Collab: Project Re-design with Selma Ali

Project Re-design was created by my blogger friend Selma Ali, and it's a really fun project where she partners with a fellow blogger each month to work on re-designing a piece of clothing.

So Selma approached me to collaborate on this project with her for the month of October, and since I'm obsessed with crafts and I was already in the process of designing several pieces for my own upcycling project, I immediately agreed!

Here's how it went down:

1) We both looked around for items that were basic/plain (not much design on their own) and were also very affordable, under $20 if possible!

2) After we agreed on an item, we both bought it.

3) We got started on designing our items separately - This was the chance for us to showcase our style! We could do whatever we want with the piece of clothing to make it our very own!

4) After our re-designs were complete, we met up for a quick photo session wearing our newly-designed clothes!

I really like how both of ours turned out! But first, here's the base piece that we bought:

High-Low T-Shirt Midi Dress, $7, Forever 21

We both saw that this dress had a lot of potential and we both agreed on it pretty quickly!

After about 3 weeks, here's what we both came up with:

Here's why I did what I did to my dress.

In the past 2 months or so, I've been going through a weird "feathers" phase where I've constantly felt the need to put feathers on every single thing, so the first thing I did was to line the front hem with light pink feathers!

After applying the feathers, I realized I wanted to make the hem more interesting, because I usually have a hard time keeping things plain, so I put on a strip of sequins and beads, before I decided to move to the top part of the dress.

I also have to tell you this - I've also been going a through yet another phase (don't ask me why I have so many random phases, lol) where I constantly feel the need to modify t-shirts, so I have been cutting things up A LOT. I even bought a spankin' new pair of Gingher fabric scissors so I can cut my cloths up better.... which is why I took one look at the t-shirt neckline and sleeves, and proceeded to cut it all off.

However, after all the snipping, I still didn't feel too satisfied with how it looked. I felt like it was still pretty plain and I wanted to jazz it up a little. So this is where the pearls (or rather, half-pearls) came in!

I had initially bought the pearls for another piece I was designing for my own upcycling project, but I felt pretty strongly that the pearls would look good on this piece, and that it would make the whole thing look more dainty, especially with the light pink feathers on the hem... so I went with the flow and introduced the pearls.

I gotta say, I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out in the end! I think we both did a great job showcasing our personal styles, and most importantly, we had fun in the process!

Please follow Selma @laselmastyle on Instagram and check out her blog for her take on this collab!