Autumn Leaves

I'm a sucker for Autumn, it's one of my favourite times of the year. At certain times of the day the quality of light changes to honey golden and everything looks bright and warm, the leaves start to pick up the same colours as the season's fashion (I'm crushing so hard over mustard and berry tones it's frankly ridiculous) and the air smells of bonfires and toffee even if it's only my imagination. In Autumn you can start thinking about hearty stews and soups and the concept of snugness takes on a whole new deliciously content meaning.

This fabulous treasury including one of my fascinators sums up my idea of Autumn to a tee. So I think today as I feel more tired than when I went to bed last night, I'll leave it to do the talking for me.



Now I'm off to hibernate for the weekend

Hipstamatic Bustles

I've been trying to keep myself motivated and continuously making over the past few weeks, but have been disheartened by the fact I can very rarely organise a photography session to get shots good enough to upload to Etsy. Making all this stock isn't so great when you can't get it up for sale or at least share some makes for general delectation.

So with the deadline for the Etsy Burlesque Seller's Team Spooky Carnival Chalenge looming I decided to take the plunge and pay the princely sum of £1.69 for the Hipstamatic iPad app to see if I could get something servicable by my very own self.

Armed with an armfull of bustle, my beloved iPad and some very unseasonable weather, I manouevered myself out to the garden to see what happened, and whaddayaknow I'm actually pretty impressed with the results. Many of the Hipstamatic lenses and film and flash effects, whilst lovely in themselves, aren't suitable in the least for product shots as they completely throw out the natural colours and I don't want to misrepresent what I'm selling. However I have found a lense that works in bright sunlight to give accurate colour balence (with just a touch more contrast and highlights) and I just adore the vintage square shape the pics come out at and the ragged edge or curved corners you can apply.

So a bit of posting later, here are the results of my weekend's work. Some more representative and some more indulgently arty:

Here's the bustle I made for the chalenge. The colour palette was oranges, purples and black and I called it The Witching Hour and even wrote it a little story (which I think I might do for all my items from now on as long as the inspiration continues to flow)

This bustle has always made me think of mermaids and sea foam. I made it ages ago but never got around to taking any photos, so I'm glad to have it listed finally. I called it The Sea Siren

I've had this one listed for ages with one solitary and rather unflattering photo so I'm so happy to have it properly represented in all it's girly glory. She's called Pretty in Pink but she might get a better name when I give her a proper story.

There's still a couple more bustles to list and then I'll get started on the hats, though it's likely I'll have lost my outside studio as this sun  just can't continue forever. It is October after all! Busy times for productive me!

Catwalk Review - Vivienne Westwood Red Label AW 2011

I have a long standing obsession with Vivienne Westwood. Her designs may be wacky, at times to the point of being unwearable, but then I've always been drawn towards costume. The themes of traditional British heritage mixed with punk styling just work so effortlessly and she cuts her clothes with such skill and cleverness. Since I've been interested in dressmaking I can usually reduce an item of clothing to it's component pattern pieces in my mind, even if I can rarely if ever reproduce these pieces in fabric, but Westwood designs often baffle me!

So of the few fashion week collections I make a habbit of perusing each year, Westwood is almost always the first. I may not have a hope of affording any of the pieces, let along fitting in to them if I could, but there are always a couple of themes and unexpected juxtapositions that a mere mortal of average build can reproduce from the highstreet. This year's Autumn/Winter Red Label collection is no exception.

I'm an absolute sucker for a pencil skirt at the best of times, it's the most common shape in my wardrobe, so I'm sure I could whip together something like this. I love the mix of smart, boyish shirt with vampy skirt and the accessories are perfectly understated. Statement belts are everywhere this season, this red suade hinge belt from River Island for £15 is a cute mix of smart and glitz for £18.

For a shirt, though I have always wanted the perfect oxford from a proper tailor, a man's shirt will work just as well. Wearing it tucket tight into something high-waisted will avoid that shapeless blocky look that can come from wearing mens un-darted clothing. Primark have a surprisingly tasteful range of shirts for around £8 or sometimes even less. I already want the fine red and blue stripe slim fit I bought for fiance a while back. Might nick it out of his wardrobe when I get home! Though a blue and white stripe is even more classic.

