After posting about my accidental Viva Magenta DIY bead bracelet, I thought I'd follow up with a few recent OOTD incorporating magenta into jeans outfits. Plus a DIY navy/bright pink/silver paper bead bracelet set that shows how upcycled catalog/magazine pages roll up into beads and bracelets.
First, a weather check in - how did everyone in the US do during this week's crazy weather? My parents in N. California lost power for 22 hours, which is frustrating because they had to throw out all the groceries they had just bought and the zucchini lasagna they'd just made. My mom really feels the cold so the 59F temperature inside their condo had her bundled up under layers of clothing and blankets.
Here in St Paul, we got 13" of snow...and a parking ticket...because my husband was unable to move his car Thursday morning through the 8"+ of snow that fell after the snow plows came through Wednesday night. They usually plow after the snow has stopped, but this time the city had a kooky plan for plowing and car moving during the snowfall that maybe made sense on paper but did not account for the reality that the city cannot plow every street at the very same moment.
The way the snow plow routes work, our neighborhood gets plowed very early (often around 9:00pm) in the "overnight" plowing cycle, so by the time we can move our cars in the 6:00-8:00am window the next morning, 9 to 11 hours have passed. When they wait until after the snow has stopped to start the plowing (the usual practice), there is no new snow fall, the streets remain cleared, and everything is OK for people to move their cars. But when snow is still falling, you can get a lot of snow in 9 to 11 hours. My husband was able to dig out his car, but he can't personally shovel a path down the streets through 8"+ of snow so that his car can be driven to a different street!
On the block my husband was parked on, there were 10 cars (of 12 total spots) that couldn't get out into the street and were thus ticketed. That's $600 on just one block. Well, I guess the city has to pay the overtime for extra plow drivers somehow! We had thought there was a good chance he'd get a ticket, but what can you do? I figure it's just a cost of doing business when you use street parking.
Luckily my car was snug as a bug in our building's parking garage so there was only one car to deal with. My husband is starting to think he's "too old for this ****" and perhaps this will be enough for him to pay the extra fees for a garage spot himself.
Here's a view of our neighborhood on late Thursday afternoon after the plows came through and cleared the street of the 8"+ of snow it had in the morning.
All right...moving on to the magenta outfits. My first outfit started with a dark column: a black pullover sweater (with a black exercise T layered under) and dark wash trouser jeans. I added the magenta quilted vest (CJ Banks, thrifted from ThredUp, Aug. 2020, $11.84) for a brightly colored contrast. (Note: my hair looks strange because I had it pulled up to air dry; this is not an actual intentional hair *style*, although it is somewhat Star Wars-like to my eye.)
Next I added this thrifted polka dot scarf with jewel tone dots against a black background. I often like to wear a long pendant with an infinity scarf, and in this case I added a simple black/silver one. I drew on the teal in the scarf print to select teal smoking flats. This "road map styling" method of choosing colors from a print is so easy and makes for cohesive multi-color outfits in combinations you might not think of yourself.
My bracelet stack is based on a DIY paper bead set that I created in a grey/magenta/silver palette last winter to match a grey striped sweater I own. (I actually left out one of the three paper bead bracelets from the set when making this stack because it didn't go as well as the other two with this outfit.) I often wear the DIY grey pearl bracelet with this set, and here I added the black bead bracelets to relate back to the sweater and scarf. I shared how the lower bicone paper beads were created from a sweater image on a Coldwater Creek catalog cover as Example B in this post.
My second outfit started with this dark orchid pullover sweater and the orchid ballet flats as a winter version of the matching top and shoes color formula. It is astonishing to me that on Feb. 4 I was wearing ballet flats without socks, since that date is generally the peak of Minnesota Winter cold weather, but we've had a strange winter this year! I was also going to wear a quilted vest over the sweater but I was warm enough without it (I have a short-sleeved T as my first layer under the sweater).
I picked my skinny ankle jeans because I like this style of jeans with classic rounded-toe ballet flats. (I completely agree with Angie that we should wear our favorites without fear...and skinnies remain on my favorites list.) As in my second outfit in the recent monochromatic teal outfits post, I went with an ombré scarf in the same color family as the sweater. This silky scarf shades from cream to orchid to magenta so it brings in a richer depth of color and a different textural element in a subtle way with low color contrast and low value contrast. Even though I'm a matchy-matchy dresser at heart, I am enjoying branching out into this kind of tonal blending of multiple variations on the same basic color idea...and ombré scarves are a critical piece of how I do that.
My daily bracelet stack is a summertime throwback of many simple DIY seed bead stretch bracelets, which is the first type of DIY jewelry I attempted [tutorial]. I combined three sets of bracelets here: the lilac/orchid 4mm trio, the cream 3-4mm trio, and a set of 4 light pink 3mm bracelets.
