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Outside of a bread machine, this is the easiest bread recipe humans have yet devised. You know refrigerator bread? It's easier than that. You know no-knead bread? It's easier than that. Why? Because it's a no-knead refrigerator bread! Once the dough is ready — and the measuring and mixing only takes about 20 minutes — only a hot oven and a half an hour separates you from a piping hot loaf of your own. Anytime you want bread, you just form a loaf and pop it in. I still like to make more complicated breads sometimes — croissants, bagels, that sort of thing — but this is my dead-easy standby. More »
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When I was watching Rihanna's "You Da One" video, I was struck by two things: one was the incredible shot-by-shot similarity between Rihanna's work and an old Numéro editorial by Solve Sundsbo (which director Melina Matsoukas, who previously was caught ripping off an old David LaChapelle editorial for another Rihanna video, failed to credit). The other was her nails. Those nails, I thought, are pretty awesome. So I decided to try replicating them at home. More »
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If you've never made a purse before, this just might be the purse for you. My last bag, the envelope clutch, was a great opportunity to explain the basics of leather working and bag construction. But that project had six major seams and nine minor ones. This bag, on the other hand, has two: the bottom and sides are sewn in one long seam, and the zipper is attached to the top in another. And that's it! If you can sew two seams — and no, you do not need a sewing machine — you can sew this bag. It's a simple but versatile design, and if you haven't worked with leather, this would be a great project with which to learn. More »
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Yeah, I made a wreath out of tampons. What? It's no secret I have a vajay and this shit's fertile as fuq. More »
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For me, a big part of the pleasure of giving a loved one a gift is in the wrapping. I'm not planning to give or receive many gifts this year — I have enough stuff, for real — but I get such a kick out of wrapping presents that the rest of my family tends to delegate all their gift-wrapping to me. With a few mugs of mulled wine and a podcast or two on the stereo, it's fun and an easy way to be creative on a small scale. And you don't have to spend a bunch of money on paper and ribbons, either. You can wrap great-looking presents with stuff you probably already have on hand. More »
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People who were part of the Black Pride movement of the 1960s also took pride in wearing their hair natural instead of using straightening combs or chemical relaxers. Their pride in African culture was an Afro-centric view that really shook (read: terrified) most middle-class Americans. The way they wore their hair was soon dubbed an "Afro," which was shorthand for Afro-centric. More »
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The idiosyncratic but engaging Twitter personality known as @kanyewest has now had some of his best work highlighted by needlepointer Amy Sheridan. Sheridan — and yes, the particular pieces shown in her Etsy listing are sold, but she'll get you "a brand new one, made just for you" — has immortalized some of the rapper's best/worst Tweets, including "I specifically ordered persian rugs with cherub imagery!!! What do I have to do to get a simple persian rug with cherub imagery uuuuugh" and "Fur pillows are hard to actually sleep on." It's not the first time someone's Tweets have been given the embroidery treatment (@MayorEmanuel's love of coffee and four-letter words was immortalized in Aida cloth earlier this year) but the medium is always appealing. Suggested additions: More »
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I love eyebrows. I love the variety of eyebrows people have. I love thick ones, thin ones, long ones, short ones. I love really dramatically arched ones and I love flat ones, too. I have always been into eyebrows. When I was a tween — not that we used that word back then — I used to stare long and hard at each new photograph of my favorite band, the Spice Girls, trying to determine who had the best eyebrows, the eyebrows that most suited her face (Posh). I still can't pass a movie poster or a magazine cover without giving the eyebrows of those featured a quick evaluation. I sometimes lurk on the Fashion Spot "Models With Big Eyebrows" thread. Good eyebrows, eyebrows that harmonize with their surroundings, enhance your face and bring out your eyes; bad brows can ruin an otherwise lovely appearance. And among the many things I truly believe in — universal single-payer health care, that all dairy products just taste better in New Zealand, the absolute and fundamental beauty of the fall-winter, 2011, Miu Miu collection — is this: everyone can tweeze their own brows. There is no reason — no good reason — to pay someone at a salon $20 every few weeks to do what you can do not only as well but better in the privacy of your own home. Some people argue that it helps to see a professional, if only to learn their methods — Dodai still speaks almost rapturously of her former eyebrow guy, a Peruvian named Sergio — and I can't say I totally disagree; eyebrow shaping is one of those things it's easier to take a practical lesson in. But even though trying to write about how to do eyebrows is sort of like trying to boil water in a paper cup, I did my best with this online instructional. Because frankly, being able to do your own brows will save you time, money, and most importantly, it will give you back control over one key aspect of how you look. So here, by reader request, is a post on how to pluck your eyebrows. More »
