Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
Earlier this year, I fell in love with a cat tipi. But I wasn’t so in love with the price.
I am seriously considering spending $50 on a cat tipi. I know My cat literally won’t care. What’s wrong with me?
— Elizabeth Giorgi (@lizgiorgi) August 16, 2014
And so I did what any crafty person would do, I started thinking about alternative ways to make it for considerably cheaper. I figured if I could make it for less than $30 it would be worth the effort. And surprisingly, the home garden department was the answer to my quest.
With the help of a few garden trellis parts, a yard of fabric and about 30 minutes, I made my kitty love a little house. Full disclosure: she loved it way more while it was just three pieces of wood leaning together and a piece of fabric thrown over it. But I have caught her in there a couple times since. These are cats we are talking about after all. She couldn’t possibly want me to actually see her enjoying anything.
The basic idea is this:
1. Go to your local garden store and look for a 2 foot to 3 foot long garden trellis. They often come in triangular shapes because it’s easier to attach plants in that configuration. Buy 3 of these. Then, tie them together using some leather cording in a triangle.
2. Wrap a large piece of fabric around your tipi and figure out where the opening will be. The opening is going to be on the flat side of one trellis. You will need to either cut out or saw out a triangular opening, depending on the toughness of your trellis.
3. Pin back the corners of the fabric so that the kitty can come and go as she pleases and pin the corners so the fabric doesn’t come off.
I suppose the most important step is to put a treat inside so she’ll be compelled to check it out. Or her favorite blanket… as Miss Alice would demand.
After chatting about clothes for two years, I thought it was about time we talked about the economics of shopping habits. I hinted about this last week, but I have a very specific way I measure whether or not something is worth buying.
I break it down to cost PER wear NOT cost on the tag.
Why? Because cheap items are cheaply made. Some expensive items aren’t practical. As a result, the poorly made items simply can’t be worn as often and the expensive items end up being pricey closet decorators.
For me, if the cost of an item per wear is $0.75 or less, I buy it. If it’s between $0.75 and $1.25, I try to determine whether or not the item could be sold when I’m done with it to make up the difference OR if I can find a coupon or wait for a sale.
If it’s more than $1.25 per wear, I’ll usually put it back on the shelf. Without further ado, here’s a helpful infographic to explain:
I hope you can refer to this when you’re shopping so you spend your money wisely and end up being happy with your wardrobe. I also hope that the series on fashion basics has been helpful for all of you. According to Google, there are 300-500 of you visiting me everyday, but you don’t all comment so I can only guess that the lack of “rabble rabbles” means approval.
For those of you that do comment, thanks. It really helps me figure out if the things I’m doing are working for you. I want to be like the most responsive customer service line ever. (Within reason. If you tell me to eff off or that my fandom sucks, well, screw you.) As proof, I’m working on two new video series based off your comments. And one of them has to do with scarves. Thanks to you, I’ve realized that I haven’t fully explored my love of them. (Can you blame me? Sheesh, Benedict.) A couple helpful tweets, a comment and an email later and an idea is born. Can’t wait.
I recently spoke at a journalism class at my alma mater about how I’ve used my journalism degree to make my living as a non-journalist.
I put a lot of thought into how this blog has helped me get paid freelance gigs and how my efforts to work for free on certain projects have paved the way for paid jobs. So, what seemed like the most helpful thing was working through the process in which content is made and gets seen… here’s what I gave them:
So my friends, what else do you do to use your blog to help your career?
