Ugly Christmas Sweater Day!

Woo hoo! It's Friday, and I am now officially on holiday! Today was Ugly Sweater Day at work (my idea), so of course I had to go all out.

You didn't actually think I would wear a manufactured Christmas sweater, did you? I made my own!

As I mentioned when I thrifted this $16.95 sweater when I bought it last Friday (here), once I found out how much my sweater retails for ($199-318), I couldn't bear to glue-gun decorations to it. It's brand-new 100% Merino wool! Made in Norway!

It was perfect for today, which ended up being a crazy, snowy, sleety and cold kind of day.

"Are you going to wear that in public?"

 I actually had to carry this in to work this morning, and then put it on, as it wouldn't fit under my coat with those massive pink glitter bows on the shoulders.

"Bored. What can I eat?"

Showing off my star fringe! This had a lot of movement with the bead icicles and the fringe. The snowflakes on the front moved as well. I also rattled (fringe again) and the silver poinsettias have bells in the centre which also made noise. You could hear me coming!

This bright pink is a limiting colour for mixing with other colours, so I decided to go BAM with this cerulean blue vintage skirt, last seen here with white leopard earlier this month.

I'm down to $3.25 per wear on the skirt in just two outfits!

My hot pink tights were the perfect match to take this skirt into Crazytown (population: me).

I de-blinged and de-uglified my sweater at the end of the day at work, as I wrapped up my desk for a week off. It's still a nice sweater, but a little casual for work. I'll probably wear it more on the weekends or around the house.

The stuff:

I love these neutral bow-tied beauties. I last wore them here (2nd outfit) in November the day of the Unlimited Woman Awards.

Big icy-blue bling:

I liked how the rings looked with the bright pink.

Sweater (Dale of Norway, thrifted), skirt (no label, vintage, thrifted), shoes (Jeffrey Campbell), earrings (Oscar & Libby's), Spaghetti Monster ring (vintage), silver ring (Stone Rose), Fulvia Ring (Wendy Brandes).

Here's how I made my Ugly Sweater:

Sweater, meet ugly crap from a couple of different dollar stores and the drugstore. I spent about $7.00 on any sparkly things I could find. There wasn't much available, so I had to try to think about what I could do on a sweater with each item as I found it.

Add: a couple of glasses of wine to get the creative juices flowing! I already knew I wanted to make star fringe from the garland, and put the pink bows on the shoulders, so it was just a matter of playing around with the other pieces to see how they would work the best.

I sewed all the pieces on quite loosely. I was in Brownies - I can sew with a needle and thread! For the fringe, I just cut up the garland into even pieces (cut in half first to be sure of even amounts for each arm), and laid them out to see how it looked before sewing them on.

Cat attack!

I had a little help from Vizzini.

And the finished product! I was covered in glitter by the end of the day.

It's quite spectacular, isn't it? It prompted giggles, guffaws and squeals of delight from my coworkers. How will I cap this next year?

The arm fringe was particularly popular.

I had to keep reattaching the stars as they kept falling off during the day.

A picture of me and some of my coworkers in front of our tree next to my desk at work.

What a fun day!