Frugal Fashionista Friday! How to Create a Style Inspiration Board

You’ve heard it before…if you want to be stylish but you have a limited budget, “Shop your closet!”  Easier said than done sometimes,especially if you’re like me.  I love to shop and I love a bargain, so I frequently find myself picking up something here or something there for 75% off and popping it in my closet.  Then a week later I see it hanging with the tags still on and think about taking it back, but for less than $10 it feels like not even worth my time! And I end up with cute pieces I don’t know how to pair together. 

Enter the Style Inspiration Board!  The idea behind this for me comes from style queen Susan Wagner, and last week I finally put one together.  I started by periodically clipping pages out of magazines with looks, colors, and pieces I was struck by.  When I had collected a small pile of pages I grabbed a ribbon board I’d made in my MOPS group back in PA and yanked out all the photos.  I carefully cut the photos down to sizes that would fit between the ribbons and tried to arrange them so I could at least see most of the image. 

Enjoy this short video showing where I hung my board, along with a small fashion haul of tops I got off the clearance rank at Ann Taylor LOFT.  At least one of these tops was an exchange from a too-small Mother’s Day gift!

My J. Crew Fashion Haul!

Warning: I am kind of a shopaholic, but I am pretty frugal.  It may not seem that way from this video, but please keep in mind that I have zero consumer debt and even though I shop, we do save a ton for retirement, our kids’ college funds, a big emergency fund, and then some.  So this is not intended to encourage spending! I just don’t want to be an enabler, so I have to say all that. 

You can see the back story to this video, and the whole concept of fashion hauling, here