Just a quick one...

Despite having an exam on Friday which I'm immensely unprepared for, I thought I'd do a quick, picture-lead post to tide you lot over- I've been a bit neglectful again haven't I?

So, at Christmas-time I was pretty brassic and couldn't really indulge in much sales shopping, but there's always funds-enough to do it thrift style!

My local Age Concern (still not yet made the switch to Age UK), in Settle, North Yorkshire, is one of the few charity shops I know of to put on a 'New Year's sale'- you'd think things were cheap enough right? But who am I to complain...

So as there was 50% off pretty much everything, I thought I'd go have a look. I picked up this belt for a pocket-friendly 50p:

It's leather with little silver and gold tone metal accents. I've seen a few of these in COW vintage, Birmingham- I think they're probably American and seem to have a bit of a line dancing influence (mine has little cowboy boots on)

And I also got this small navy bag for 75p:

Excuse the sinful, chipped nail polish

Thought it was quite cute and most of my bags are black, so a good addition I think.

My Age Concern also has an amazing fancy dress section, which I hadn't visited since I was 17 for a fancy dress day in sixth form.

(This is the place where all the great fur coats are exiled)

I had a little time to kill so popped up. It really is amazing!

The majority of the stuff up there is vintage- some really obscure stuff which they would make a killing off if they sold it on eBay!

Anyway, here's a few pictures I took up there on my phone:

I attemped to buy this vintage sequin top but they wouldn't give in!

They're very reluctant to sell items from the fancy dress area. I was told that they often chuck some of it out (!!!) when there's too much stuff and they were planning to have a mass cull in due course- gutted I'm back in Birmingham now!

Later that day I went to Skipton to do a little more charity shopping- I'll post my buys sometime after Friday.

(I'll also do that outfit post soon too. Promise!)

Well, turned out to be a longer post than I expected! I always feel the need to narrate what I've done and indulge in a bit of rambling- must be the journalist in me.

Oh and...

I've had a lot more views these past two weeks, despite not posting for some time; mainly thanks to an old post of mine on retro swimwear, mentioning the impossibly gorgeous Katy Perry.

So for all my new readers, made up no doubt of horny teenage boys google-ing 'Katy Perry in a bikini', here's another:

Goal for the summer?!

Enjoy!

Foxy

x

Some serious denim...

I'm in a great mood today- why? Because I'm about to embark upon project denim shorts!

Daisy Duke- the denim shorts poster girl

So, as I'm back in Yorkshire for summer, I decided to go and pay a visit to my grandparents today.

Now, this set of grandparents, like many others I'm sure, are serial hoarders. I mean, seriously.

For a while, I've been talking about getting some vintage jeans (preferably Levi's) and cutting them up into shorts for summer. This hadn't proved very successful as most pairs I found were around a tenner- I couldn't bear to chop them up (not to mention the possibility of butchering them into unwearable shreds!)

However today my Dad mentioned that my Grandad had a shed load of old jeans which he bought to sell, and inevitably hadn't had any luck in doing so- always out to make a quick buck (usually selling old junk) my Grandad is.

Anyway, my Grandad handed over about 10 pairs of these jeans to me (and more to come tomorrow)- and behold! A stack of brand new/ old stock vintage American denim dating back to the 70s/80s I would say.



There's no wonder he couldn't sell these; the style is outdated. The jeans even proudly display the width of the bottoms on a label- 20" for most pairs!

The daft bugger's also been selling these at the wrong places. With the largest waist size being 29" (a UK 10-12), he's hardly going to shift many pairs at autojumbles! (It's a well-known fact that motorbike enthusiasts are dainty little creatures now isn't it?)

So the question became, 'what do I do with a load of old, tired jeans, sizes 25"-29" in summertime?' The answer? Make vintage denim cut-offs of course!

And here's my first pair...



I decided to make these into turn-ups rather than raw-edged shorts.



All I need to do now is stitch the turn-ups in place and it's job done!


(I haven't quite got Daisy Duke's figure, hence my pair being slightly more forgiving!)

Not bad considering that they initially looked like this!



ANOTHER YORKSHIRE-BASED UPDATE

So as I'm back on home turf, I paid a quick visit to the two charity shops in my small town.

Here are today's finds:



In the first of the two shops (its name escapes me), I bought this cute vintage perfume bottle and the small gold watch.

I haven't really been in this shop before in all honesty (once, a few years back looking for pirate-themed fancy dress items), and I actually found it to be quite expensive- as far as charity shops go.

I almost didn't get the perfume bottle, which was £5, but as I'm moving to a new flat soon (automatically equates new décor darling), I've been on the lookout for little nick nacks to spruce up the place.

The watch was only £3- which didn't exactly break the bank.

The second shop I visited was Age Concern where I got the scarf (seen underneath) for £1.50 and the gold necklace for £1.

All in all a great day for Katie- minus the sunburn (ouch!).