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[Intro jingle]
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This video is supported in part by Storyblocks.
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Hello welcome to another Make Thrift Buy episode.
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This is the show where you send in suggestions of mass-produced, super-expensive or just plain weird
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fashion things that you found on the internet and then I try my best to recreate them.
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Today's suggestion was sent in by Emily, who wanted to see me recreate these...
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really...
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interesting?
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Yeah, we'll go with interesting - sock boots.
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By the anti fashion, high fashion, meme-brand Vetements,
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these sock boots featuring a unicorn heel, stick it to the man by only costing you a cool
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$1500
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So cheap right?!
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Buuut as it turns out, the internet figured out how to recreate these sock boots for even cheaper
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basically as soon as they hit the runways last year.
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The Man Repeller showed just how Simple it was to DIY these back in April of 2016 -
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And when Kanye West also released a line of sock boots,
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an instagrammer called thenuvogue made these for a lot cheaper as well.
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This DIY is so easy, simple and cost-effective, there is a bunch of people who recreated this look already.
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"So Annika, why are you here then?"
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"Are you here to tell us how to use Google?"
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Well, no i'm not, because there's one thing that hasn't to my knowledge been the subject of any DIYs and that is the particular heel on this boot:
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The unicorn heel. I may not be a huge fan of the sock boot look,
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but I am pretty fond of that magical unicorn heel.
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So let's get started!
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Alright let's do the easy part first -
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I thrifted this simple pair of black heels for $2, and I also found this pair of sports socks (I think?) for $5 at the thrift store.
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The color seemed pretty similar to the original boots - I don't know who the heck AIRDS are?
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My guess is that they're a random local sports team that I'll now be repping.
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GOOOOO AIRDS!
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I popped the shoe on and I pulled one sock over the toe of the boot pulling them on all the way.
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Then I took them off because it was too hard for me to stretch the sock over the heel while i was wearing them.
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So with the shoes off I stretched the socks up over the heel,
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and I made sure the sock was pulled up as far as possible
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and then I snipped a tiny hole with some scissors right where the heel is.
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Note that the hole is much smaller than the actual heel width because socks stretch!
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I stretched the sock up as far as possible around the heel
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and then I cut small slits at the back and the front to widen the hole slightly
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while continuing to pull the sock up, until the hole was wide enough to get to the top of the heel.
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This frayed sock looks pretty bad around the edges so to make it look a little bit more schmick
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I grabbed some fabric glue - I prefer this kind of glue over hot glue gun or craft glue
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because it's specially made to fix fabric both to other fabrics and to basically any other surface as well.
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So I painted fabric glue around the hole then I folded the raw frayed edges underneath like this all the way around the hole.
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[Music]
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And because these are slippery socks - and combined with high heels is just a faceplant waiting to happen -
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I latticed some hot glue across the sole of the shoes and now I won't slip over when I wear them!
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Other people have suggested attaching a circle of sandpaper to the bottom of the shoe -
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Buut I didn't particularly wanna scratch up the wooden floors in my rental house
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and it's also possible to buy these non-slip shoe pads which I think would be the perfect option
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because they're specifically meant not to mark floors and stop you from falling over at the same time.
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Or if you're feeling thrifty an old non-slip bath mat
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or an old yoga mat cut up to the shape of the bottom of the shoe could work as well.
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But anyway - now onto the unicorn heel!
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So the heels on the original Vetements shoe are not only unicorn-themed but also shaped like a cigarette lighter
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and I got these shoes before I realized that I wanted to make this unicorn heel
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and there's no way that I'm gonna make these cone-shaped heels look anything like a cigarette lighter
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but I can definitely still unicorn them up!
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Also: Don't smoke, kids!
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So to make this space unicorn heel a reality first I needed to make a space unicorn graphic
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so I headed over to my favourite royalty-free graphics website: Storyblocks!
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(Storyblocks is sponsoring this episode but all opinions are my own)
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Ambitiously first I made a search for just space unicorn buuut that was a long shot -
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still, this was surprisingly kind of close?
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But I wanted a more active looking unicorn so I continued my search.
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Anyway next i found myself a handsome looking unicorn,
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some great space-scapes and a lens flare.
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And then i got to work composing an image out of these
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[Funky music]
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Now if you did have shoes with rectangular block heels and you wanted to turn it into a cigarette lighter -
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(But remember: Don't smoke, kids!)
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You would want to make an image that looks like this -
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print out two -
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And then wrap it around the heel.
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And in case anyone wants to recreate this heel, I have made this image available to download on my website
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just resize it to roughly your own heel's measurements.
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Buuut I like to make things unnecessarily complicated for myself
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and I have this more complicated shaped heel to work with,
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so I made a bunch of measurements and calculations With the heel and I ended up with a heel design that looks like this.
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This will be the inside of the heel and this the outside.
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The unicorns will be visible from the back.
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I did leave the lighter part up the top here just to see what it would look like just in case,
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but i will be getting rid of that later because nobody owns a lighter that's shaped like this.
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(Don't smoke ki - )
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Before printing them out i also increase the height and width of the heels by 10%
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to make sure that I'd have enough of the print to work with,
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and I printed out some extra space scenery too just in case.
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I printed these out onto Lesley Riley's Transfer Artist Paper Which is material transfer paper
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and then I cut these pieces out.
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Next I'm going to transfer them to leftover scraps that I had of this canvas material.
