DIY: dress shirt to fashion top

I'm excited to post my very first DIY tutorial! How to turn a boring dress shirt into a fashion piece. As my husband and I were cleaning out our closets during the move, a LOT of clothes that needed to be donated turned up. Among them were oversized dress shirts that my husband couldn't fit into anymore. I took one of the shirts from what I thought was on the "donation" pile because I loved the color and started cutting it up. It actually ended up being one of the shirts he wanted to keep. Oops.
Anyway, I hope the photos and my directions are easy enough to follow along. Here it goes!

1) Take an oversized dress shirt and try it on. Make sure it's big enough to wear as a tunic.

2) Cut the sleeve right where the sleeve placket ends. This will make the sleeve 3/4 length. Surge the edge of the sleeve that is still attached to the shirt.

3) Hem the sleeve up 1/2" and leave a small opening for the elastic to go in. Roughly measure the length of the 1/2" elastic by putting it around your forearm. Cut the elastic and slide it through the hem with either a safety pin or a bodkin.

4) Sew up where the elastic went through and you'll have a sleeve that looks like this.

4) Measure about 5 1/2" down from under the armhole and chalk a line all around the shirt from front to back.

5) With a 1/2" thick elastic wrap it around your waist and stretch it just a little to measure how long you want the elastic to be around your waist. You don't want it to be too tight or too loose.

6) Sew the elastic on top of the line that you drew evenly. I usually use a zig zag stitch when sewing elastic.

7) It'll look something like this.

8) Make sure it's even all around.

That's it!

You can wear it with a belt over it or without a belt and you will have a nice cinched waist with bubble sleeve tunic. I hope it was easy enough to follow along!