Photo Collage Featuring Red, Brown and Gold Necklace and Bracelet

        Here is another addition that I will be sharing on here, a photo collage that will feature jewelry pieces that I designed and created and that are for sale in my Etsy shop.  This particular collage was created with items from my closet and shows a way that I personally would wear this jewelry (which does make it hard because I want to keep all of the items when I see how fabulous they go with my wardrobe!)....But... I love giving my customers a chance to snatch items first before I decide if I need it or not.... at least for the most part :-)

The outfit consists of an off white button up crinkle shirt from Old Navy that I gave a tea bath to.  The cropped red cardigan was a find at Target on clearance for $6 back last year.  This brown belt was a find at a local boutique, but any brown chunky belt would do.  The dark green leather-looking stretchy pencil skirt was a find online at Jane.com & was one of there items for sale for a few days, it is fairly new and has only been worn once.... I look forward to showing it in future outfits.  Next to the jewelry pieces, the creme-de-la-creme of this outfit are these amazing shoes that I picked up on Zulily earlier this year, but I believe that you can purchase them here.


Here are some pictures of the jewelry up close.  I apologize for the quality of these pictures, between the lighting and reflectiveness of the gold on the jewelry, my phone was having issues getting a clear photo.

 The bracelet can be purchased here

 And the necklace can be purchased here.

As much as I would love to share the link for the earrings, they sold already and were definitely a harder one for me to send off as I loved them so much!  But there it all is.  I really hope that people benefit from these collages in both seeing what our jewelry pieces can be paired with, but also to give you some more inspiration in your own everyday wardrobe and to give you the confidence to try new things in your outfits!  Thanks for joining us today and we will see you next post.

Lindsi Jo

Leopard Tissue Paper Shoes Refashion

This is a project I started on a few weeks ago, but just didn't have the time to finish it up until this past weekend.  I have had people waiting to see how this one turned out.... I think they were doubtful that it would turn out, but it turned out AWESOME!!!

 I started off with these pink shoes that my dad gave to my girls for dress ups from the thrift store (they have lots of dress up shoes, so they did not need another pair.... so naturally, I took them ;-) )

I had these leopard tissue paper sheets that came in some packages I had ordered and desperately wanted to think of something to use them for.... so of course, why not SHOES!

I started this process by painting sections of the shoe with some Mod Podge and tearing fairly small pieces of the tissue paper and sticking it on.  I was careful not to get Mod Podge on the sole of the shoe so that when it came time to cut it with an exacto knife, it wouldn't be glued on the sole and would give me a clean edge.  Up at the top area, I wrapped the tissue paper to the inside and glued it down with the Mod Podge.

After everything is glued down,  take your Mod Podge and coat the entire top of the tissue paper making sure to completely seal the whole thing.  Let it dry and exacto knife the edges off very carefully.  Next, paint the heel and the straps with Cognac leather paint.  it takes a couple of coats to really get a nice look, then paint the buckle with gold fingernail polish.  As you can see above, I undid the buckle to get everything painted.  One thing I have noticed from projects, leather paint doesn't hold up under any buckles, it rips it off and ruins the whole thing, so this time I decided to cover the whole strap with Mod Podge to protect it and it is working out great

I am super excited with how they turned out!

Definitely one-of-a-kind shoes that will be great for dressing up or pairing with jeans like I did here.

The jeans, jacket & brown cuff here are thrifted from friends or my local FB Yard Sale page, scarf was a cheap find at Walmart.  Super inexpensive, yet fun and colorful outfit for the fall approaching..... and I am LOVING these shoes!  So fun to see people's reactions when I tell them I refashioned them with tissue paper!

Hand-painted Leopard Shoes

          Do you love leopard as much as I do?  Leopard is my POWER pattern!  I feel very powerful and confident when I am in leopard, so that was of course my inspiration for these shoes.

          I purchased these little red beauties for a whole $2 from my local Facebook yard sale page. 

         Some people would think that there is nothing wrong with them, but they are just too bold for my style and coloring.  After buying them I thought "why did I even buy these?  I don't care for this color for me...."  But then I had a thought and I was bound to do it.....Hand painted leopard shoes!

       #1- The first step to creating this was to rub my shoes down with pure ACETONE.  NOT fingernail polish remover.  With a cotton rag, rub and rub to see if you can get the glossy finish off (sometimes it all comes off and sometimes you just can't get it off).  *please use rubber or latex gloves during this process and do it outside where it is ventilated.

       #2- The second step is to get your colors figured out.  I use Angelus leather paints that have to be ordered online.  The base color I chose to be Mustard and the spots are Cognac.

     The base I used a larger art brush & gave it a good 2-3 coats.  After letting that dry, I used the little paint brush in the paint and free handed some spots.  I created a free pattern as I wanted them to be a bit unique.

      After getting all of the spots on and letting it dry, I took the Light-brown paint and drew random borders around the spots.

     With this picture, you can see the random pattern.  It is really cool around the heel and didn't take it all around the shoe.

     My original plan was to just stop at this point, but as you can see, it was a bit bright and animated for my taste and I desperately needed to find a way that I could tone down the look.  Now, with part of my background being in mural painting and wall staining, I took some techniques from that and created an over color that would tone down the yellow and make it look aged.  Here is what I did.  In an old plastic bowl, I dabbed a little bit of the dark brown paint and a pinch of water.  I took a cotton rag and dabbed it both in the brown paint and water and created a wash out of it.  I swirled that all around the the shoes and created some spots darker and some lighter so get the aged/worn affect I wanted.

       You can see here in the picture that it created a very beautiful, yet fun look that I absolutely love and adore!

     I even wore them in a photoshoot I had back a few months ago.  So, for a few bucks for some shoes and some paints (that of course stretch into many more projects), I now have a FABULOUS pair of shoes that I get compliments on ALL THE TIME!  So try it!  Don't be afraid because you say you aren't an artist.  This is not difficult and the end result is well worth the bit of time put in.