It was also such a pleasure to meet Tashia of Hips and Hangers, a brand new Boston blogger who fit right in rocking a neon lace top from H&M’s Conscious Collection of recycled, upcycled & sustainable fabrics.

My best snag of the night (which I’ll be featuring along with more “insider info” from Goodwill this week on Shoestring) was this metallic tweed pencil skirt from J.Crew, in my size and brand new with tags marked $148 — yet I paid only $4.49!

Lei Ann of Lei Ann Off Duty scored big and immediately styled her floral trench find into a springy pick-me-up of an outfit to beat the nasty, overcast weather we’ve been having.

Immediately after the shopping, we gathered for pizza, soda, and a “sneak peek” presentation led by James Harder, director of marketing & communications for Goodwill in Massachusetts. Bloggers got a chance to learn more about the “original” Goodwill and ask any burning questions they’ve ever had about how Goodwill works.

Then we went literally behind the scenes on a tour of the Distribution Center and Goodwill Outlet, led by JD Garcia, director of job training.

Bloggers were in awe at how vast the distribution center was…and that there was such a thing as a Goodwill Outlet. (I’m guessing another field trip/blogger tour is in order soon.)

It was really difficult for all of us not to reach out & snatch up some of the amazing items waiting to be sent from the distribution centers to local Goodwill stores — but reassuring to learn that even Goodwill employees have to wait 24 hours after an item hits the store before being able to snatch it up. (Actually, that sounded like torture!)

Miles of Z-racks sorted, tagged, and ready to be loaded on to trucks bound for various stores around Massachusetts…maybe even yours.

The girls went a little ga-ga for these racks of wedding gowns from Goodwill’s Brides on a Budget event. One lucky bride-to-be will get to purchase one of these seriously discounted designer gowns at our June swap. (More details coming soon!)

Not the best picture, but the best tour guides ever! From left to right: James, JD, Patty Wilkinson and Christine Moire (both directors of stores, including our faves: Boston, Somerville, Quincy and Worcester!)

And, the highlight of the night: a group shot! If you’ve ever wondered what happens to clothing and other fabric items that are donated but can’t be sold in Goodwill stores, or haven’t sold after being in a retail location then the Outlet, we’re standing in front of the wall of clothing bales headed to textile recyclers, which will then be made into things like housing insulation, batting for car seats, and recycled fiber mats for car flooring. Pretty cool!

If you’d like to get more involved with Goodwill in Massachusetts, here’s how:

• RSVP for the upcoming “Put Your Clothes to Work” reception on 5/23 in Boston

• Follow @GoodwillBoston on Twitter & “Like” Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries on Facebook.

• Share pics & posts about your latest thrifted, vintage, swapped & other bargain scores each week with us on Twitter using the hashtag #ThankGoodwillItsFriday!

• Come to the Good Party, Goodwill’s annual gala fundraiser, on June 14th! All proceeds go towards job training and career services — Goodwill helped train & placed 9,000 people in jobs in Massachusetts in 2011 alone. A great cause and a great service during this Great Recession!

With #swaplove,
Melissa & Amy

PS: Hope to see you all at our upcoming swaps!

Fiesta Swap
5/16 in Boston
RSVP ($10)

Canal District Swap
5/19 in Worcester
RSVP ($5)

We debuted a new DIY photobooth backdrop made using neon paper in an old skool paper chain design. So easy, affordable, and fun! What do you think?

Right after tagging and hanging their items, swappers got a chance to sip on super delish, dry rose wine from 90+ Cellars, one of our favorite local wine labels based in Boston’s Seaport. Just like a “famous label” designer find from Filene’s Basement, 90+ only bottles wines made from grapes rated 90 and above by wine experts but because they keep the sources a secret they can also keep the prices a steal! It was the perfect way to ring in warm weather, our Garden Party theme, and our summer of swaps overlooking the 40 Berkeley courtyard.

Melissa also shared her own handmade cucumber-dill finger sandwiches, which she created on site with a huge kitchen assist from Tara of Apartment Therapy and the Boston Food Swappers. If you’re into home cooking, local food, and everything DIY, check out their monthly food swaps to exchange surplus foraged, baked, canned, jammed, jellied, or otherwise homemade edibles with other DIY foodies. (And, if you loved the finger sandwiches, check out Melissa’s twist on the classic recipe over on Shoestring.)

