DIY: SCRUNCHIE

I never wear my hair out. Even if you know me, you probably have never seen me with my hair not in a pony tail or a bun. I'm much better at wasting time eating breakfast and reading before realising I should have left home five minutes ago and not sparing my poor (rather long) locks a thought.

Enter scrunchie.

Have had my eyes on some cool American Apparel ones for some time now but remembered childhood days where my gran used to let me 'design' (/pick out material) my own hair scrunchie and make it in less than 20 minutes.

I picked up this cool-coloured scrap fabric at an Australian fashion label where I've started doing some graphic design intern work recently and this scrunchie took me all but two train trips to complete.

DIY: CUT OFF SHIRT

I don't know if it's the way I dress or if look particularly needy but I always seem to get heaps of second hand clothes passed on to me. Most of the time these huge bags of clothes get passed straight to charity shops (no I don't want your old school uniform) but today I felt a bit inspired...

NEED:

• T-shirt (preferably rock 'n roll)
• fabric scissors

I found that it worked best by turning the shirt inside-out before cutting the sleeves off.

I got the idea to 'modify' this shirt from one of my favourite Sportsgirl tops- I really love the squareish shape of it. If the particular T-shirt is quite large, there isn't even a need to cut around the neck, I just found this one a tad tight for summer.

It literally took about 4 minutes to do this and I will definitely be trying this with some of my other old & forgotten T-shirts. Note: I am not actually a big fan of ACDC...but wearing this I like to think that I look like someone who is.

I had a really nice weekend- the party on Friday was great and I spent the rest of the weekend lazying by the pool drinking slurpees and San Pellegrino (one of my presents was a whole case of it!). Photos of Friday night to come soon.

DIY: PIMP MY RIDE

How nice was the weather in Sydney today?! Was planning to do work but that idea went when I woke and saw the sunshine.

Ever since I saw a bike locked up around Ultimo with a similar bike 'basket', and ever since my back has been dying from carrying KILOS on a shoulder bag pretty much every day, I've been meaning to make a 'basket' like this for my bike. I know road bikes aren't really the type to attach baskets to so I was worried it might look a bit odd- but I'm happy with the result.

Need:

• bike
• bike rack
• milk crate (acquired, err, legally...)
• 6 cable ties
• saw

Do:

Cut half off one side of the crate + quarters off the other two adjacent sides. Milk crates are actually surprisingly easy to saw off, the only reason they seem so strong whole is because they're so cleverly designed. I had a pretty blunt saw and it worked fine. Why cut half of the crate off you ask? If you stuck the whole crate on the bike rack, it'd be too close to the seat making it near impossible to sit down/ very uncomfortable to cycle.

Attach crate to bike rack using cable ties. Since mine is a road bike, I used a special rack and had to attach it under the seat. Most most bikes however would allow normal bike racks to be attached to the wheel.

I used 6 cable ties in total (depends on the bike rack) to tie the crate to it and trimmed it after tightening.

I drilled a hole in the crate after tying it on to attach a reflector.

On ya bike! Now to dodge those pesky magpies (aka bane of my existence).