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When you left the house this morning, everything was fine. But suddenly, through some twist of fate, weather shenanigans, or all-out clumsiness on your part, your footwear situation went awry and now, here you are with a broken heel in the middle of a snowstorm. What are you going to do? More »
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I was raised in a temperate climate — New Zealand, to be precise — but it didn't take me long to grasp the absolute, primal importance of coats in much of North America. (Moving to Minnesota in January will teach you the value of a proper winter coat in, oh, about 15 seconds. Which is about the time it took the parts of my wet hair not covered by my hat to freeze one morning, oh happy Midwestern memories!) The problem is, as any card-carrying member of what Garrison Keillor called God's frozen people knows, is that the most stylish coats tend to be the least warm. Bunchy ski-wear made with Gore-Tex and studded with elastic drawstrings isn't really cute — and fuck me are those things expensive — but it does a much better job of keeping you warm than your average lined wool-blend shell from Old Navy. But if you're nonetheless drawn, for reasons of aesthetic preference or the necessity of maintaining a "professional" appearance, to non-sporty coats, there are some ways to trick them out. With basic sewing skills you can take any plain old coat and turn it into a piece of performance sportswear — on the inside. More »
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Now that it's officially okay to don us now our gay apparel in preparation for Generic Winter Buying Holiday, the streets are alight with seasonal cheer. Stoplights are festooned with garland and strings of lights, stores have pulled out their terrifying giant Nutcrackers, and soon the houses of your favorite imaginary TV families will be impeccably decorated for a single episode. Every place is alight with festive cheer. Alight, I say! But not your house. Your house looks like it's mourning the fact that there's still a plastic pumpkin full of candy sitting on your desk. You want to decorate, but you're lazy and/or poor. Let's fix this. More »
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It's getting mighty chilly up here around the 40th Parallel of the earth's Northern Hemisphere, leading some (okay, me) to turn our crafting imaginations to scarves and visions in bulky-weight yarn. This Burberry-inspired cowl is warm enough to wear under a blazer or a jacket on a brisk autumn evening, and — layered over a scarf — it kept my neck and ears warm last night during Occupy Wall Street's very cold Brooklyn bridge march. Best of all, the pattern is available for free online, and it only takes a few hours to make. Here's how. More »
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You know that feeling you get at 2 a.m. where you suddenly feel like you wanna build something out of things you'd find in your closet or under your bathroom sink? Well, Laurel Roth ran with that feeling. More »
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If you're not into wearing loud prints or bright colors, introducing those things in miniature doses can make for a fun change of pace. Mixed prints and colors were everywhere at the spring collections, which ended last month, and a few designers showed head-wraps and/or had their models' hair styled with bits of fabric woven through. Simpler than plaiting a piece of printed cotton into your bun, however, is making a jazzed-up hair comb or barrette that you can just stick on top. This week's DIY will show you how.

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Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Maybe it was growing up in a country where it wasn't celebrated that has led me to go a little overboard now that I live in the states, but putting together a creative costume is an annual ritual. I tend not to go for your standard "scary" looks — I think I had the most fun the year I went as Magritte's "Reverse Mermaid" come to life — but this year I had our brother site io9's zombie party to contend with. And so Zombie Daphne Guinness was born. Zombie Daphne Guinness will eat (brains) when she's dead. More »
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For the lazy person who hates shopping and being looked at by strangers, Halloween is a cruel holiday indeed. Coming up with a clever costume idea is mentally challenging enough, but then you have to figure out where to acquire all of the costume's pieces, and then you have to go all those places where they might sell those pieces, and then you have to put them all on, and then it's usually too cold to wear anything fun outside and everyone's dressed like Little Miss Strumpet or Sexy Ladybugs or Booblestiltzkin. What's the unprepared would-be Halloween partier to do? Half-ass it, that's what. More »
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Why not freshen up your nail game — and/or document your Jackson Pollock/Abstract Expressionism fandom — with this DIY manicure that mimics the effect of spattered paint? Like all the best things in life, it looks a hell of a lot more complicated than it actually is. All that stands between you and getting just the right amount of streaky spatter on your fingertips is a little nail polish and a drinking straw.