Layering is my new best friend now the weather's getting cooler. I still want to get the best use out of my chiffon blouses and satin pussy-bows but don't feel like shivering the day away. There are a lot of chunky patterned knits around this season but for me a skinny knit long line cardi is the perfect throw over item when teamed with a skinny belt. This one in rust red from H&M is adorable for £24.99

There's a mustard yellow one in New Look which is equally versatile and would tie in with the mauve and tan thing I already have gonig on from summer. According to the above I wouldn't be out of season with this combo. I'm also loving the print dress/long socks/cardi combo in the second picture. I'm tempted now to nip back to the boutique sale at Awear which still has some amazing reductions and some dresses that would translate well into autumn. This print tie waist dress is only £19 and though the print is quite bold it would look fab with a pale, well draped cardi. Even the shape is slightly Westwood! I may have to swap the knee highs for a pair of opaque grey tights (also popular on this year's runways) to save that inch of inch of chilly flesh.

Colour and shape are always very important in Vivienne Westwood collections and this season's colours are right up my street.

From this skirt it looks like I need to be digging out and stocking up on turquoise, rust, navy and tan. Easier said then done when I found the Clarissa Jersey Midi dress at Boohoo.com for only £20 available in both colours (as well as black) and I can't decide! I think this may be the most versatile shape of the season (and look, another sexy big belt) so if I don't decide on a colour soon I may be forced to buy both!

And finally one more amazing dress from the collection. When Westwood does a LBD she does it with some real pazazz,. Look at that draping! I'm going to have to figure out how she does it as I'm now set on having this kind of cowl neckline for my bridesmaids. Mix it with the circle skirt from the dress above and a big sash belt and they should be wonderfully flattering.

Hooray for Vivienne Westwood! She may be crazy, but she's my kind of crazy!

Penny Black - one of my hats in a music video!

I was so excited when I got my first commission from Scottish singer/songwriter Penny Black back in June, and even more excited to find out it was for her new music video!

She had seen my Write Me a Love Letter hat on Etsy (below) and wanted to change the hat band and flower decoration to match the outfit of one of her extras. She was ever so lovely to work with and I always enjoy commissions, and she promised to send me a link to the video when it was done.

Yesterday she did just that, and it's fab! The video has a Victorian vaudeville theme, with a group of ladies being taken for a ride at a fake seance by a very dapper looking Penny (my hat's one of the things that gets pinched, the blighters!) and also lovely Penny in a pink corset and fantastic bloomers with the sparkliest eyeshadow ever. The song's really great too, I urge you to have a listen. My hat is on the very pretty lady in Green:

Click here for a link to the video on You Tube

I'm so proud! Big thanks to Penny Black and hope to work with her again in future.

The Blocking Bug

Finally getting around to a making post! I mean to do more of these but it's hard to get into the habit of taking in progress pictures. Usually when I'm in the flow of making something I won't stop until it's done or I've messed it up!

I bought two rolls of craft sinamay months ago when they were reduced in Paperchase with the vague ambition on learning to block properly and they've been sulking untouched in the corner of my sewing room ever since. But with a posh wedding coming up this weekend and having followed the string of amazing fascinators at the royal weddings and the races this year I thought I'd give it a go myself.

I can't afford real wooden blocks at the moment so I started looking around the house for a substitute. My eyes landed upon a stainless steel fruit bowl with a nice curve to it. Then I flipped it over and found a cute pedestal base perfect for a mini crown











I started by using three layers of the open weave sinamay, wet them thoroughly with hot water and started to smooth and ease them over the shape of the bowl. The sinamay not already having stiffeners in it as proper millinery sinamay would I improvised with watered down PVA (a tip I had read in a few craft blogs) to hold the shape and bond the layers together. I obviously couldn't pin the layers down into the metal as you would with a wooden block so I improvised with some elastic straps and a piece of stiff wire.











Whilst the whole shebang was still pretty wet I covered it with a piece of scrap fabric and pressed it hard with the steam iron to start to cook the shape in to the sinamay. Luckily by this time it was late enough to go to bed as I'm a horror for fiddling with things whilst they're still wet and messing them up completely when I should just leave well enough alone.

The next afternoon I was chomping at the bit to get back from work and see how it turned out. I eased it carefully off the bowl (a couple of hairy moments there) and voila:





The bust is another recent make but I'll save that for another time. At the point of this photo I'd also trimmed and wired the edge.

At this point the two dresses I bought from Awear turned up. Both fit, if a little tight, but both had much paler tones than this creamy yellowish sinamay, so I decided to make a second base from the paler, even weave sinamay. It was easier the second time around and I also decided to accentuate the off centre crown that had been an accident the first time. I love fortuitous accidents.

Finally I added a band of navy grosgrain around the edge and a spray of vintage ostrich and stripped coque feathers that I'd picked up at the Manchester Vintage Textiles Fair. A clear comb on the inside and it was complete!











