[intro music plays] [zipper sound effect]
Hi, my name is Annika and you're watching
Make, Thrift, Buy, a show where you guys send me clothes from the internet and I attempt to re-create them!
Today’s Make, Thrift, Buy was suggested by my friend Tilde who sent me a picture of
this mermaid top, originally from a shop called Tokyo Hardcore, though there are various iterations
of this theme all over the internet. So, let’s see if I can re-create it! So first I looked
up pictures of seashells to make a kind of stencil with. I found this shell whose shape
looks similar to the one on the shirt, so I copied it into Photoshop and copied it into
two different sizes because I wasn’t sure what size I wanted. The shirt that I’m using
is this old crop top that I’ve had for five years. I decided to use the larger shells
which I then cut out properly. Then using a pencil, I marked where I wanted the top
and the bottom off the shell to be and I traced the shells onto the shirt. Next up, mixing
the paints: so red + blue + white equals…horrible grey, apparently. So I eventually got to a
pretty pastel purple by adding a lot more red, a lot more white…more red, more white.
Yeah, alright, that’ll do. Now I’m adding one part fabric medium to two parts paint.
Adding the medium helps the paint to stay permanent on fabric, even when washed. Then
I put a piece of cardboard in the shirt to separate the front from the back and started
painting. Wait. Wait a minute. At this point, I remembered what a disaster combination cardboard
and paint were. Oh well, better late than never. At least I’ve learned from my mistakes.
So I carefully replaced the cardboard inside the shirt with a piece of plastic and I continued
painting my seashells on. And I finished off the edges with a really fine brush and after
letting it dry overnight, and according to the instructions on the fabric medium, I put
a tea towel over the prints and ironed them for a good two minutes. Then, using a purple
permanent marker and a ruler, I drew some dotted lines just like in the top from Tokyo
Hardcore. And I ironed this all again because well, why not. To style this
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To style this shirt,
I paired it with some ice cream earrings, bright pink lipstick, some jelly shoes to give
it a beachy feel, and a long green skirt which I felt kind of looked like a mermaid’s tail.
So, my conclusion? [scissor cutting effect, zipper sound effect]
So I’ll admit that you probably could buy this cheaper than you could make it, although obviously
I’m going to re-use all of these paints and permanent markers again in new craft projects.
While yes, one of the points of this series is for me to show you that you can re-create
things from the high street for a fraction of the cost. Another motive of this series
is to slow down the pace of fast fashion. Every new thing you buy uses up resources,
and most of the time a lot of the things you buy are made in sweat shops. On that political
note, please give my video a thumbs up if you liked it and subscribe to my channel and
I’ll see you all next time! [outro music plays]