Chic on a Shoestring is your entrée into the world of high fashion that will inspire you to create your own covetable clothes and accessories. Learn to transform ornate trims and vintage buttons into spectacular brooches, craft a favorite silk scarf into a chic top, or rework flea market shoes into fashionable showstoppers. With more than 40 unique and stylish ideas—including quick and easy no-sew projects—Chic on a Shoestring will inspire first-time and experienced crafters alike.

"Chic On a Shoestring is about investment dressing for the discount decade: a practical how-to guide for women who find they have less time and money to spend on clothing, shoes, and accessories, but a greater desire and need to dress better in their professional and personal lives."--Back cover.

Learn how to reuse, recycle, restyle, restore, and revamp your old furnishings to create a stylish and unique home, without spending a fortune! Whether you are on a tight budget, or simply want to give your existing home a new look, Thrifty Chic provides a treasure trove of ideas at your fingertips. Learn how to reuse, recycle, restyle, restore, and revamp your old furnishings to create a stylish and unique home, without spending a fortune! Whether you are on a tight budget, or simply want to give your existing home a new look, Thrifty Chic provides a treasure trove of ideas at your fingertips. Divided into 7 chapters, Thrifty Chic will take you through everything you need to know to jazz-up your home. Starting with “Elements of Design”, you will learn how to utilize fabric, paint, windows, frames, lighting, and more, to make the most of your environment. Then, room by room, each chapter will show you how best to pull together mismatched items into cohesive schemes, how to upcycle furniture, and how to introduce some clever ideas for storage. You will learn how to create certain styles in your home, from French-inspired antique chic, to the cosmopolitan eclectic and the steel-finished urban cutting-edge. You will even gain insider tips on what to look for at antique markets and in thrift stores, and how to care for and restore your bargain purchases. Packed full of irresistible designs, and with a final chapter detailing how to do the projects yourself, there will be no stopping you from creating your perfect habitat.

In Handmade Chic: Fashionable Projects That Look High-End, Not Homespun, Laura Bennett shares simple strategies for creating 40 small luxuries and high-fashion accessories, from a smart leather iPad portfolio to a feather-embellished evening bag. With sections organized in skill-building order and based on type of accessory—small leather goods, agendas and notepads, electronics, bags and wallets, and evening items—Laura offers patterns, easy-to-follow diagrams, and detailed instructions for fabricating each glamorous project, whether it involves sewing from scratch or embellishing a prepurchased garment. While showcasing her own creative designs, she provides readers with the basic techniques and encouragement they need to come up with variations and create their own signature pieces. Packed with Laura's signature flair and finesse, vibrant four-color photos, step-by-step drawings, and a complete list of suggestions on where to purchase materials, Handmade Chic is an accessible guide to at-home crafting that is elegant enough for the most modern, fashion-savvy of women.

In 2016, Mary Jane Baxter did what many people dream of: she quit her job at the BBC, rented out her flat and headed for the hills. Her home for the next few months was an upcycled 1986 Bedford Bambi campervan with a top speed of 60mph. She raided skips for vintage wallpaper and scoured second-hand emporiums to source stylish vintage accessories, creating her own travelling craft studio, packed with everything necessary for crafting on the road. She then set off around Europe searching for inspiration, travelling from Belgium right down to the Cinque Terre in Italy then around France and up to Scotland. Armed with her trusty hand-cranked Singer, she spent a summer sewing on the go, foraging in flea markets, meeting artists and hosting pop-up events to help fund her trip. Like creatives the world over she decided to see where her travels would lead her and returned with a head full of new projects. Fortunately, there’s no need for you to give up your job, wave goodbye to your family and rent out your house in order to re-ignite your own creativity; Mary Jane has done all the hard work for you. Sew on the Go is her guide to carving out more creative space in your life. From decorating your own budget-conscious bolthole to achievable projects including clothes and fashion accessories, beautiful gift ideas and child-friendly makes, this book is the ideal companion for those who dream of devoting more time to their craft.

“I think it’s terrific.” –Diane von Furstenberg, of the original edition of Cheap Chic Beloved by designers and style mavens alike, the LBD of fashion guides—with a new foreword by Tim Gunn—is back and more in fashion than ever. Before there were street-style blogs and ‘zines, there was Cheap Chic. Selling hundreds of thousands of copies when it was originally published in 1975, this classic guide revealed how to find the clothes that will make you feel comfortable, confident, sexy, and happy, whether they come from a high-end boutique, sporting-goods store, or thrift shop. Astonishingly relevant forty years later, Cheap Chic provides timeless practical advice for creating an affordable, personal wardrobe strategy: what to buy, where to buy it, and how to put it all together to make your own distinctive fashion statement without going broke. Alongside outfit ideas, shopping guides, and other practical tips are the original vintage photographs and advice from fashion icons such as Diana Vreeland and Yves Saint Laurent. Inspiring decades of fashion lovers and designers, Cheap Chic is the original fashion bible that proves you don’t have to be wealthy to be stylish.

..".Elliott uses her own home as an example of what can be done with cheap finds, and the transformation is quite remarkable and innovative....well-written directions...Recommended for public libraries..."--"Library Journal." "Elliott uses her Oregonian home as a showcase of basic principles of making something from nothing--or at least from something ordinarily thought unsalvageable...save-the-stuff stories abound, and instructions are easy...to follow...Her creations are wondrously whimsical and imaginative."--"Booklist."