It's wonderfully light to wear and the tilt should be great for hiding from the family papparazzi. The only problem is now I've been utterly bitten by the blocking bug and keep looking at random objects with possible hat shapes in mind. I've already stolen the lid from the coffee jar, much to fiancé's bemusement!

Post (and) Script - Mini Obsession

Mini obsessions come and go in my life. I'm a great one for finding a beautiful item, style or genre, then obsessing over it untill I own at least one item falling in to that category (usually more than one).

One of the recent obsessions that seems to be having a resurgance in my conscious today is vitage postal ephemera, possibly sparked off by the Disaster Designs Dandy items I mentioned in a previous post. Despite the fact I've never been a good letter writer myself I'm compulsively drawn to images of vintage letters, postcards, stamps and postmarks as well as old-looking cursive handwriting. There's something so intriguing about old letters, the secrets and words of love they might contain.

So I'm going to vent my obsession here today in the hopes reliving a few loves, wants and makes will stop me buying anything new! There's the most amazing host of paper items out there with vintage postal prints, from notecards to swing tags to journal covers, but I think the items that work best in this theme are the non paper ones.
Printed fabrics are constantly top of my list of wants, for use with my hatmaking. The quality of fabric and print and the depth of detail in the designs, mostly seeming to come out of Korea and Japan, at the moment is astonishing. Most of my current collection comes from Etsy sellers RetroNaNa and Minnafabric, though given some extra pennies I'd definately snap up some pieces from Renees Fabrics. I could fill a whole post with amazing fabric prints (in fact, maybe I will at some point soon) but for now here's a little treasury of scripty style prints for you crafters:



Actually, that was a really bad idea as now I've found a bunch more fabrics and sellers to keep an eye on! Here's a couple of recent Chapeau Carmine creations vibing off the postal theme

This one's called Write me a Love Letter

and I called this one Meet me in Paris. Old romantic much? This one recently sold, but I have a new one made from the same fabric to be listed soon!

Searching around the subject on Etsy today (this is how all of my obsessions gain ground in my head) I found this amazing Postcards From Europe Corset Cincher by MidnightAgenda which I'm totally in want of (she has a vintage newspaper style one which is eaqually if nore more gorgeous):

There's also about a million really adorable pieces of jewellery around this theme, mostly of the scrabble tile or silver charm kind but this one by kvossdesigns has really caught my eye:

Now, I know I'm totally Etsy-centric and find most of my pretties through there (how cute is this airmail T-shirt, £35.90 with postage from Milatree)

 But it's not only the amazing crafters on Etsy who are feeding my postal frenzy (surruptitious drinking would feel so much more stylish with the Wanderlust flask, £15.10 from the gloriously named WhimsyandInk)    

OK, OK, enough Etsy.

I found these adorable business card holders on Not on the High Street (which I may well have to investigate more. A friend gets a lot of real bargains from there). 4 designs to choose from for £8.07 each

Or you can get the matching compact mirror for £9.50

This Silver Postcard charm is gorgeous too, and personalizable (is that a word?) with your own message for £55

 And finally one for the men: The Postcard Mighty Wallet for £11.99.

There are a lot of really cute zippy purses and pouches out there (made from some of the fabrics I listed above no less) but the Mighty Wallet has Mighty in the name, so it wins automatically.

Well, whaddayaknow. I may have managed to distract myself long enough by the finding of these things that I have no more time today in which to buy them. My bank balance can sleep safe for another night. One day closer to payday...

Treasury Goodness

It's always such an honour to be featured in a treasury. I don't make them as often as I'd like or I should these days (I'm always on here instead!) but when I do I know how picky I am at choosing exactly the right complimentary items to put together the perfect overall look. So I was incredably proud when having relisted a few of my favourite items from my shop, I was promptly featured in two amazing treasuries!

Having dug around for the perfect way to link to them (thanks again to Dearest Jackdaw, I didn't know about Craft Cult until reading your blog!) here they are!



I feel Nauti by Frenchonion



Measure TWICE... Cut Once by creativemummy (who's currently selling some amazing Orla Kiely fabrics which I'm totally in love with)

Thanks for featuring me lovely Ladies! I'm off to make a treasury of my own now...

Feel Better

It strikes me that hangovers just aren't getting any easier as I get older. Gone are the days when I could pickle myself on sugary spirit and mixers (remember Taboo?) and still bounce out of bed the next morning. These new hangovers also seem to be dividing themselves into more distinct categories, you'd expect different levels of consumption to affect the evilness and logevity of a hangover, even the kind of alcohol consumed, but at the moment even the day of the week on which the hangover falls seems to have a marked effect on how godawful I feel.