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To transfer the images to the fabric I covered them with some silk organza to prevent the fabric burning
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and I pressed down on them hard at maximum heat setting
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no steam for 20 to 30 seconds, which transferred the design
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and then I cut them out.
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To apply the design to the shoe, first I covered the inner heel with fabric glue
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and I pressed the inner heel design down onto it.
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Where the fabric overhung the heel I made small incisions in the fabric
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and I pasted them down to the sides of the heel like this.
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Buuut with the outside heel I realized that I hadn't accounted for the curvature
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of the heel which left a gap in the side here.
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So then I figured out the actual shape that it would be when it's laid flat by draping
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bits of fabric down onto the heel,
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tracing around them with some pen,
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adding more pieces of fabric to this template with glue until I had this.
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And this is the actual shape of the outside heel when it's laid down flat.
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So back in photoshop i made a shape like this:
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the reason it's not curvy here is that I just wanted to make sure I had enough space-scape to work with,
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and I printed it out again and I used the template from before to cut it to the right shape.
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After transferring each design to canvas again
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I painted the outside heel with fabric glue and I carefully wrapped
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the space unicorn design around the heel.
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This was a little bit tricky but with lots of adjusting
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and by cutting small slits in the edges of the curves of the fabric
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I was able to lay it down onto the heel smoothly.
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And then I cut off the excess bits with my tiny pair of embroidery scissors.
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While I was doing this I realized that it would have looked a little bit neater
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around the top of the design if I had done the heels first and then put the socks on afterwards,
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but I think that seeing as I was making this all up on the spot it turned out pretty good.
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Lastly, I wanted to seal the design and make it last a bit longer
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so I grabbed this water based sealant Mod Podge
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and I painted a thin layer over the top of the unicorn heels.
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This makes them more weatherproof -
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not that sock boots are ever going to be a good idea to wear while splashing around in puddles,
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and it also gives the heels a subtly shiny finish.
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So that's it! I'm done. Question is: "how did I go?"
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[Electro swing music]
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Yeah so I'll admit that the shoes still haven't totally won me over.
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I was also having a little bit of trouble styling them -
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at first I thought I'd try and keep it simple by pairing them with a little black dress...
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but that didn't really work for me.
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So then I thought, why not go all out and make a matching space unicorn t-shirt
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and wear a beret that perfectly matches the color of the socks?
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Maybe..? Yeah!
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NOW I’ve got that ironically self-conscious I’m-so-street-fashion don’t-care-what-I-wear might-as-well-have-DIY’d-it-I’m-so-anti-establishment-but-I-paid-$1500-for-this Vetements LOOK
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- except that we did make these for
ourselves. For about ten bucks
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So I guess we've come full circle?
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Or maybe Vetememes already has that one covered.
I don't even know anymore... [sigh]
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…All of that is moot anyway because I can’t walk in heels for the life of me.
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But at the very least, it was all worth it to end up with this unicorn t-shirt
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which I AM very fond of and I'm wearing as I record this voice-over.
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And as for the shoes… well… I learned a lot from upcycling them?
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I can always chalk them up to DIY-experience?
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But who knows. Maybe one day I’ll be invited to a fashion week
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and then I can blow everyone’s minds with these babies and how effortlessly ironically anti-fashion I am.
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Sooo.... what do you all think about this whole “super-ironic anti-luxury-dress-like-a-poor-person-but-only-if-you-have-thousands-of-dollars” trend?
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Is it a clever bite at capitalism and consumerism, OR does it accomplish exactly what it claims to be against?
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Is that the point of it?
Are they trolling us all?
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Do I just not get it?
Is there anything to get?
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I know you're all smart cookies so I'd really like to see some discussion down in the comments below.
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Okay. So apart from sending me into a bit of an existential crisis,
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obviously this episode wasn’t a super serious Make Thrift Buy recreation,
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but I think that I did a pretty good job of recreating these nonetheless, so I’m gonna call this a:
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[scissor sound, zipping sound]
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Yeah, and if you do wanna make these but you don’t want to do an outrageous unicorn heel
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then sock boots take literally about 5 minutes to make for yourself, with a pair of socks (sports socks or otherwise),
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a pair of high-heels, scissors and some fabric glue.
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I actually think if you don't spend thousands of dollars on them they can look pretty cool -
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but bonus points for adding a whacky design to the heel as well.
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Obviously, there’s some things which are done slightly better in the original -
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I mean, you’d hope so, for one-and-a-half-thousand dollars -
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It has proper soles, for instance, and so it is overall probably a little more weather-proof than mine.
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I mean a little... Both are still… socks
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But if we’re looking at this solely from a cost-effectiveness point of view… I think that my boots win.
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And they certainly have that DIY shabby chic appeal... (cause they're actually DIY).
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Plus with this green pair being out of stock anyway,
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even if you did have a spare couple of thousand to blow,
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making them for yourself is probably your best bet to get your hands on them.
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This video is sponsored by Storyblocks!
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so you can use them in anything that you want!
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Thank you so much to Storyblocks for sponsoring this video!
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And thank you to all of YOU for supporting the companies that support this channel!
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Anyway, that’s it for this episode – I’ll see you all in my next video!
Bye!
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Thank you to all of my supporters on Patreon for making this video possible.
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To become my supporter go to patreon.com/annikavictoria
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[Outro jingle]