Somehow making a cassette tape is so much more artful than mailing tunes over aim or burning a disk that just gets re-burned to an ipod, but that time consuming trend died somewhere in the 80s & 90s. Still, we love to reminisce about our youth, and so for you detailed, artful, nostalgic lovers out there I have collected my 10 favorite pieces & places to carry on the memory of cassettes & mix tapes.

1. Muxtape.com
   Upload songs to the web-site to create your own “mix tape”, or listen to the full mix tapes of others online. To show you how easy it is, I just spent an hour (there were hard decisions to make!) mixing a tape JUST FOR YOU. You can now find my tape at stickersanddonuts.muxtape.com.
2. Digital Meets Analog Ipod Case
   If you’re going to betray analog, you might as well do it with the cover of classy analog style. 45ipodcases.com makes crafty ipod cases out of vinyl records and, of course, cassette tapes. You can even pick the exact cassette tape you want to encase your ipod in.
3. Cassette Belt Buckles
   
   The pretty gold cassette buckle shown at the top of the pages was sold on Esty once upon a time. Now you can find cassette belt buckles lots of other places like (more…)

Here are photos featuring the fashion industry’s love of boyish figures and super-skinny women. Fashion’s exclusion of all other sizes is ridiculous. Nonetheless, these photos from The New York Times have been sitting on my desk for weeks, and I just now decided I couldn’t let these bright colors slide by, no matter the size of the model within them. (Check out the New York Times Spring 2008 Fashion & Beauty Magazine online. It’s got some amazing stuff, and beautiful web-design, too!) (more…)

Here is a whimsical, Alice in Wonderland-esque inspiration board featuring puffy sleeves, large ruffles, bright pastels, and overflowing baby doll dresses.

Although I am not fond of the skinny-model obsession, there are few other ways to get such depth and breadth of fashion inspiration than what high fashion (and with it the skinny models) provides. And thus, I (more…)

Clockwise, starting top left: Maria Carla Boscone in Harper’s Bazzar, Gwen Stefani, Model for Louis Verdad, Salma Hayek (who also plays Frida in a movie about her life), Model for Rafaella Curiel, Model for Christian Lacroix

Check out the Frida-Inspired images above, and then dress yourself Kahlo-esque using this list of How To Dress Like Frida: (more…)

To clarify my title: the top ten things currently available online in lime (neon, florescent, highlighter) green that are not a million dollars. (I love lime green. See my room.) Even though neon brights are popular this season, it’s harder than you’d think to find lime green merchandise outside of a costume, Halloween, or clown store (seriously). But with a little hunting I’ve come up with a pile of lime green merchandise that is sure to injure your retinas (yay)!

1. American Apparel’s Strapless Ruched Dress in Fluorescent Green ($36)
2. Target’s Lime Green Party Set for 96 People ($50)
3. Manic Panic’s 8″ Synthetic Glam Strips in Electric Lizard ($5)
4. Alice + Olivia for Payless, Aidan Wedge in green ($30)
5. Ikea’s Saxan shower curtain in green ($5) (more…)

I bought these bright pink, pointy, graffiti-ed high heels for $15 at a little store in Cape Cod. I don’t know who made them, but I would buy another pair in a second if I could find them. They’re like a work of art, more comfortable than you might imagine, and always get some kind of comment when I wear them. (more…)

These glasses are $160, but I think even $20 too high a price. Get similar version for $7 on the sidewalks of St. Mark’s Place (NYC).

Low-budget shopping is all about creativity! Basic neutrals — like jeans, kakhis, and woven tops — are always findable for a bargain, but the true mark of a shopping crafts(wo)man is if she can put together a fashionable outfit for less than $50. (Lucky for you, I do it everyday.)

1. Re-define cheap. Not fall-apart-in-three-wears cheap, but $5-for-all-of-this?! cheap. You can get a sweater for $10. You can get shoes for $5. And you will.
2. Have a budget and stick to it. If you can only spend, say, $50 a month then you’ll want to get as much bang for your buck as possible, and you’ll be forced to shop as inexpensively.
3. Shop sales racks. Make a bee-line for the super-sales racks and be prepared to hunt and pick. I’ve gotten $1 sweaters at Gap. I’ve gotten $3 leggings at American Eagle.
4. Shop at the end of the season. If you like to wear your clothes right when you buy them, it’s hard to shop out-of-season, but most clothing stores have some accelerated version of time, so you can buy super-sale summer items late in the summer when retailers consider them out of season. Other amazing times to shop: after Christmas in January and after Fourth of July. If you really like the capture as much as the kill, then try shopping in February. A lot of items are picked over, but this is when you can find items at Gap, Old Navy, and other retailers for cents rather than dollars (seriously).
5. Ignore labels. Who gives a crap what the label says? (Unless you want to know where it was made or what it’s made of. These are fair questions.) Imagine the $5 JC Penney shirt folded neatly on a lead table at Banana Republic. Does it make you want to buy it more? Then buy it because no one can even see the label but you, and you can only see it if you’re looking. (With clothes, it actually is what’s on the outside that counts.) (more…)

As the comments and conversations about my outfits grew and grew, I decided I need to get to the bottom of the hullabaloo, so I started taking pictures of my clothes every morning. What did I learn? Sometimes, I go a little overboard with color. Sometimes, I miss the mark. Sometimes, I actually hit the mark with a delightful quirkiness that others simply call weird.

All of my outfits are featured in a single Flikr set. You can view the images as a slideshow, or as a large group with more detail, or you can click on each outfit individually to see my what-not-to-wear-esque commentary or look at tags noting where I purchased each piece. (more…)