pocket look. Although I want to follow the trend, I’ve never been one to spend my hard-earned cash on something new when I can recycle something I already have or funk up charity-shop find, and in this instance, I picked up this slouchy tee from a charity shop for only a couple of quid. You can hunt for a similar t-shirt in your own local charity shop or Oxfam online.
I already had some fat-quarters of fabric from Wholeport at home, but you can often find small pieces in the remnants bin of haberdasheries and charity shops. The only difficult part of this project was choosing which colour and pattern to use. I decided on a contrasting pink floral fabric and set to work on creating my pocket and attaching it to my t-shirt, adding a little button embellishment on top. You could always consider adding a pocket to the sleeve of a top, or putting a couple of pockets on the front of a skirt to be bang on trend for this Spring/Summer.
You will need: T-shirt, small piece of fabric, iron-on hemming web (if you don’t have webbing you could use fabric glue), card, scissors, needle and thread, button.
Decide on the size and shape of your pocket and cut a piece of cardboard (I used a cereal packet) to shape to use as a template. Your pocket could be square, with folded corners like mine, or with a traditional ‘pocket-shape’ pointed base – whatever you prefer.
Draw around the template onto your contrasting fabric then cut out with an extra 1cm hem allowance all the way round.
Fold the edges of the fabric over the cardboard and iron to create hems on all sides.
4. Place the iron-on hemming web underneath the hems and follow the instructions on the webbing packet until the glue has melted and sealed the edges of the pocket.
5. If you want to add an embellishment or button to your pocket, now is the time to stitch it on – I added a small purple button to tie in the colours of the fabric with the t-shirt.
6. Position your pocket on your garment and use more iron-on hemming web to glue it in place along the sides and bottom of the pocket.
All done – Enjoy your new t-shirt! And don’t forget to add contrasting pockets to anything else that takes your fancy.
I’ve started volunteering for Oxfam Fashion and this was my first DIY blog post for them – check out the Oxfam fashion blog here for more amazing DIY projects and bargain clothing ideas.
PS: I’ve been shortlisted in the Company Magazine Style Blogger Awards and I would be eternally grateful if you would stop by their page and cast your vote – I’m in the Thrifty Blog category and I’d love it if you voted for me! Thanks so much
Let me know how you get on and if you do rustle something up please email me your photos of your creations by the 28th of May to 
