Olivia's Butterfly

Hi!

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I was an absolute bum all weekend and I loved every second of it! When you're a mom of 3 kids, it's hard to find down time. My hubby was off from work this entire weekend and was kind enough to give me a break from the kiddies for a little bit. 

You know that giddy feeling you get when you discover a new store that you've never shopped before? Well, I had that same feeling when I stumbled on Olivia's Butterfly on Etsy.  As many of you know, Etsy is not the most navigable site on the internet. There are literally thousands of different shops with no easy way to filter through them all. Most of my favorite vintage pieces were discovered after hours scouring the site. Luckily, you can save some of your time scouring through Etsy and add Olivia's Butterfly to your favorite shops list!   Olivia's Butterfly is a vintage shop whose pieces consist of colorful, bold print and edgy designs with a lot of personality. She carries items for petite and full-figured women.  When I saw this vintage skirt suit, I knew I had to have it as I'm all about bold colors and especially stripes.  The suit is a medium but has amazing stretch. I'm loving the military buttons and the shoulder pads! Since the suit has a lot of spunk, I decided to style my hair accordingly opting for a side coif with spiral curls that I picked out with a comb. Also, it was completely coincidental that I had these amazing ASOS court pumps that match the green in the suit to a T! Pat on the back for Izzy!

Vintage Skirt Suit: Olivia's Butterfly via Etsy

Necklace: F21

Earrings: Ashley Stewart

Shoes: ASOS

 

A close-up of my hair and my recently-acquired highlights!

Etsy win!

Hi!
I'm trying to get my act together so that I can do some more outfit posts. My Dad is letting me use his camera which happens to be utter crap but will have to do until I get a new one.  This outfit post was taken before my camera broke and so I thought I'd share it with you all.  If the dress looks familiar that's because I was coveting it a while back when it was on Etsy.  I ended up buying it from Midnight Flight who has alot of cool vintage pieces.  This dress is a size XL and fit me fine at a 260 (I have since lost a few more pounds).  I am really liking the pattern of the dress and I absolutely love purple so its a win on both accounts.  I probably have to pin the front or something so that my bra won't show but I was too lazy to do that for the pics.  I know some of you are really overwhelmed by Etsy but I encourage you to play around with some key words to find the perfect piece...you won't be disappointed!

Drsss: Midnight Flight via Etsy

Shoes: Aldos

Necklace: F21

Earrings: American Eagle

A close up of my earrings!

Be sure to stay tuned for some clothing reviews (I bought the pink wool skirt from Talbots and a couple of pieces from Eloquii) and a contest! <3

Thrifting on Etsy...plus size edition

If you've ever visited Etsy then you already know that it can be pretty hard to navigate.  It's even harder if you aren't 100% sure what you are looking for.  Because there is not one uniform  way for vendors to describe or tag items (i.e., something striped could be called "multicolored" by one person, and "rainbow-colored" by another) it can make it quite frustrating for the discerning fashionista to find that one amazing piece. When searching for vintage clothing on this site,  I employ some pretty easy search tips.  These tips can also be applied to eBay as well.  While you may not yield all the possible options, you will get most of them.  Here is how I do it:

1. When searching vintage clothing I use the following search terms (not all at once):
"plus size"*
XL
"extra large"
16 18
large or L

*I put quotes around the words or phrases that I want to be searched together for further specificity.  Without quotes the term "plus size" will yield results with plus and size anywhere in the title and/or description--we don't want that!

Here is an example:



Eek, 4,300 results.  Maybe if you had some time on your hands you could look through all of them and not lose your mind in the process...slim chance of that happening.  If you look on the right, you will see that our search has been broken up into categories.  We can select "clothing" to narrow the results a little.

You see how the "clothing" category gets broken down further?  Now you can select the category you want. 

You can also refine your results by leaving "plus size" in the search box and adding a color, size, or clothing style or feature.  I like vintage dresses that are sheer so I would put "plus size" and "sheer" in the search box, select the clothing category, then select the dresses category....voila!

Keep in mind that there are many ways you can enter search terms with each method possible yielding different results.  Play around a little bit and try to avoid obscure terminology when searching for clothing (i.e., using "chunky" instead of "plus size"). Most importantly, don't relegate yourself to the term "plus size" when looking for unique vintage pieces.  A lot of vintage clothing is stretchy and forgiving so don't be afraid to look for clothing that is tagged one size or large, or even medium.  The sellers on Etsy are pretty good at posting measurements and describing the fabric type (stretch vs. non stretchy).  don't be afraid to send a message to a vendor asking for further measurements!

My mastery of the search terminology for plus sized vintage clothing has resulted in some pretty cool finds.  Here are a few of them (not all of them are clothing):

Sized XL

Sized XL

Size 10

Sized XL

What vintage pieces have you discovered on Etsy? Where else do you go for vintage clothing?