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Gum, while being chewed, can eliminate bad breath, quell mild hunger, and fend off a case of the snoozes (or, depending on who you ask, chewing gum can make you look like a minty-mouthed bovine hussy). But both normal people with normal opinions and my grandma can agree that already-been-chewed gum, when out of the safe confines of a human mouth, can wreak all sorts of havoc when it gets stuck in places it shouldn't. And that's where your MacGyver skills come in. More »
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You know what I have too many of? T-shirts. There are t-shirts in my closet that I've had for years and never worn. Band t-shirts, random promotional t-shirts, fun-run t-shirts, hand-me-down t-shirts — whether scoop or V or crew, t-shirts basically go to my wardrobe to sit around in neatly folded piles, collecting guilt. One day this summer, I was "talking" with Lux Alptraum, the proprietor of our wonderful sister blog Fleshbot [which is thoroughly and definitely NSFW] on IM, which is how I communicate with all of my colleagues because I am antisocial and that way nobody has to know when I'm not wearing pants, and she told me she'd recently turned a t-shirt into a pillow. The shirt had a cool design on the front, but it was too big for her and she never wore it. The pillow looked really cool. Probably a lot cooler than the original shirt had. And there is probably not much that's easier than turning a t-shirt into a pillow! You cut it out, you sew it, you stuff it, and you're done, folks. I thought 'We have to turn this into a DIY!' So, one recent Saturday, Lux came over and we made t-shirt pillows. The shirt I used bore the name of the college I graduated from. I believe my parents bought it for me at one of those ubiquitous Made In China school-memorabilia shops in 2005 or 2006; when I pulled it out of my closet, it still had tags on. This is a vastly better use. More »
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My mum had a cookbook called Half A Can Of Tomato Paste And Other Culinary Dilemmas that sat on our kitchen bookshelf when I was a little kid. (I remember her explaining to me what a dilemma was one night while she was microwaving me some Milo.) If someone were to concoct a book on crafts and pitch it at my particular tastes, it wouldn't be one of those books full of elaborate projects that take nineteen balls of wool apiece. It would probably be called Half A Skein Of Yarn And Other DIY Dilemmas. This week's DIY is one project that comfortably takes care of that kind of leftovers. More »
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I guess it's no real secret that I'm into doing my nails. Having manicured hands stops me from biting my nails, for one thing, and I am lucky enough to be in a profession where I can rock all kinds of weird nail art. That wasn't always the case; I sometimes think that my interest in nails is just one more after-effect of having first a high school and then a job where anything but clear polish was verboten — kind of like how I still don't own a single pair of brown leather shoes because those were the shoes I had to wear, with white socks, every weekday from ages 12-17. That and as a writer I spend a lot of time looking at my hands, I suppose. More »
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I was looking through some old Corinne Day editorials the other day when I came across an image Day shot of model Rosemary Ferguson for The Face in August, 1993. The story, called "England's Dreaming," was styled by Melanie Ward and it's pretty much amazing (at least based on the bits and pieces I could find online). But a particular t-shirt Ferguson wore in it really drew me. I couldn't tell if it was ugly or not, but I liked it. And I wanted to make one. More »
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This week's DIY comes to you with a hat-tip to Sarah Palin. Please don't stop reading: the thinking woman's least favorite half-governor has a pretty fearsome nail game. Don't imitate Palin's politics: bite her nails (steez). More »
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Oh, handbags. Next to underwear, shoes, and swimsuits, it's hard to think of a fashion item with a less attractive cost-per-square-inch. But if you have a few hours, a few beers, some leather and a needle and thread, you too can make a gorgeous, top-quality bag of your own. No sewing machine required. More »
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If you've always wanted to learn how to knit but haven't known where to begin, you're in luck! Author, DIY maven, and BUST co-founder Debbie Stoller just recorded her first-ever DIY knitting instructional video, and she decided to share it with us. Watch as Stoller shows how to hold the yarn, how to cast on, and how to do your first rows of stitches. (If you already know how to cast on, you can skip ahead to 2:40.) "Knitting is really just a matter of pulling one loop of yarn through another loop of yarn," she says. "It's really not that different from what you do each morning when you tie your shoes." More »
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Back in the era of Deco and Depression and FDR, ladies who did paint their fingernails didn't generally paint their fingernails the whole way. Wouldn't you like to know their secrets? More »
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Did you hear about the newest trend? It was invented in prehistoric times, and we've spent thousands of years developing technology so that we don't have to do it, but now urbanites are discovering it and so it's cool again! It's sewing! More »
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Did you ever make those elastic and safety-pin bracelets at YMCA camp? With the beads on? Those were fun. Well, I have some good news: ordinary safety pins — shiny, sharp safety pins of the type that sell in 100 count bags for $2 — can improve the coolness factor of almost any article of clothing by up to 78%. Here's how. More »
