I’ve written before about my inspiration binders and inspiration boards, and the resulting outfits such projects inspired. But now that you’re unemployed (see all unemployment projects here!) you have time to go crazy with your inspiration binders and achieve something else equally important — getting rid of all of those magazines I know you’ve been saving.

I had stacks of Print, Oprah, Real Simple, Nylon, Teen Vogue, Good, and ReadyMade (between Oprah & Teen Vogue, try to guess my age!) piling up in my shelves and taking over my life. I am a packrat, so I couldn’t just throw them away.

I made multiple binders with the following categories: Fashion (with tabs for: hair, makeup, professional clothes, socks, and awesome outfits); Recipes (real food, desserts); Crafty Inspiration (Cool Page Layouts, DIY, and Home).

Here are some excerpts from my fashion binder:

Here are some Tips & Tricks for your binder making:

• In my fashion binder, I chose to cutout my fashion inspirations and mix them together on blank white paper under clear sleeves, but because most of the recipes I found took up entire pages, I just hole punched them and put them directly in the binder (with a blank sleeve at the front so I can take one to the kitchen and not ruin it).
• For my fashion binder, I only put in items I could feasibly make with my own wardrobe, this way the binder would be really useful when getting dressed (its purpose!).
• But I was too sad to leave some awesome fashions in the recycling bin, so I labeled one clear sleeve “Love Em” for outfits I loved but couldn’t see making with what I already owned.
• I also made an “Archives” sleeve to stuff in things that started to get old. This way, I can cycle through inspirations as my fancy strikes.
• I actually use my binders for reference! And you should too! Sometimes, I take out something cool and put it on my inspiration board (ie bulletin board hanging in my room reserved for inspiring things).
• If I like something on both sides of a page, I don’t use a white background in my sleeve. If something takes up too much space, but I think I might like to see the whole thing or if there is more info I might want to reference, I fold it instead of cutting it out. Sometimes I’ll tape extra info about a product onto the back of the picture if I think I’ll want to reference it later.
• Yes, you can probably do this project while watching reruns of everything you already watched reruns of on Hulu.

Finally, a crafty reader named Ann sent me the funniest email and an awesome project. While you’re going through your magazines, cut out little squares of solid colors and use them to make or decorate something you need, like a CD rack. I’ll give you her instructions:

“After many rounds of somewhat lame cross-stitch projects, I needed something different to do, so I decided to attack my mysterious Vogue subscription (mysterious because I have no idea why they’re being sent to me because, obviously, I can’t afford anything advertised there) collection. I needed a storage solution for my cds and whatnots, but since I couldn’t find a cool box that i liked from target, I decided to grab my scissors, magazines, and glue and get to gettin.”

“First, I cut down my Quaker Oats jumbo box to about 5″ high. Then I started ripping out pages from my magazine, focusing on those pages that were mainly of one color, or of fun pattern (stripes, plaids, and flowers). Then I started cutting out 2.5″ squares from those sheets of paper. THEN I folded in the four corners, glued, flipped over, folded in the four corners again and glued, to make mini squares. THEN I sorted them into ROYGBIV order, then glued them onto the box. I cheated a bit on the long sides, but I like the finished product well enough.”

With both of these projects in hand, you should be busy for at least two days!

I don’t know if anyone has posted this yet, or maybe I’m the only young adult out there reading Woman’s Day (er…) but I AM SO EXCITED about this periodic table of cupcakes. Go to the Woman’s Day page to view the table larger, see how it’s color-coded, and (yes!) if you click on any square you get the corresponding recipe (and more pictures, usually)!

The table is so well designed, isn’t it? And it’s about cupcakes! I wish you could clik on a square and a cupcake would appear on your desk. I’ve been thinking about cupcakes ALL DAY.

Sometimes, you want the icing and the cupcakes… and an art project. If so, crazyaboutcupcakes.com has inspiration images that will make you drool!

If you want to torture yourself with more sweet snacks, check out Oh Joy’s recent post on magical looking icy pops from icypops.com.

Above left: The more stylish version of the frosting shot. Image from Fosters.com. The Foster’s article includes a recipe for making your own frosting shot. Above right: A frosting shot from Babycakes, presumably before the vintage shot glasses. Image from Roboppy’s Flickr stream.

In my most recent edition of Currently Obsessed , I mentioned that a recent thrill has come from eating vanilla frosting directly from the can, no cupcake or cake required (or none availible, as it may be). Upon seeing this post a friend recently mentioned that there is a new fad for frosting eaters — frosting shots. It is said that these little guys take the middleman out of frosting enjoyment.

One of the places offering such deliciously calorie-filled snacks is Babycakes, a popular place for vegan cupcake eatery in lower Manhattan. According to The Arizona Republic, Babycakes tried to rid itself of the $1.50 frosting shots, but people just kept coming back for more. Now, they’re served in vintage shot glasses and people who want to add a twist to their evenings often stop by before going out to the bars

And, in case you are health conscious, even Oprah magazine thinks Babycakes, in all of their vegan, gluten-free glory, are pretty good for you, and pretty good tasting, too.

A little ramble on food and fashion.

I’ve been shifting through old magazines and clipping pictures of foods that look pretty and yummy (making a little inspiration book), but, unfortunately, the recipes are often complicated and require lots of ingredients, some only available at specialty stores, so I decided to create my own special, pretty food.

It suddenly occurred to me that making meals is a lot like putting together an outfit. You add and subtract until it all “matches.” Often, you need a central piece or idea that holds the concept together, and “food porn” — ie pretty pictures in cooking magazines and the like — is a good way to jumpstart your brain into creating a new and exciting dish, the same way fashion magazines don’t suggest you go out and buy that $500 Marc Jacobs top, but that you find a few things in your wardrobe that can be put together in a similar way. (more…)