When it comes to Belly Dancing, are your eyes bigger than your pocketbook? Can you simply not afford to be decked out enough to fully reveal your inner goddess? Do you look at all the beautiful merchandise worn by your dancing sisters and want to cry?

I feel your pain! Below are a few bits of knowledge I've gleaned from my years of pinny pinching and dancing. Hope it helps!

How to recognize good quality merchandise

Yes, it will cost you a bit more initially, but will save you lots of money in the long run! There is no way to go easy on your costume while belly dancing. If you buy cheap merchandise, it will fall apart! These notes are especially useful to new dancers.

Projects

It's a lot cheaper to make it yourself! I wrote down instructions on how to make some of the things you might need for classes or performance! A few of them are things I sell (or intend to sell) on my website! I upload these as images on tribe (faster for me to make/upload them that way, so any that aren't listed here can be found by clicking here for the complete list of all my how to's.

Description	Difficulty	Est. Cost
Tribal Tassels	Easy	$5-10
Harem Pants - Pattern	Hard - math required!	(free if you use old newspaper)
Harem pants - sewing	Medium	$7

DIY aura-designs

I do not mind at all if you copy my designs to make for yourself. Anything you feel you are able, feel free to copy. If you get stuck along the way, e-mail me and I'll help you out. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? And if you can't afford to buy my stuff to begin with, I'm not losing money by you making it, but you are getting a costume to dance in and feel beautiful! All I ask, is when friends tell you how beautiful you look, tell them about me please.

I should mention that it isn't worth it to try to make your own hairpiece. You'll have to buy the whole bush of flowers, and the whole skeins of yarn, and only use a bit of them, and it will cost you the same or more than my hairpieces. Anything else, pants or belts or tops, you will save quite a bundle by making it yourself.

Miscellaneous writings

Turn Art into Cash
An article I wrote for Jareeda Magazine, published in the September 2006 issue.

More coming just as soon as I write them!

	"And what makes you think you know what you're talking about?" While I was growing up, both my Mom and my Dad had their own businesses. For those of you that have never been self employed, this translates: Lots of time with both parents, no money. My favorite pastimes included making dolls and clothes for them out of wire tie thingies and paper towels. I'm talking dolls with fully poseable limbs, and dresses with gathered skirts and puffed sleeves. I have to clarify; I did have toys. I just liked making stuff better, and paper towels were the only materials on hand! When I was 13 my Mom showed me how to push the pedals and thread the sewing machine. From there I taught myself. My first sewing projects were Victorian era reproduction dresses for my barbie dolls, made from fabric given to me by people in our church. By the time I started belly dancing, my Mom had gotten her decorating business going to the point that by helping her, I had an income for at least part of the year, and worked a part time job. I was a student in college at that time, and also had to keep my car in gas and repairs, so that didn't leave much of anything for fun. My first costume for performance consisted of: lavendar tissue lame pointed hem skirt, self made - $4 length of variegated pink-lavendar-indigo chiffon draped around hips for bulk, gift fuschia hip scarf, turkish-emporium.com - $19.95 bra made from old bra, covered with pink-lavendar-indigo velvet, embellished with jewels and sequins from Walmart and beads from silver mardis gras necklace - ~$10 Total cost: $33.95 Nope, no chance of me posting a pic of this costume. It was all I could do on my limited budget, but it really was god-awful! Thankfully it was just for a local friends and family performance! My second costume for performance consisted of: 3 layer lilac chiffon skirt - taken from vintage thrift shop dress: $5 White bra, clearance at Ross - $6 Embellished bra with sequin trim, jewels, and that cheap prestrung bead stuff - $8 White Hipscarf from turkish-emporium.com - $19.95 Total cost: $38.95 I wore this one for a performance at a martial arts meet. Though it wasn't quite as horrible as the first, I still hope there aren't any pictures floating around!