I’m proud to admit it: I’m a total sucker for bloggers and influencers. One might think with all the work we do here at Fast Horse that you’d become skeptical or unamused by #sponsored posts or the millionth picture of a “But first, coffee” label, but not me. It’s just opened my eyes to more pretty pictures, impeccable lighting and the visual satisfaction of a flat lay. When the Adidas Superstars train came through? I jumped right on. When my #roominspo feed filled with pics of clean, crisp walls? I painted everything in my room white. When Gigi Hadid posted a pic in a choker necklace? I bought three. You see the pattern.

Well, a few months ago my roommate and I made our first trip to Dallas for a weekend of exploring and hanging out with friends. Between the drinks, barbecue and sightseeing, we sent our guy friends to the bar and sprinted into a few of the local boutiques for some retail therapy (shocking, I know). There they were: the exact up-cycled rocker t-shirts with perfectly destroyed hems and the sassy lace-up front donned by Hailey Baldwin. We had to have them.

https://www.instagram.com/p/-S1PeAFDFi/

We were pumped to bring our digs back to the less-trendy suburbs of Minneapolis until we looked at the price tag. $108 for a cut-up, glorified T-shirt. Is this how my mom felt about my destroyed Hollister jeans in middle school?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BA71ssdSZmw/

https://www.instagram.com/p/8WetIhSZre/

We left Dallas, sadly without our rocker shirts in tow, but determined to put our crafting skills to use and make our own.

So here I am, putting on my wannabe-influencer hat, and making a DIY lace-up T-shirt tutorial.

What You Need

• Any T-shirt with a fun graphic on front (a.k.a. raiding my parents’ storage room and stopping at Savers)
• Silver or gold metal eyelets & eyelet starter pack
• Black trim or lace
• String, cording, lace, whatever you want to loop through the front
• A hammer
• Scissors

Step 1

Lay out your shirt and trace out your v-neck. I didn’t cut this one as low as some of the other pics, but you can make it however you’d like.

Step 2

Apply trim to edges of the shirt, either by gluing or sewing it. I used a tape fabric adhesive which made it super easy.

Step 3

Place the metal eyelets where you want them. I used a piece of loose-leaf paper to make sure they were even on both sides. I then used a permanent marker to mark where the eyelets would go  

Step 4

Cut small holes where you marked the eyelet spots using a scissors.

Step 5

Push the bigger side of the eyelet through the holes, and using the eyelet starter kit, hammer the other side in to secure.

Step 6

Hard part is done! Now just take whatever string you want to loop through and thread it through the eyelets. The cool cording I wanted to use didn’t fit ?, so I just used more of the trim I had purchased.

Step 7

Embrace your inner influencer: Put on your new shirt, find some good lighting, apply a VSCO filter and voilà!

We had fun playing around with different T-shirts, trims and random metal things we found at Jo-Ann Fabric. And at the end of the day, we made 3 different shirts for a total of $40. Boom.