Ladies and gentlemen, I am skint. Not horrendously so - but thanks to my various insurance payments which were all due this month plus a few more expensive activities than usual, I am going to have to be a bit careful for a while about how I spend my money. However, since September/October is "back to school" time for me, I usually like to have a few new outfits so that I look extra professional and hopefully mildly terrifying when I start teaching the ickle freshers*.

So what's a girl to do? I decided now would be an excellent time to issue myself a few challenges so I feel like I have some new outfits without having to spend very much (or possibly any) money.

I hope I'll get the opportunity to have a play around with a few different challenges as I have several in mind, but to begin with I decided I'd start out easy and compile a bit of a capsule wardrobe with the aim of creating as many outfits as possible from a set few items.

I remembered the gorgeous Miss Victory Violet doing a similar thing a while ago so I referred to her posts to see how many individual items she had used. Since she seemed to do very well with 10 items I decided to pick out 10 items for my own capsule wardrobe and see how many combinations I could come up with.

*I am just joking. I don't want to scare the freshers. I get freshers flu every single year though, so frankly they can keep their germs to themselves.











Above are the 10 items I selected. I have:
1. Navy blue pencil skirt
2. Navy blue flared skirt
3. Light blue button-up blouse
4. Navy blue striped bardot top
5. Floral jersey top
6. Blue floral peplum blouse
7. Blue checked vintage dress
8. Blue floral "Elizabeth" dress from Dolly and Dotty
9. Purple cardigan
10. Grey cardigan

Because the intention was to create as many combinations as possible, I chose things that I hoped would be good for mixing and matching, thinking carefully about the colour palette I was working with. Using blue as my main colour seemed sensible since I already own and wear so much of it! It was also a good opportunity to use some items that I don't wear often enough, like the blue pencil skirt (which is a bit lumpy because I made it myself - I'm not the best at sewing but I give myself points for trying) and the lovely peplum blouse which for some reason I just never reach for, plus it buttons up the back which is a bit awkward when I'm getting dressed by myself.

I didn't place any restrictions on my accessories or shoes, simply selecting whatever I fancied to match each outfit.

Here's what I managed to come up with:

















If I've added up correctly (don't count on it - maths, like sewing, is not one of my strong points) then I have 24 combinations which isn't too shabby for a first attempt! I will definitely be trying to wear at least some of these over the coming weeks.

Let me know in the comments how you think I did and which is your favourite outfit. You can also see a couple more combinations I could have made here and here. I hope I may have given you some ideas for how you can mix-and-match items of your own (I certainly gave myself some great ideas for the future) and maybe I'll do this again sometime, although I want to try my other challenge ideas as well.