3 Statement Floral Shirt Summer Outfits + DIY Paper Beads

Today I'm shifting away from the blue and pink color combinations of last week to feature summer outfits with another Lands End shirt from my purchase over the winter. This is their "No Iron 3Q [3/4 sleeve] Tunic Top" in "light blue lotus floral" print. It was on sale for $10.19. I loved the color palette of mint, peach/coral, and rust as well as the floral design. I really like the floral prints Lands End uses with black as an outline around the flowers and leaves (here is an outfit round up from last summer with a blue floral shirt of this kind) so I was happy to add another one to my wardrobe.

Outfit #1 uses a simple summer outfit formula I wear again and again: tank/T + capri pants + button up shirt as lightweight shirt-jacket. And this version with an accent color top and neutral pants in colors taken from the print button up shirt is a very common way for me to wear it. The button up shirt is the statement piece of the outfit while the rest is the supporting act.

I went for simplicity with my necklace, wearing a cute piece with enamel flowers and goal chain to echo the black and white colors and floral motif in the shirt. (I must have fastened my necklace strangely because the black flowers on either end kept flipping around to show the gold back...which looks fine but isn't how it's supposed to be!) I don't wear this necklace as often as some of my other pieces, but it seems to make its way into outfits with these black-outlined floral prints.

You may be surprised to see me in black flats given that I'm so often reaching for leopard print or a bright color, but I decided to wear these comfortable Me Too brand flats with the gold buckle to repeat the black in my capri pants.

When I wear black shoes, I do like to create a bit of a bookend effect by wearing my black DIY 5-strand t-shirt headband with them. (And here you can see the front of the flower on the end.) I wore simple pearl stud earrings because I wanted all jewelry attention on my bracelet stack...

...which is an all DIY stack based on a new paper bead bracelet set I made with this floral shirt as the inspiration! I purposely made the two paper bead bracelets with black glass beads as spacers, not using any metal, so that it could coordinate with either gold or silver jewelry.

The top paper bead bracelet was made from this wonderfully colorful drawing from an alumni magazine. I liked the sky blue background, the prominent dark coral red in the bricks, and the bits of black and white as a fit for my shirt's color scheme. I used black marker along the edges of the strips to cover the white paper core and to add black striping on the beads. I also covered up the text with black marker but otherwise left the strips as-is. I love that the minty sky blue, rusty red, orange, and black colors dominate the beads but that small flashes of cream, grey, green, etc., are there too. I think my favorite thing about these beads is how cool the bricks look with the pale lines running at a 90 degree angle to the black stripes of the beads.

The bottom paper bead bracelet was made from this drawing in The Economist with a mint background, some orange areas, and black outlining. I did do more to change up these strips before rolling the beads to get the color scheme a bit closer to what I had envisioned. The pink, blue, and grey colors weren't on point for me so I covered them with orange and rusty brown marker. I thought the rusty brown would be closer to rust than brown, but I'm okay with the color. Compared to the orderly striped look of the first bracelet, the beads here have a more irregular speckled appearance, which I thought made for a nice pairing.

My second outfit is just a variation on the first outfit, substituting a sandstone coral tank for the rust T, a black skirt for the black capri pants, and black pointy-toed flats for the black ballet flats. This outfit has a slightly dressier vibe than the previous one, and because the skirt has a flared shape, it creates a different silhouette for the outfit overall. But once I put the first outfit together, it took almost no time at all to create this one with a few tweaks. I like to create new outfits as much as anyone, but it's also very satisfying to take an outfit you like and modify it...or wear it again in its entirety!

I wore the enamel flower necklace again but created a simple layered look this time with the addition of a multi-chain necklace and a long black pendant necklace.

Don't these studded flats just bring the party to any outfit? It has a bit of "New Year's Eve in July" energy that's a lot of fun.

My bracelet stack is based on the same two paper bead bracelets and black/metal bracelet as the first outfit, but I finished out the stack a bit differently. I substituted a mint-blue magnesite bracelet for the mixed blue-green one; a rust agate/silver rabbit bracelet for the rust carnelian one; a white glass bead bracelet for the plain black one; and added a mixed metal spacer bead bracelet. With the lighter color of top in this outfit, I decided to lighten up the overall look of the bracelet stack too.

I have styled the shirt differently for the third outfit: buttoned up like a normal shirt and half-tucked with the famous J. Crew Half Tuck like it's 2012 all over again. I tried leaving the shirt untucked, then various partially tucked options, but in the end, I actually did like how this silliest of partial tucks worked with the denim skirt!

Predictably, my husband did helpfully point out that my shirt had come partly untucked; how nice for him to notice, right? I gave him a quick history lesson on the partial tuck, pointing out that from now on when his own fully tucked shirts come untucked on one side, he's not being sloppy; it's an effortlessly cool, creative and dramatic visual effect!

I enjoy wearing this ruffled beaded necklace under the collar of a buttoned up shirt, so it was the obvious choice. Bonus: it stood out against the busy colorful print better than I'd expected and made a nice impact.

And it doesn't hurt that the gold color of the necklace repeats my hair color for an additional harmonious aspect. My earrings are a pair of the world's easiest DIY earrings made with 4mm glass pearls in a sandstone color added to pre-made hoops.

My daily bracelet stack is based on a larger (8mm) paper bead bracelet that I also made to coordinate with this shirt. I love that gold swirl bead as a focal in the center. I made the mint blue 12 mm magnesite lentil bead/gold spacer bracelet to work with the paper one. Then to complete my stack, I added the 8mm rust/silver rabbit bracelet you saw in the second outfit above plus two DIY spacer bead bracelets, one 8mm in silver tone, the other 6mm in gold and silver.

The paper bead bracelet was created from a wonderful piece of junk mail: an Amazon Christmas toy catalog in a blue/green/teal + orange color palette and an outdoor/nature/animal theme. The paper in this catalog was quite thick, which makes for nice chunkier beads. I selected this full-page drawing which only required some gold marker on the edges to cover the white paper core before rolling into these pretty beads. (I didn't need to cover the text at the top of the page because the font size is so large that it doesn't look like text when the beads are rolled; it's just a dark green area.)

Do you like wearing button up shirts in the warm seasons? What's your favorite way of styling them? Would you wear the classic J. Crew Half Tuck? Do you have a outfit formula you've been wearing this summer?

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