Advice

Where to Find and Buy Specific Items Online – 5 Great Sites for Fashion

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 Click here for item details on Polyvore 
(Shoes from ASOS and Wittner)

I love browsing shops when I don’t have anything in mind to buy but when I am in need of something specific I can find it a real headache. Since I’ve started blogging I’ve discovered some great sites that really help you search for and track down a specific item. I have 5 favourites and I thought I’d share them with you today :)

I love Shop Style! This site is AMAZING. I was blown away when I first discovered this. Shop Style is basically a search engine that allows you to search for products across hundreds of online stores all at once. You can specify price range, colour, brand, shop and sale/discounted items. It’s available in lots of different countries too. I use the Australian site which includes lots of local stores (like Myer and the Iconic) as well as larger international sites (such as Boohoo, Forever 21, ASOS, Nordstrom). You can create an account on this, favourite items, create lists, specify favourite shops and get sale alerts too.
The Find is a a similar site to Shop Style in that it searches across hundreds of online stores all at once and collaborates results into one simple list. The Find has some different stores to Shop Style and I usually get quite different results when I search there. Like Shop Style you can specify price range, colour, brand, store and many other things in regards to sales and payment. The Find has both a US based site and a UK one. It currently doesn’t have a way to search for internationally available items, so if you do live somewhere else you will have to sift through search results yourself to discover if they are available to you. I actually save a list of shops within my account that I know ship to Australia and then only search within those stores, which works really well.
Amazon is actually one of my favourite places to search for jewelry and accessories as it has such an amazing range of product. I was searching for earrings on there the other day and got over 300,000 results! It isn’t as great for clothing but I think always worth a look. You can get pretty specific with what you search for and I find it provides great recommendations on related items too. Most stores on Amazon have great international shipping and prices too.
Etsy is like one gigantic, worldwide marketplace that’s open 24/7.  It is absolutely the best place to search for unique, handmade and vintage clothing and accessories. You will get a ridiculous number of search results here (I just got over 1.7 million earrings) and really different sorts of things too. It’s easy to tweak search results in terms of price, colour and shipping destination. I think Etsy is particularly great for searching for specific gift ideas as it has such beautiful, one of a kind items.
I’ve had mixed success on Ebay and don’t tend to shop there unless I have have something specific in mind to search for. I’m not exactly sure why as they have such an incredible range of things and the prices can be ridiculous (I think it’s the whole auction thing that stresses me out a bit and the fact you can’t easily return them). I’ve had some success finding items or sizes that I missed out on in stores when I was too slow making a decision or ones that have been discontinued – I really recommend it for that. Although I find search results a bit more patchy than some of the other sites here you can really find some unique, special items here (at a bargain).

Do you like checking out these sites as much as me? Let me know if there are any other great ones out there I can add too :)

The 5 Essential Earrings to Own (and Pack When Travelling)

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In the last few years or so I’ve worked out a few formulas to help me pack for a vacation and also to help fill in some gaps in my wardrobe. Today I thought I’d share an earring formula that helps me work out the best choices to take.  
The 5 Essential Earrings to Own:
A BASIC NEUTRAL – Something simple that will go with everything, including a necklace, like a round stud or a small drop, generally metallic but not necessarily.   
A DRESSY NEUTRAL – Another simple earrings but a little bit more dressy such as a pearl or something with some sparkle, usually a post earring.
A POP OF COLOUR – a solid pop of colour of a favourite colour, something that will go with the majority of your wardrobe. These are usually a statement post or a single beaded earring.

A NEUTRAL STATEMENT – A larger neutral earring, usually metallic too, that is fairly simple such as a hoop, tassel or disc. 

A FUN STATEMENT – An earring you love wearing just because it’s awesome, something that will make a statement on it’s own and look great with a basic tee. These can be single coloured, multi-coloured, patterned, textured, whatever you like. 

A Few of My Favourite 5 Earrings to Pack:
These links just go to the stores – I can’t imagine any of these would be online still
Blue Studs LOVISA (Pop of Colour) // Studs made from Flatback Gem (Dressy Basic Neutral) // Small Silver Squares PASTICHE // Large Silver Circles PASTICHE // Red Statements (refashioned with nail polish) BIG W- (Fun Statements)
These are a few of my favourite earrings and ones I wear at lot of. I would say I wear a basic neutral about 40% of the time. I think it’s really important to have a few great neutrals that you absolutely  love, they are really the best types of earrings to invest in. Whatever colour I choose as my ‘Pop of Colour’ earrings, I’ll try to choose a ‘Fun Statement’ earring in the opposite colour i.e. a cool coloured pair and a warm coloured pair. This gives me more variety with my outfits.
I hope this is of some help.
What do you think of this formula? What would you consider as your essential earrings?

50 Fun Ways to Create New Outfits

Every now and then I start getting into a bit of rut when it comes to creating outfits. Usually this will happen towards the end of a season or if I haven’t bought anything new for a while. As there’s nothing like having a wonderful new outfit to wear, I thought I’d have a bit of a brainstorm of some ideas to help inspire the creative process. 
So here are 50 random ideas to help add a bit of creativity and fun into your outfit creations. Some may not exactly result in great looks, or even be something you’ll want to try, but they will hopefully help you get thinking and discovering some great new combinations – and have some fun too!
1. Use chance (a Twister spinner or dice or something similar) to choose your colours/pieces.
2. Re-order your wardrobe in a different way. Organise by colour/type – take out some of your most worn items – create a section of clothes that you’d like to wear more often.
3. Create a capsule wardrobe of 8 or so pieces you don’t wear very often and create at least 8 outfits from them.