The lovely ladies of The Closet Boston weighed which of the awesome new-to-them finds from other swappers to take home, after “seeding” the swap with a selection of designer castoffs from their store on Newbury Street and posing with me in the photobooth (below). We totally heart these girls for being die-hard swappers and being undying supporters of The Swapaholics from from day one! Local love for days…

Amy Allen of Stylish Year (far right) and Katy Rose of Modly Chic (near right) posed with some friends after helping sort/hang fashion items like absolute swap veterans. Huge thanks especially to Amy and her superstar husband Stew for showing up hours before the swap to set up, and for their loyal support going on three years (and in three cities). Look out for a guest post & DIY from Stew soon on hosting his first fly fishing swap!

We were also stoked that our dear friend Aubrie Pagano (left), founder of Zoora, finally made it out for her first swap! Make sure to get tickets early for our June event for a chance to swap & also shop from Zoora’s capsule collection of dresses perfect for summer weddings, and all under $100!

Kara from KO Pies in Southie & Boston Home came to show her #swaplove with Melissa in the photobooth. Big news coming soon about the grand opening of KO’s second location sometime later next month — spoiler alert: an outdoor deck & a beer/wine license are involved!

We were also stoked, thanks to our new regular Wednesday night timeslot, that the lovely ladies of Flock Boston on Shawmut Ave were able to join us! They were killing it with their mix of bold colors and tribal prints/jewelry. Seriously covetous style for summer.

Speaking of, share your swap scores with us using the hashtag #GardenPartySwap on Twitter, tag yourself in our photos on Facebook or in your blog posts so we can share your outfit photos on Swapperazzi, and, get your tickets now to our next swap at 40Berkeley! The theme for May’s #FiestaSwap on May 16th is Cinco de Mayo inspired, so bring your best, boldest & brightest clothing to kick off the sultry summer months stylishly.

Huge thanks again to 40Berkeley for hosting us in 2012! Be sure to follow them on Facebook & Twitter — and tell all your friends and family visiting Boston to book rooms now before word gets out and availability is impossible to find, bound to happen any day now!

Spring 2012 Garden Party Clothing Swap
Wednesday, April 18th 2012
7 to 9 pm (EST)

at

40Berkeley
40 Berkeley Street
Boston, MA 02116

Spring is finally here,
so it’s time to clean out those closets!

Make way for fresh spring & summer fashion by giving 3 to 5 of your favorite, gently (or never) worn items of clothing or accessories a new home in exchange for 3 to 5 new-to-you items.

Sip drinks in 40Berkeley‘s beautiful courtyard (weather permitting) and catch up with your favorite stylish Bostonians. Pose with your new scores in our photo booth. Rock your cares away in the sunroom while basking in the glow of free shopping & noshing on spring fare.
And more fun surprises coming soon!

Questions? Chat with The Swapaholics on Facebook or Twitter

And use the hashtag #40BerkeleySwap on Twitter and Instagram to share what you’re bringing with other swappers!

Limited tickets available — get yours before they sell out!

I’m so very excited to be on The Swapaholics blog today with a recap of a fun swap event that I attended last week in NYC! The very first swap I ever attended was The Swapaholics’ ModSwap event with ModCloth.com during NYFW last fall, so I credit these lovely ladies with getting me hooked on swapping! Since then, I’ve been to a few other swap events in NYC, as well as swapping frequently on the awesome website, Swap.com. Before I started swapping, all of these clothes were just sitting in my closet unworn, so I think it’s great that I can swap them and give them somebody who will show them a little more love. In addition, it’s a great way to add some new-to-me pieces to my closet without having to spend any money at all! Basically, I really can’t say no to a good swap, so of course I was really excited for this event.

This swap was put together by The Bloggers’ Collective, a group of fashion, lifestyle, and beauty bloggers who live in NYC. For their first official event, they chose to host it at Wix Lounge, a really cool, free work/event space for creative professionals in NYC. They even offer free wi-fi and you can pop in to do some work anytime you want! Since this is literally two doors down from where I work, I just did a quick change after work and headed straight to the swap.

When I arrived at the swap, I checked in and was given a number, which would indicate when I was allowed to peruse the swapping items. For this swap, we were asked to bring 4 to 10 items of new or gently used clothing, or you could also bring unused beauty products. The number of items you brought was the same number of items you could take home with you. Since I had plenty of items to swap, I ended up bringing 10 items, including some shoes, purses, dresses, and more.

After checking in, I popped over to the refreshments table to grab a plate of yummy snacks and a glass of wine! The baked goods were made by one of the hostesses’ friends and the wine and cheese were provided by Spark Rebel, one of the event sponsors. Once I had my food and drink, I was ready to mingle!