The worst of these new kind of hangovers? The All-Day-Friday-As-A-Result-Of-Thursday-Wine-Consumption hangover. Weeknight drinking always seems ever so ritzy and blase at the time, but hangovers on a Friday are dreadful, and wine is the most dreadful of them all. You're up early when you really need to lie in, you're at a desk and concentrating when your brain is made of mush and you're restricted to an hours lunch break when all you want to do is stuff your face with stodge continuously untill the about-to-explode feeling overtakes the about-to-keel-over feeling and the shakes begin to subside. The Inycon Selezione Sangiovese Shiraz of last night was very lovely (and half price in Sainsburys at the moment from £9.99 down to £4.99) but was it really worth all this?

So today's lunch break blog is dedicated to all those things that would really make me feel better right about now, and perhaps if I concentrate hard enough I can absorb some of their healing powers through my monitor, like comfort osmosis.

Food:
Luckily I have half of yesterday's 3 meat pie with stuffing crust to chow down on, a very sucessful experiment made by a good friend of mine. Pastry is the king of all hangover foods, closely followed by anything that goes straight from your freeser to your oven, is brown in colour and usually either battered of breadcrumbed. Today is not the day to have food guilt.
But whilst the pull of cheap and nasty carbs is strong, a real treat can also lift the flagging spirits so my real food craving today is Rococo Chocolates Artisan Chocolate Bars. My wonderful sister buys me a couple each year for my Birthday and they're always a joy to be savoured. This years offerings were White chocolate with Cardamon, Milk with Sea Salt and Dark with Chrystaline Ginger. Each one scrummily rich and melty with a hint of something different. Totally worth the slightly treaty price of £4.25 per 70g bar. My all time favourite is their Rose Otto milk chocolate. How could such a pretty pink bar of gorgeous fail to make you feel better?

Film:
I want to be on my sofa, under a blanket, escaping from the thrumming in my head and into some other, better, prettier world where hangovers haven't been invented. Musicals are perfect feel-better-fodder but equally I'm dying to rewatch my box set of Amelie and A Very Long Engagement. I bet Audrey Tatou never gets hangovers!

Fashion:
It being dress-down Friday I totally could have erred on the side of comfort and worn my jeans and trainers, but my vanity got in the way as well as a desire to overcompensate for how bad I feel on the inside with how fab I look on the outside. It was good in theory, but now my feet hurt in knee high green boots and I'm constantly tweaking at the troublesome muffin top area where my skinny jeans are falling down and my vest is riding up and I've totally abandoned the gorgeous bottle green sweater with drapey shoulders because I'm roasting hot! All I really want is some comfy cosy loungewear and maybe a big white bed to sprawl on

Face:
On bad face mornings I'm usually tempted to go one of two ways: Have a misguided "more is more" moment and throw the lot on in an attempt to mask the problem, or give it all up as a bad job and wear no (well, barely any) makeup with the argument that I might as well look as dodgy as I feel. Today though I saved myself from either course and instead fell back on those few reliable products that really do help. Decently defined eyebrows (I've been using the same Body Shop eyebrow palette for yonks), a nice rosy blush to put a bit of colour back in (Mac's are fabulously sheer and worth the few pennies more than high street brands), concealer for the undereyes (the link is the classic Touche Eclat, find it cheaper on Ebay, but honestly Aldi's concealer pen is nearly as good for only £3.59) and, saviour of all saviours, Palladio Rice Powder which is brightening and anti-shine without being heavy or drying.

You know, it might be the litre and a half of water I've already poured into myself, but I really am starting to feel better. It might be worth some hair of the dog tonight just so I can indulge myself in all of the above tomorrow. Saturday hangovers are so much more obliging!

Blog crush: Dearest Jackdaw

I'm going to admit it... I have a secret Blog crush!

I've perused quite a number of blogs recently as the idea of starting my own was already circulating in my mind, but then I came accross the utterly lovely Dearest Jackdaw and ended up spending the rest of the day reading her entire archive of posts.

This is the kind of girl who's so effortlessly stylish and beautiful that you want to be jealous, but writes so wonderfully that you want her to be your friend at the same time. She's an amazing photographer so every picture on the blog is gosh-darnit pretty in that classic British summer day kind of way (I think she has her own private sinshine generator) and it's full of generously detailed How To's and a few desirable giveaways as well as little slices of her day to day life. Here's a little pic of her recent How To for Bunting Greeting Cards

I urge you all, whoever's listening, to go and read this blog immediately! I think I might go and do the same myself...