4. Dress backwards to the way you normally do – ie start with handbag, shoes, scarf, jacket, hair, makeup etc. etc.
5. Get a friend to create an outfit for you.
6. Get a man Dad/Brother/boyfriend/Husband/Grandpa to create an outfit for you.
7. Only wear clothes you haven’t worn yet this year (at the start of the year have all your hangers facing backwards in your closet and turn them around only after you’ve worn the clothes on them – I think I got this idea from Oprah!)
8. Stick up outfit ideas you love near your wardrobe. It’s so easy to forget looks you want to try from magazines, advertisements, Pinterest etc. so keep them where you can see them.
9. Begin by picking an accessory you wish you’d wear more often then create an outfit around it.
10. Find a new, different way to wear your hair and then create an outfit around it.
11. Do your makeup first– try some new colours or ones you wish you wore more often – then create an outfit to compliment. 
12. Learn some colour theory and create an outfit based on complimentary colours, analogous colours, triadic colours etc.
13. Create an outfit from different intensities of the one colour.
14. Dress for some different (imaginary) occasions – going to the Amazon, having a picnic, shopping on the Champs Elysees, a casual look for a movie premiere.
15. Put together two items that you don’t think ‘go’ together and then try to bring balance to the look through other items.
16. Find some fashion rules to break – clash prints, colours, textures, wear blue with green, dress for a different body shape.
17. Find some fashion rules to follow.
18. Seek your colour inspiration from nature or something with design, such as an artwork, can of corn or even a print in an existing piece of clothing.
19. Seek inspiration on Pinterest. It’s by far the best place to find new things to try.  Even if you don’t have an account you can still bookmark great boards you come across.   
20. Experiment with layering things you normally wouldn’t. Try layering some of your dresses to look like a skirt etc.
21. Look at refashioning some of your least favourite/older pieces then incorporate them into a look.
22. Get dressed in the dark.

23. Make an outfit based on only the cheapest (or most expensive/oldest/newest etc.) items you own.
24. Begin dressing casually then try to make the look formal (through accessories, makeup etc.)
25. Begin dressing formally than try to make the look casual (by adding a comfy cardigan, flip flops, casual hair style etc.)
26. Play with combining two very different styles together (such as a teenage and more mature / or a sporty and formal)
27. Take pics on your phone of outfits you like from TV/movies then keep them with your other ideas.
28. Create an outfit out of only neutrals.
29. Search for an item you’d like to style (like striped tee etc.) on Pinterest or Polyvore and look through the thousands of ways it’s already been styled.
30. Dress for a different season then it is and either add/remove some layers.
31. Designate a different colour to wear for everyday of the week and stick to it for a month (preferably colours you don’t wear too often).
32. Pick a different accessory to wear for everyday of the week and stick to it for a month as well (ones you don’t wear too often too).
33. Choose an item to wear several days in a row and style in so differently that people would be lucky to pick up on it.
34. Put on a favourite, go-to outfit, then dramatically alter it’s primary focus/statement (ie. If the main focus of the outfit is a bold belt, take that off and put on some colourful heels or a wide headband instead)
35. Create an outfit for someone else to wear, then make it your own.
36. Try to create a really ‘bad’ looking outfit, then try to make it look good.
37. Create a look for your teenage/younger self then make it more mature.
38. Create a look for your older, more mature self, than make it look younger.
39. Choose your clothes and then have someone else choose your accessories (or other way round).
40. Pick a single item and challenge yourself to come up with as many ways possible ways to style it.
41. Start taking pics of your outfits everyday for a month, then look back on them to see what you’d like to try differently.
42. Create a similar wardrobe to yours on Polyvore (or a small capsule one) – (you can even sort items with the tag ‘My Wardrobe’) then use them to create collages. You could even set up a group contest and have others do it for you!
43. Create your outfits at a different time of day than usual. If you normally work out what you wear before bed – try working out what you’ll wear in the afternoon, or whenever you feel most creative.
44.  Challenge yourself to coming up with an amazing outfit in 5mins, 3mins, 1min, 30secs!
45. Use music/scent/movement/food to make yourself feel really different (like calm or intensely happy) then pick your outfit.
46. Make yourself change something about your outfit every hour during a day.
47. Look back on some photos of yourself as a kid! See what sort of colours and patterns you loved most and create an outfit using them.
48. Find out the latest trends and use some of your oldest items to try to recreate them.
49. Buy some old fashion magazines from the op (thrift) shop and find some inspiration in past trends
50. Lend some of your clothes/accessories to a friend and see how they style them.
Wow that actually turned into quite a long list! Hope these will be of some help! If you try any of these let me know how you go :)
I’m thinking of writing some posts on particular ones of these in the future too so you can see how I go.  I really like the idea of making casual outfits formal as well as playing around with some capsule wardrobes too. 
How do you create your new outfits? How do you discover different things to try?

Linking up with: Funday Monday, Whims Wednesday, All Things Pretty, Three-Fer Thursday, Lovely Thursdays, Friday’s Fab Favourites,