Other than my friend Alex, I didn’t know any of the other bloggers at the swap, so it was really great to meet other NYC bloggers like these ladies above. Naina (on the left) totally DIY’ed those awesome studs you see on her blazer and iPhone case, while Christina (on the right) was just as sweet as can be in her pretty floral shirt!

After a brief welcome and a round of introductions, we quickly got to swapping! The items started out organized by type (such as tops, dresses, skirts, and so on), but by the time the first group had gone digging for goodies those divisions weren’t so clear! Space was a bit limited, with only five bloggers were allowed to browse at a time. I was in the third group, so I just kept chatting with new friends and snapping pictures while waiting for my chance to swap!

In true blogger fashion, after we had selected the things that caught our eye, we then went around showing off what we scored to our new friends. At the end of the night, a lovely representative from Goodwill of NY & NJ was there to collect all of the items that people didn’t want as donations for a special blogger rack at the Goodwill on W. 8th!  I thought this was a great idea because absolutely nothing went to waste.

I scored some pretty fab items at the swap, including a cozy sweatshirt with elbow patches, a black sequined top that will be perfect for nights out, a cute little romper that I can’t wait to wear this summer, some ‘crackle nail polish’ fake nails to try out, and a floral tank that just screams “Spring is here!”

A little after 8 pm, we called it a night and parted ways contentedly with our bags full of great swap items. As usual, this swap experience did not disappoint and I can’t wait for the next opportunity to meet up with these ladies again!

*All pictures above taken by Alex (on the left) or myself

Thanks again to The Bloggers’ Collective for throwing such a great event and to The Swapaholics for having me as a guest on their blog today! Keep on swapping!

~ Nnenna

Now that you’re hopefully unpacked, rested & catching up on your blogs, we would love to see what you scored & how you’re styling your swap items! If you post a recap of the event, tag Swap.com on Facebook in your post announcement or use the #SwapLulus hashtag on Twitter – we wanna share!

Also:

• Join Swap.com & Follow Lulu*s
  Create your free account on the new Swap Market to connect with all your new favorite bloggers and swap your favorite fashion items all year long! Follow Melissa, Amy & Lulu*s to get started, and share your profile with us so we can add you to our directory of fashion bloggers on Swap.com!

• Download the free Swap Market iPhone App!
  Inspired after seeing so much gorgeous fashion all weekend long? Adding items you wanted from Lulu*s, from the swap, or from other bloggers’ own wardrobes, is super easy with our mobile app! Give it a try & let us know what you think.
• A huge Thank you to Wines Of France and also to Austin Goodwill, who donated racks and hangers and invited us to play Thank Goodwill its Friday in their stores while we were in Austin!

With #swaplove,

~ Melissa & Amy

Photo Booth:

Photos by: Adam Towner

Here’s Michelle’s swap story:

I had the great honor of attending a ModCloth & Swap.com Clothing Swap this week, hosted by Julia from Jeeze, Julia! Julia is a member of the ModSquad, a group of ladies selected by ModCloth.com their to be “Style Ambassadors.” Julia and others share feedback about their items, the website, their blog posts, and customer service. The ModSquad-ers have a similar love of vintage clothing and fashion so they chat about upcoming trends, favorite vintage, and of course, swaps!

Julia and her boyfriend, Ryan, were the sweetest hosts and made everyone feel immediately at home — I was so happy to meet new thrift and swap lovers here in Portland! I brought my friend Ashley from Sweet William and we were greeted at the door by our hosts, who whisked away our bags of clothes for sorting. While everyone’s swap contributions were being carefully organized, we were treated to snacks and drinks — they even made a special swap drink called “Berry Picking” that featured sage-infused berry syrup mixed with gin and tonic — heaven!

I sneaked a peek at the sorting at one point, as Julia (and her friend Julia) were organizing swapped items into categories: shoes, accessories, sweaters, shirts, tanks, dresses, skirts, and men’s.

Julia has great thrift style and her apartment decor is just as stylish — look at the menus she created to help plan their weekly meals!

She also created a fab “mid-century camping” theme for the swap. She borrowed old coffee and tea tins from her grandfather’s New Hampshire camp, as well as this great old marshmallow tin.

I really like the way Julia organized this swap. Once everything was sorted, we each got about 20 minutes to sort through everything, get a sense of what was there, and try things on. Everyone was then given three tags so we could “pin” our top three most-wanted items.