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What do you get for the Saved by the Bell fan who has everything? Why, a cross stitched homage to the Very Special Episode wherein we all learned that drugs are bad, that's what! More »
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Leopard-print nails are fun, and one of the easiest "fancy" manicures to DIY. All the painting is freehand, and you can work quickly because the more uneven your leopard spots are, the better. With three chords, you can write a rock song. With three polish colors, you can do your nails all leopard-y. More »
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Ever wanted to dye your own stuff? It's actually a lot easier than it sounds, it (miraculously) doesn't take any special equipment, and the results can be a million times cooler than the basic tie-dye t-shirts the counselors made 9-year-old you do at YMCA camp. More »
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Making a necklace out of hardware store gleanings isn't exactly a brand new idea — in fact, there's a whole book dedicated to hardware store jewelry projects — but it is easy, satisfying, and generally cheaper than making a necklace out of regular old beads. (Or maybe the bead stores in my city are just overpriced.) And best of all, you can finish a necklace in about five minutes flat. More »
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Ever have a moment of acute designer covetousness that coincides with the realization that you have, like, $67.16 to last you through your next paycheck? The things we see on the runway and in magazines might as well for most of us exist in another universe. But if you consume designer collections more with your mind's eye than with your wallet, and you have some basic crafting skills, making your own at-home versions isn't always too hard. Last week, I took an idea Prada had — making handbags out of knitted leather — and translated it into a purse of my own. If you can knit, you can knit this bag. More »
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I feel like this happens to me all the time: I'm browsing the racks at the SalvA, skipping past unfortunate housedresses and schmattas of little significance when I spy something astonishing. Something really gorgeous. And this something only costs a few bucks, and I simply must have it. Only problem is, it doesn't quite fit. The dress is too long, it's too short, it's too big, it's too small, the arm holes are too high or they're too low, the waist gapes or the hips are tight, or maybe it just doesn't generally sit "right" — whatever the problem is, the astonishing dress is just not quite wearable as-is. More »
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Okay, so your shorts don't have to be white. You could make them blue, red, yellow, teal, cerulean, seafoam, hyacinth, striped, spotted, dip-dyed, appliquéd with your home-made N*Sync fan art, or printed with a mosaic of stills from Rebecca Black's "Friday." Mine just happen to be white, because something about white shorts says "summer" to me. Like white wine, white weddings, and white-cresting waves. But this is a set of directions for making shorts, period. Choose the style and the fabric that you want. This is a moderately challenging project that you can finish in about an afternoon. Even if you've never set a fly before. Promise. More »
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It's summer, and while we're all sweltering in the 98° heat, our thoughts turn naturally to cooling, natural, beautiful, necessary water. The seaside. The local pool. The river. The nearest lake. And when you've had your swim and you get out and towel off, reveling in that unfamiliar feeling of our body parts not sticking to each other with sweat, you wanna throw on something that suits your weightless, relaxed, newly cool mood. More »
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Having a custom dress form that matches your body shape is a boon to any home sewer. Especially any home sewer who'd like to more precisely alter commercial patterns, or venture into pattern-drafting and draping. The problem? Cash money. More »
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To any home sewer and pattern-drafter, the appeal of a custom dress form is obvious. Commercial forms don't resemble the human body in the slightest: nobody I've ever met has that weird, smooth monoboob like on the Wolf forms, nor that cleft-less so-called "ass." Plus, those things are like $400 used. Adjustable forms, though cheaper, are if anything even more limited. They collapse when you're trying to pin things to them, their articulated planes wobble out of alignment, they are riddled with gaps, they suck. More »
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Brightly colored stripes were all over the spring collections — Jil Sander, Prada, Marc Jacobs, Fendi, and Céline all played with parallel lines — but a dress or a top by any of the aforementioned isn't exactly within my freelance writer's budget. Also — no offense to MObama — I strongly suspect I'd feel like a tool wearing most of those things in a year. So...I set myself the challenge of incorporating stripes into my look in a far cheaper, and reassuringly temporary, way. Striped nails! Here's how I did it. More »
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What's the coolest thing about a royal wedding? It's not the dress — snooze — or the guest list — Victoria Beckham, really? — or the Senior British Correspondents all the American television networks trot out to bask in their expert analysis. It's the hats, stupid! The glorious, creative, towering, ridiculous, fancy, very very very pretty HATS. In this post, find out how to make a perfectly tolerable approximation of a feathered fascinator in the privacy of your own home, in just 84 easy steps. More »
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