The winter switch, in more ways than one

A funny thing happened this year to my fashion sense.

I made a rapid about-face from being absolutely smitten with knee-high boots, to being bored stiff with them and buying almost nothing but ankle boots.

And boy, did I ever buy the ankle boots! Over the summer and the first few weeks of fall, I stocked up on every kind of ankle boot you could imagine. I got so many new ankle boots that I literally ran out of space for them in my closet, and their boxes are piled high all over the top of my standalone wardrobes as well. (They will take up less space once I remove them from their boxes, but I have this thing where I must keep my new shoes in their original box until the first day I wear them. They feel more special that way!)

New boots as of October 9. I've since worn two of them and acquired two more.

Why this sudden infatuation with ankle boots? Well, in addition to tiring of knee-high boots, I've also tired (actually, grown sick to death!) of skinny jeans. Now, as I write this, I'm wearing a brand-new pair of skinny jeans, so I can't say they're banished by any stretch...but ever since I learned to embrace my preference for form-fitting shirts last spring, I realized that skinny jeans just aren't a logical part of my aesthetic.

I've said it before, but I can't seem to find it so I'll say it again, If you're wearing loose clothes on the bottom, try to pair them with something tighter on top so you don't look too shapeless. If you're wearing tighter clothes on the bottom, try to pair them with something looser on top so you don't look too exposed.

I can't really get away with wearing my beloved tight tops over skinny jeans (and I never liked them anyway!), so my solution is to wear more wide-legged pants. As I mentioned a few months ago, I'd successfully invested in some really outsized palazzo pants, but since they didn't get along well with my desk chair, I've accepted that straight-leg pants of the less dramatic variety are good enough. So over the past several months, I took every opportunity I could to add loose-fitting pants to my collection.

All of this pants-shopping has officially turned 2017 into the Year of the Pants for me. The new wider pants alone account for 7 of my total collection, and then you have to add in all the wide-leg pants I bought in the spring (four to my reckoning, if you don't count the butterfly ones I already ruined). And then there are still new skinny jeans as well, because, even though I'm tired of them, they still have their uses—and colorful skinny jeans especially (my favorite kind!) are undergoing a massive selloff in the secondhand market, so I just can't resist buying them when the price is so cheap.

 

But what does all this chatter about pants have to do with ankle boots? Well, unlike knee-high boots, ankle boots fit under your wider pant legs without adding a strange amount of bulk or an unnecessary level of insulation, but they also work equally well with skinny jeans. Ankle boots are thus the logical solution to all of my footwear needs, whether I decide to rock the retro 90's look (I'm bringing cargos back!!), or stick with the tried, true, and 2010's-approved skinny jean. Notice I still eschew the "mom jean" that is slowly simmering down from its brief moment a couple years ago.

So here I am, buying 13 pairs of new boots and 11 pairs of pants, along with the requisite complement of new shirts and dresses.

 

This is a Winter Switch that goes above and beyond my usual, as I traded in not just one season's clothes for another, but I also traded up to an entirely different personal style!

I heart this outfit

Remember those green heart earrings that I was just crazy about way back in 2012? I still have them, and I still love them just as much.

A few weeks ago, when I was at the thrift store checkout line, taking advantage of a 40%-off-boots-and-dresses sale, my eye fell on a tangled necklace dangling off the end cap. I was astonished and overjoyed to see that it had the same green glass beads with gold flecks that featured prominently in my beloved earrings. I had just stumbled across a gem that could turn my favorite accent piece into half of a matched set! And, just like its counterpart 5 years ago, the necklace was only two dollars! I cannot begin to express how much this serendipitous find delighted me—even at full price, it was the best deal I got at the thrift store that day! 

What's even better, I happen to have recently (sort of) acquired a dress that could make my matched set into a matched triad! It's adorably designed with green and brown elongated hearts scattered across it in whorls. It is both earth-toned and heart-themed, which are not two things that are often found together. When I saw it on eBay, I snapped it up, but was disappointed to find it too large for me.

That was over a year ago (April 2016). I couldn't wear it that spring, I left it in storage all summer, and finally in the fall, I set out to resize it. It took the better part of the winter for me to figure out how to cut and re-fit all the layers together neatly. But it was worth the effort, because now it gets to make its blog debut as part of a ridiculously thematic three-piece set!

I wore all the hearty goodness with my brown overknee boots, slouched down a bit for that requisite gap at the bottom of the skirt.

Double Duty Necklace

After a 6-month hiatus, I reinstated my Rocksbox membership last month (Would you like a free month? Use code valeriehbff11) and hit the jackpot with my Perry Street Ciara statement necklace.  Quite unlike most of my statement necklaces (which trend to the candy colored and cheesy in theme), this one was dark and refined. I loved the smoky colors, which seemed to perfectly complement a lot of the clothes in my wardrobe. So much so that I actually used it for two outfits before reluctantly returning it to Rocksbox.

It's been a while since I've been truly excited about one of my outfits (that were not a costume, at least), but both of these, I am.

 

For the first one, I wore my beloved purple pleather pencil skirt, a dark purple camisole, my long flowing black vest, and a new pair of boots. 

