white elephant

This is what I wore to a blogger potluck/white elephant hosted by Katie. In attendance were Christina of profreshstyle, Jennie of Going West, Erin of calivintage, Liz of Late Afternoon, Xtina of candybox, Ami of Song of Style, Brittany of Work It, Berk, and Helen of Chictopia. Liz has some pictures up here (where you can see Erin modeling my atrocious white elephant gift).

I had my two linguistics finals the day before, and my scene due before that, and my term paper before that, sooo the night before the party I was scrambling to find a gift and a vegan cupcake recipe. (Now that I know what goes into these, I don't think I could ever go vegan.)

Above, vegan cupcakes + powdered sugar, artfully sprinkled by my roomie. Theyhad been rolling around in their Pyrex container for several hours when this picture was taken. Also I ran out of flour halfway through the recipe and had to ask our neighbors for some.

This is the gift I ended up bringing. Unfortunately I didn't have enough foresight to photograph what I made before wrapping it, but Liz has a picture of Erin (sportfully) sporting the ugliest hair bow in existence.

Look how happy my little snowman is in his mini scarf!

That hairy/tinsel-esque fabric swatch on the outside of the package was supposed to be a preview of what was inside.

Basically I went into my craft box and found the ugliest fabric I owned, to sew into an unreasonably large hair bow, which I sewed and glued to a hair clip. I actually took this fabric from my high school's drama department when I worked on costumes there for tech in sophomore year. I recall my co-sweatshop-workers saying in response to "Hey do we need this or can I take it?" something like "I don't think - OH MY GOD, SAM! What are you going to do with that, build a space suit?!"

Yeah, not the most cooperative fabric. Our living room carpet was a hot hairy silver mess afterward:

I also rediscovered my Perler beads (yeah, baby) and made myself a double-C Chanel logo because I am the epitome of class:

Above, I probably left it under the iron for too long. I've never seen Perler beads melted so thin they become translucent like this.

I then attached my extra-classy fake logo to some ribbons and voila, CLASS!

Above, okay, a chunk of it fell off during the party so these pictures look sad. I can't even counterfeit properly!

Anyway, here's what I wore. (It was raining, and I don't know what that little chunk of hair is doing in the back of my head. Just chillin, probably.)

Totally fake Chanel necklace: ribbons + Perler beads, DIY. Black dress with pockets (!): Old Navy. White thermal: Old Navy. Bright red tights: H&M. Black flats: Steve Madden.