Amazingly, everyone pinned three different items, so there were no scuffles! (Julia had planned trivia questions to break any ties.) After everyone got their three top items, Julia gave out some great tote bags from ModCloth and Swap.com so we could scoop up other items we wanted, then everything left over was donated to Goodwill Industries of Northern New England (where I work!).

One of the best parts of the night: in keeping with the mid-century camping theme, Julia made everyone a “girl scout” necktie. It was a sweet touch and I’m excited to wear and own a handmade item from Julia!

I scooped up a number of great items — here are some of the highlights:

Turquoise necklace (donated by ModCloth)

Great natural wood earrings

One of my favorite swap items was this pair of black Aldo boots from Ashley (thanks, they fit perfectly!)

Two great belts

And here we are all the end of the swap, happy little “campers!”

Thanks to Swap.com for helping with this event — I hadn’t been to a house party swap in a long time and it was great to have such a small, intimate setting for swapping clothes and sharing fashion ideas. Ideas for future SWAPmaine events are already coming together!

I would have loved to have flown to Denver last week to participate in the Goodwill Denver’s Fashion Show + Clothing Swap. But since we had Fashion Week plans, we sent our favorite Denver blogger instead! Anna is the fabulous force behind And Then She Saved – a photographer and lifestyle blogger based in Denver who was recently featured on the Nate Berkus show. Here’s her recap:

Once I arrived, I made my way to the eager helpers who traded me a yellow wristband
for my items (the wristband was to allow us into the swapping area that would start after
the fashion show).

As soon as Mondo Guerra from Project Runway fame announced that the swap was
starting a line instantly formed. In the line we were all so close that we began to move in tandem. Suddenly, I found myself in the swapping area, and by pure luck I ended up right next to a rack that had a mint-condition wool J Crew jacket on it! (The score of the night!) On that same rack I found another jacket that still had it’s tag on it (tag said $129!). When the crowd moved you moved so I started grabbing some random things off racks that had cuteness potential.

Somethings that could have been improved about the event: too small of a swapping
area (I heard rumors that there were 850 people there- don’t know how true that is
but there were A LOT), the yellow wrist-bands weren’t checked so anyone could be in
the swapping area, and the emcees instructed everyone to take 10 items (regardless of
how many items you brought). Also, since the exit was right behind the swapping area
people had to go through the mass of people to leave the building. A better layout would
have made all the difference.

What I really liked about the event was that the clothes were organized by type; shirts
were with shirts, pants were with pants. That made things easy once you got to the
rack. At the end of the night, people wiped their brows, heaved their armfuls of clothes and
most ladies looked pretty happy with their loot. Apart from the few glitches it was still a lot of fun to experience a swap of that magnitude, and that J Crew jacket made all that squishing worthwhile!

Check out my blog www.AndThenSheSaved.com. By doing a Spending Fast I
eliminated all of my debt and now I’m on a mission to help others get out of debt too!

The Twitter rumors are true: We are hosting are another clothing swap with Lulus.com! Our second #SwapLulus event will be in Austin, Texas this March as the opening event of the Texas Style Conference. Last year’s Texas Style Council swap was my favorite event that we ever hosted. It was 3 full days of fun and making new fashion friends.

This year’s clothing swap will be a little bit different then last year’s Austin event:  bloggers/conference attendees will get to know each other and their wardrobes at our first official #TxSC event, just like last year, but this time we’re asking you bring just TWO of your best items of clothing to swap. (Easier to pack, too!) We’ll tag your items with your Twitter handle, your site URL and your Swap.com username and you can swap continually throughout the night with other attendees. Then hang out in the Lulu*s lounge, take home a complimentary item from Lulus.com, and spin the prize wheel for a chance to win even more fashionable loot!

If we won’t see you in Texas for SXSW, don’t fret: you can still hang with the lovely ladies of Lulus.com at New York Fashion Week this Friday! Hit up their  Style Studio at New York Fashion Week this Friday, February 10, 2012 from 6 to  10 pm. We’ll be there!

We invited those loyal & fashion-forward supporters to bring two designer or vintage items from their wardrobe (leaving the Forever 21 & Zara and bringing only Marc, Cynthia, Vince, Betsey & friends). Our friends from The Closet on Newbury Street had a little pop up booth at the event giving away free designer items to the attendees…awesome right? We sipped cider & nosh on amuse bouche while mixing, mingling & getting caught by the Pretty Instant photogs.

Happy World Swap day everyone!
View the complete set of photos here.