Welcome back to Friday DIY, where we spend hours making everyday things, because shopping in stores is for quitters. This week's project is a leather belt, and I was lucky enough to be schooled in the art of belt making by a young man named Maximum Cohen.

Got some crafty people on your holiday gift list? Fear not — a present like one of these is bound to please even the pickiest of Do It Yourselfers. (And — self-interested bonus! — it virtually guarantees years of awesome knitted/crocheted/sewn or otherwise home-built gifts for you in turn.)

A few weeks ago, my friend Lux Alptraum (who runs the fantastically NSFW porn blog Fleshbot) asked me if I could teach her how to do cross-stitch embroidery. Sure, I said. Needlepoint was actually one of the first crafts I learned, and I still find it extraordinarily comforting. And cross-stitch is one of the easiest…

As soon as Karl Lagerfeld showed those ridiculous(ly sublime) hula-hoop bags on the Chanel runway for spring, my colleague Dodai and I knew we had to make one. "It's not up to me to say it is chic," said the always-modest Chanel designer after the show. "I thought it was but I cannot say it myself." Well, Karl, we…

Are you ready for a nail DIY? This project explains how you can layer fabric paint over nail polish to achieve something akin to those "antique" and "distressed" paint effects that are so popular on home-decorating programs. (You know the ones where some hyperactive blonde is always convinced that what this suburban…

Or: Quick and Dirty Pattern-Draping for Fun and Profit! If you're even a neophyte home sewer, you've probably dreamed of making clothing from your own customized patterns. Commercial patterns are fantastic in many ways — the sheer variety always makes flipping through a pattern book (or browsing vintage reproductions…

This week's DIY is a t-shirt DIY — which is, in case you haven't guessed, one of my favorite kinds of do-it-yourself project, because of the ubiquity of the raw materials. And this t-shirt DIY comes to you with the help of a very special guest: fashion designer Natalie Chanin, of the label Alabama Chanin. She showed…

Summer's coming. Couldn't you stand to have some whimsical sunglasses in your life?

Strapless dresses: is there any other garment that promises so much, but at such high risk? If you've owned or worn a strapless dress, you've probably spent at least one night pulling the damn thing up every couple of minutes. That's because most strapless dresses are too cheaply made to provide sufficient support to…

Ombré patterns have been everywhere as of late. The French word ombré means "shaded," and in fashion it refers to pretty much anything that starts out one color and then slowly morphs into another. We've weathered trends for ombré hair, ombré clothes, ombré fur — last summer I even showed you how to ombré dye a scarf.…

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 —…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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).…

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).