This outfit brought me so much joy! I love that I was able to finally wear some of my new shoes. I love that I was able to wear my pinstriped camisole, which I'd given up on and was trying to sell—it's always a delight to find a new way of wearing something you thought you were bored with. I love even more that the choice of camisole was totally a fluke. I was an inch away from wearing my lavender camisole when I discovered it had a grease stain front and center, which is the only reason for my last-minute reconsideration. I love the combination of winter wear (boots) and summer wear (no sleeves). I frankly just love wearing no sleeves (a welcome rarity in November!). I was lucky that the day that I wore it (last Friday) got up to 77 degrees!

 

The next outfit had to be much more covered-up, since I wore it on a rainy Tuesday with a high of only 49. For that outfit, I wore a maroon sleeveless tunic, leggings, a long black cardigan, and burgundy boots. I loved the way the boots resembled the color of the camisole but didn't quite match it. I loved the flowing hemlines of the tunic and cardigan, and how they interacted with each other.

All in all, for the two days that I wore this necklace, I felt like a million bucks. It was certainly worth the 19 dollars a month.

A magical transformation

Not too many years ago (perhaps 2?) I acquired this pair of purple boots used on eBay. Although I've worn them a handful of times, I don't think they ever made it into my blog, and now they're too old!

Much like my off-white slouch boots, the plastic coating had begun peeling off the fabric uppers, leaving these boots too ratty to wear in public any more. Also much like my off-white slouch boots, I decided to excise the worst of the damage and turn them from boots into shoes.

As before, I started by cutting off most of the shaft, leaving about a half-inch to fold down for a smooth edge.

These boots had a black fabric liner. I cut that a little shorter so I could fold the outer material over the top of it.

Unlike the last boots I used this technique on, these ones were in much worse shape. The purple coating kept peeling off as I worked, prompting me to remove as much of it as I could, just to expedite the inevitable.

Then I folded the remaining portion of the boot shafts down inside the shoes, gluing with E6000 and holding in place with binder clips.

After a 24-hour glue-setting period, I turned my attentions to the noticeably pale inner edges of the shoes. They stood out too much and needed to be a more similar color to the outsides. For this, I used some of the purple hair dye I still haven't quite used up since I first used it in 2014.

I brushed it on with a paintbrush, and was actually astonished by how closely it matched the color of the shoes!

Seeing as it was dye, and its sole purpose is to colorize whatever it touches, I thought I should do something to keep it from rubbing off onto my foot or socks. So I sealed the dyed areas with a coat of polyurethane varnish.

For my next trick, I had to figure out a way to make the buckle actually functional. When the shoes had been boots, the buckle was just a decoration, attached with a permanent metal brad. I thought about this for a while; I considered snaps, hooks and eyes, and elasticized loops before finally settling on Velcro. It might not be glamorous, but it would be quick!

The next day was Halloween, and the shoes' big debut!

But, as you may recall if you read my Halloween post, the old boots didn't just get a second life as a different kind of footwear; I used the rest of them to make a mini hat!

The hat was the harder part of this process. Sizing down boots into shoes is child's play; but creating a whole different garment out of the scraps is practically sorcery!

This is how the boot shafts looked when I started.

Using good old mathematics (I lied about the sorcery), I decided on an appropriately sized triangle that would form one half of the cone for a witch's hat.

I cut out two triangles, put them together with right sides facing, held them together with binder clips (I didn't want to use pins for fear of putting permanent holes in the vinyl) and sewed them,  up the sides along the marked lines.

This did produce a cone, albeit one with a strangely shaped bottom edge!

I trimmed the bottom edge so that it was a smooth curve all around.

At this point, I decided I would add the embellishment to the cone before attaching it to the brim. I thought this would make it easier to handle so I could position it accurately and glue it firmly. In retrospect, this was a bad idea, as you'll see in a minute. But at the time, I went blithely ahead, using a black grosgrain ribbon and a decorative buckle I'd salvaged from a shirt sleeve, which I attached to the bottom edge of the cone with hot glue.

To make the brim, I simply cut a circular shape out of the remaining boot shaft. To get the shape, I used a jar of very appropriately pumpkin-shaped candy!

It was much too floppy to hold its shape, so I found some sturdy art paper that just happened to be a similar shade of purple, which I cut out and glued to its bottom surface. 

I also colored around its outside edge with more purple dye.

I then hot-glued the pointed part to the brim. This is where I regretted already attaching the hat band and buckle. There were a number of gaps between the brim and crown, which I could have hidden with an artfully placed hat band, but it was too late for that now!

I was out of plain metal headbands for crafting, so rather than permanently ruin one of my existing headbands, I set out to make the witch's hat detachable.

I started with two loops of rubber bands on the underside of the hat. I could slide a headband into these, and they would hold it in place...that is, until they kept breaking and slipping out of their glue patches. I later replaced the rubber bands with carefully sized loops of ribbon, which worked much better.

For now, the hat was finished, and this was the way I wore it for Halloween.

However, I later cut a circle out of the center of the brim, so that it could rest more snugly over my head. This means that if I ever wear it again, I'll have to redo the ribbon strips, because they ended up getting removed in this process.