These orchid ballet flats are a great example of why I think the "if you haven't worn it in a year, you should purge it from your closet" advice applied strictly is (with all due respect) absolute garbage! I purchased these Born brand flats in Nov. 2013 (on sale for $25 at Eddie Bauer). I wore them often when they were new, especially with a specific orchid floral graphic T I bought at the same time, but I have worn them less in recent years. They were usually selected by "road map styling" when a print had orchid in it. I was also prioritizing other, newer shoes with a higher cost per wear over these older shoes. Before this outfit, I had not worn them since July 2021...which was 19 months ago, so over 1.5 years. But they still fit, are in good condition, and I like them. And now that I have this dark orchid sweater, suddenly these ballet flats are back onto my radar, and I can see myself reaching for them more often this spring. If anything, taking a break from them has made them feel fresh and new to me again!
My third outfit is an older look I shared in my winter WFH daily dozen post that also features an ombré print scarf, twisted along its length to make it more compact with one end thrown over my shoulder to frame the elephant on the sweater. The fabric of this scarf is more matte than the silky one above, and it has more muted deep pink and magenta tones, but it is also easy to blend with other versions of red and red-violet like the wine of the elephant motif. I'm wearing straight leg jeans in a medium wash in this look.
My fourth outfit uses magenta as a pop of color in an otherwise neutral look. My base outfit is a simple grey 3/4 sleeve T, dark wash trouser jeans, and metallic loafers. I had been planning to wear my navy fleece blazer but didn't need the second layer. In late January. What?!
This sweater knit infinity scarf has grey and navy (which coordinate with the top and jeans), dark burgundy, and a bright pink/magenta that stands out beautifully against the neutral background. I am also wearing a long silver/lavender/rust tassel necklace to add some vertical integrity to the outfit, break up the expanse of plain grey t-shirt, and repeat the metallic element from the shoes in the upper half of the outfit.
I call the color of these loafers "pewter" but they are a really interesting pinkish-silver color that pairs beautifully with colors with a cool undertone (e.g., all those "Summer" cool blues, pinks, purples).
My daily bracelet stack is a DIY set of 2 paper bead bracelets made to coordinate with a particular navy/bright pink floral top, the bright pink/silver glass bead bracelet I made to go with them, a navy blue lapis lazuli bracelet that goes with a bunch of different sets, and the dark grey hematite bracelet I added to reference the grey of the t-shirt. The hematite bracelet is actually a make-over of a bracelet a friend made for me over 20 years ago that was strung on wire with a lobster clasp, which was difficult for me to close and that had become too snug for me to want to wear. I restrung the beads on 1mm stretch elastic with some small silver spacer beads (to lengthen the bracelet) and now I wear it frequently.
I used these three pages with floral dresses from Coldwater Creek catalogs as the paper for my paper beads to make a highly unified set. The beads made from the floral dress on the top right I actually set aside for another project, so we'll be focusing on the other two pages today. The larger navy/pink floral dress on the left was perfect for tube beads because the image was close to the edge of the paper, so I cut as many 0.5" rectangular strips as I could from the page.
Didn't these roll up wonderfully? The size of the floral print on the image was just right, a definite advantage of using catalog pages as the paper source. I added silver metallic paint to the ends of the beads and strung them on stretch elastic with silver-tone spacers. Because I had 11 0.5" beads instead of my usual 12, I padded out the back of the bracelet with a couple extra spacer beads so it was the desired size.
The lower bracelet started life as this page with a trio of dresses in navy and pink prints. Yep, that top floral dress is the same one as in the tube beads above - the image is just a bit smaller size. I cut triangular strips for bicone beads: 7 1" wide for the bracelet plus an extra 4 0.5" wide because I could.
I could have rolled the strips as-is but I wanted to cover up the white spaces because the high contrast look with white was not what I had in mind. I added navy and warm pink (the color of the flowers on the reddish-pink dress) marker to the edges of the strips so the colors flowed without interruption from one dress section to the next. I truly loved how these beads turned out. The small scale of the prints meant that you could still see the polka dots and flower/leaf motifs on the finished beads. This is also a good reminder of the difference your bead width makes in how spaced out (left side, 1" width) vs. scrunched in (right side, 0.5" width) the paper edges are as they wind around the bead. I strung the 7 1" beads with delicate open-work silver spacer beads for a simple but lovely bracelet.
Here are the two paper bead bracelets as well as the full 4-piece bracelet set along with my inspiration item, the floral knit top. I get a real kick out of the fact that the white polka dots on the navy background of the second bracelet mimic the white floral "dots" against the navy background of the top.
Other posts in this series:
Do you like to follow color fashion trends? Do you have any Viva Magenta items for winter? Or for spring? Did you buy something new and/or shop your closet for this color?
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