Category: DIY

I bought this pretty cardigan on clearance from Summersalt last year and I just didn’t love the sleeves.

I tried wearing it a few times to see if I’d get over it. However, the fact that the body of the sweater was a super lightweight and soft cashmere and the light blue portion of the sleeves were a thick, ribbed cotton finally broke me.

And I decided to chop them off.

Initially I was going to cut off ALL the light blue, but then I realized that there were no elastic cuffs on the cashmere portion, so after wearing it a bit the new cuffs would most likely get all loose and baggy. With that in mind, I decided to leave a little bit of the light blue cuff.

I eyeballed my new hem and pinned it into place.

Then, I just hand-sewed around once. It went super quickly!

I trimmed the excess and that was it! Here is the new inside of the sweater:

And here is the new outside:

It took me less than an hour and I love the sweater SO MUCH MORE now!

Clothes are just clothes. If they aren’t making you happy, it’s so easy to make these little changes until they better meet your needs!

I recently checked out a new crafty store with a friend and ended up sorting through some beautiful vintage buttons. They had a ‘fill a bag’ special, so I ended up with an assortment of vintage, antique and sparkly bits and pieces. Did I have a plan on what to do with them? Mostly nope. Except when it came to this one:

How gorgeous is this? There were four of these vintage buttons which looked to have abalone stone on them. I just loved them on sight. My friend added one to her bag and I added the remaining three to mine. I was only planning to buy one, but then I felt kind of guilty leaving the stragglers behind.

And it was a good thing too, because somewhere between purchasing her buttons and getting into her car, my friend’s buttons disappeared!

Luckily mine made their way home with me, so I decided that I’d not only make myself a necklace from one of the buttons… I’d make one for my friend too.

Each button had four little holes for securing them:

So I threaded some elastic string through a hole, knotted it twice and started adding beads. When I ransacked my bead drawer, my green beads and metallic beads were calling to me. So I made two similar versions of a necklace – one with just a few metallic beads near the button, and the other which alternated gold and green beads in sets of 5.

Here’s what the back looks like with the elastic secured:

I love how they both turned out and I gave my friend first pick of which one she’d like to keep. She chose the necklace on the right, so the one on the left is mine:

I really enjoyed upcycling a vintage button to make a unique piece of jewelry that will live on. I think these will look great alone, as well as layered with a metallic chain necklace.