Layering Pieces Are The Wardrobe Transforming Miracle You Need

When I was in college, I collected a large assortment of partying tops. These tops are cute and provocative, a great way for catching an eye in the club... but it can be hard when you can no longer wear your favorite "slutty" tops outside of the nightlife setting. I have a lot of very sexy tops that I look damn good in, but that I can hardly wear anymore, being that I'm no longer a college student with an excuse to go to random parties on a weeknight.

But as I have discovered recently, the way you can make these looks work appropriate is by layering them with a more conservative piece, or in my case, just throw a tee under your spaghetti strap tops and dresses.

The cami I'm wearing is slightly see through and has a spaghetti strap, racerback look that makes it nearly impossible to wear an actual bra under it. To solve this issue I threw on a lettuce hem, slightly ribbed top from Cotton On.

My office bathroom selfie can give you a better idea of the look. Combined, the look is that trendy, cool girl, effortless look I love, plus it is opaque and I was able to wear an actually comfortable bra. I accessorized with a black belt, a black choker with a gold charm that sometimes turns my skin green, but looks super cute, and matching square-toed booties. I think for the day I was the office cool girl, which is always what I am going for.

Hell yeah.

Collages: How to Spice Up Old Bujo Spreads

Towards the end of my last bullet journal, I started to realize that I had a ton of empty spreads. I had made trackers and not used them, and now I just had a bunch of wasted real estate in my journal with less than a dozen new pages left.

Around this time, my love for fashion and my obsessive desire to hoard magazines finally paid off. I may not have any skill at sketching, but I have an eye for color and shape. All you need are magazines, or even the use of a printer if that's your thing, plus scissors and a glue stick. Then you'll go wild like you're in first grade again. I love how so many of these turned out. Plus, it kept me from having to flip past trackers for habits I had abandoned.

This page had originally been intended for the placement of personal photos, sort of a highlight for each month. But after September I had stopped caring about printing out images. I lived in a sorority house at the time, and not only was the house printer a pain in the ass, it also ran the risk of feeling super awkward while printing out photos on printer paper. This image matched with the color scheme and allowed me to use this large advertorial. The words I selected don't super mean anything. After a while of searching through my cutouts for something suitable, I eventually surrendered and chose text that matched with the theme instead.

This collage companion filled in the blank space next to September's cover page.

October's cover page companion gave me an excuse to use all of the purple clippings I had collected.

The story of this collage is a nicer story than just me being too lazy to fill in a tracker or to fill in the blank space next to a cover page. I had made a massive job searching spread that extended over six pages. Each page had a quote with that circle motif, and on the righthand side I would input the jobs I had applied for. Luckily I found a job after only filling in two pages (that was still more than fifty job applications, so don't feel like I lucked out too much). I filled in what would have been a search spread with this collage instead. I have a lot of wedding magazines, but I don't like to fixate on weddings when I'm decidedly single, so this spread let me focus on the glamour of that sweeping train.

(A note on the quote that likely only I will find important: while it reads "opportunities don't happen, you create them," I don't always 100% agree. I had chosen it to motivate myself and apply for as many jobs as possible. However, I think that sometimes that perspective can be incredibly privileged. It ignores the fact that sometimes less talented individuals receive opportunities due to connections or situations. At times it seems like that position is used to shame those with less means for not "trying hard enough," but that's not always the case. I saw this firsthand as I spent my summers working two jobs to make rent, while many of my peers were able to accent unpaid internships in their field because they could afford not to work. At times it is not as simple as "making opportunities." I think it's partially true, but I was almost entirely done with the spread before the time I thought the phrase through. You can only dig through Pinterest for career quotes for so long before you start to go a little nuts.)

Fitting with the green theme from July, this spread subbed in for abandoned trackers. I chose the quote to make me feel better and I got to use all the random images of plants I had found.

This spread was a way to close out a yellow themed section where I discussed my goals. One of the perks of using collages is that they can cover a multitude of sins. This let me cover up bleed through from the previous page. I love to color with markers, but I don't have the patience for delicate strokes. Collages are what save the day.

Doormats: Showing Your Apartment's Vibe

Every apartment needs an adorable doormat if you are a 20-something who really loves Instagram. I am insanely proud of how mine turned out, and all it took was butchering a DIY video and ruining two paint pens and also an entire evening.

The finished product!

I think that this is super cute and it shows my personality and no one else is going to have it because everyone else can probably afford a doormat. I was following the basic idea of this Lone Fox video about DIY Ikea Hacks. The premise is to get a plain, super super cheap doormat from Ikea and to just paint it. That was certainly the plan. But the nearest Ikea is about an hour away, and my car doesn’t have AC so that would be miserable. And I’m a millennial, so I sure as hell wasn’t willing to wait for shipping. In theory, Target has a similar plain coir doormat for less than ten dollars, and the internet said that it was in stock at the nearest Target.

The internet was wrong (but they can’t but anything on the internet that isn’t true?) and after waiting for the poor Target associate to dig in the back to no avail, I bought the next best thing. Ish. The forlorn mat at the bottom of the shelf, coated in a thick layer of dust. But it was coir and it was cheap and I was impatient. So, I bought it.

The steps to how I created it are as follows

1. Measure out the dimensions of the mat to figure out how tall and wide each letter should be. Attempt to make a formula. Realize that you are bad at math.

2. Eyeball it instead and trace it out on sheets of computer paper. Figure that this is good enough.

3. Place the sheets on the mat to see if they fit. If not, return to step #1, or take a beat and have another glass of wine. Surely that will make you better at math.

4. Once they fit, cut the letters out of the sheet, making a rough stencil for yourself.

5. Tape those sheets in place where you want the letters to land. Nobody cares what kind of tape; this is not permanent. Just make sure it sticks.

6. Take a paint pen and color to your heart’s content.

7. Realize it probably would have been better and faster if you had used paint like the tutorial had instructed.

8. Press on because you have already started and no one can stop you because you live alone!

9. Wait until the paint dries, then remove the stencils.

10. Quit while you’re ahead. Don’t try to fix any details because you will ruin everything.

And that's how you give your apartment welcoming vibes without looking cheesy!

I love this mat. It has personality and it’s not that ridiculous “Hello Goodbye” mat that every woman in her 20s owns. And I didn’t have to spend $60 to get a similar one from Etsy. Even with all the supplies, this was less than $20. Hell yeah.