Customising my loopy cardigan.

A few months ago, I published an entry about some of my Cardigans and how much I just generally love them! I also mentioned in my last paragraph how I planned to customise the loopy taupe one.I had some antique bronze studs and thought they would be the perfect embellishment... and the cardigan had the perfect space for me to fill in! It took about 15 minutes to embellish both sides and I'm so pleased with the result. I was a little concerned about it being too heavy, but I actually found that because the cardigan doesn't have any fastenings, the studs helped to hold the front down instead of it flapping around!You may notice that the studding doesn't go all the way around the neckline, I quite liked it like that but I may finish it off if it starts to bother me. As you can see, it is so quick and easy to customise a garment... you'll be seeing many many more from me!

Dr Martens.

A few years ago, I would never have thought I would wear Dr Martens, they just looked so heavy and too chunky to look in proportion to the rest of my body...but then I saw the ad campaign with Daisy Lowe, and thought how they didn't look so heavy and chunky after all!After that, I kept seeing them in different colours, different prints and different washes. I could actually wear them and they would go with so many of my outfits! Next step was to see how they felt on, so I took myself to the Covent Garden/London store and tried some on. They were not as heavy as they felt and I was set on getting a pair - but a little cheaper. I searched eBay every couple of days until I finally found a pair that I had to have! Luckily, it didn't seem like many other people wanted them, so I found myself winning them for under £3/$5! They're a black fabric base with gold diamonds printed all over. I love them as I'd never seen them before and I was sure I would not see anyone else wearing them! They're super comfortable and this won't be the last pair of Dr Martens I'll be buying.

Most exciting website this month.

I have been a fan of Irregular Choice shoes for about 5 years now, and if you check out some of my Shoe Collection, you can see that Irregular Choice does tend to crop up a lot!

Several months ago, the Irregular Choice website had shut down for maintenance, so I signed up to their special newsletter to be alerted for when they re-launched.I received that much anticipated newsletter today and was so excited to have a browse! They have clearly spent a lot of time and money refurbishing the site which now looks so fresh and amazing!
Have a peek HERE.

Admittedly, I have never bought via the site, as the shoes are currently too expensive for me to pay the retail price (thank you eBay!), but not expensive in regards to uniqueness. So, I tend to use the site to keep updated with news about the brand etc. If you have a moment and even if you don't like shoes, do have a look at the site which will leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy!

Studded Gladiators.

In May, I published an entry on a pair of Gladiators I purchased from Select. My very last comment was the introduction of some future Jellies that I planned to get. However, this never happened due to being unable to find my size. I assume this happened as they are so cheap and commercial (every single High Street store had them) that even children were buying them - therefore the smallest adult size were most likely snapped up by them! Anyway, I decided to just forget them for this year and then accidentally came across a pair of beautiful strappy, studded ones! So, I went from yearning to own just one pair of Gladiators, to now owning two pairs! These are from Red Herring @ Debenhams for £32/$52. They are a bit more expensive than what I would normally spend on sandals, but I have worn these to death!

Draping.

Draping is a term in Fashion Design when you literally drape, pin and cut a large piece of fabric around a dummy to create your garment. This method is predominantly used in Couture. Sometimes, the Designer will hand stitch the garment as it is on the dummy, therefore making it a complete one-off piece of Fashion. Or, you can mark on the fabric where the seams will be, a zip, pockets, etc... all information will be marked onto the draped garment. I will show you how to do this in the future! Once that is done, the fabric can then come off, laid flat on paper, traced around and all information is to be transferred. You will then have a pattern piece for your garment and can repeat it as many times as you wish. The most well known seamstress who created by this method is Madeleine Vionnet who was at her peak in the 1920s. She created all her garments by draping on a miniature dummy, and then making them full scale once she was satisfied with it.I came to realise that this was also my favourite method during my last year at University when I draped my entire Graduate Collection! However, I must admit that it can be difficult translating it into a pattern piece, as they can sometimes be very complicated - just think of all the folds, nips, tucks, gathering and pleating that may go into a draped design, and then illustrated into the pattern. Anyway, the point of this blog entry, is to show you a quick way of changing a bought garment using the draping technique. This beautiful pink summer dress is from H&M and I purchased it from the Sale rack for only £15/$25.I knew I'd look frumpy in it because when you're petite, you should only really wear a mini or a maxi when it is full skirted, and this dress hit me right at the shin!... so I knew I'd be changing it when I got it home. At first, I was just going to simply shorten it, but decided to make more of an effort and began draping. I cheated and actually draped it while I had it on, but I found that was the best way to see how it would look on me, and also my dummy is a bit bigger so it would not have been accurate.I hitched sections of the skirt up and pinned it into place, which was very hard (especially the back!) and I did not go unscathed...I then took it off, placed it on my dummy and hand sewed all the anchor points securely, which you can see a bit clearer on the photo below. I think this is a much more interesting way of shortening a dress and just makes it a lot more special! You could even embellish the parts you sew to conceal it (if you're a messy hand sewer!). Anyway, if you attempt anything like this, I'd love to see it!

Owl Purse.

Being in the fashion industry, I am always aware of my surroundings when shopping. There are so many tricks when it comes to merchandising items in a store, and I always try not to fall for them! However, while waiting in a long queue in H&M, my eyes wandered over to this little owl purse, sitting amongst others in a cleverly placed section near the till point. I couldn't help but get it, even though I already have a coin section in my everyday wallet!

Initial.

I adore personalisation. Anything with my initial or name on it... or anything that I could put my initial or name on, I wanted! As a child (and with parents who both designed and made jewellery), I always asked for a personalised piece of jewellery for my birthday. Sometimes I'd get my initial, my entire name or my birth stone (garnet) incorporated into the design. The necklace below is an example of what I have received with my birthstone, which my father designed and made for me, and is also one of my favourites!Personalisation has always been something I never grew out of and when I was a tomboy teenager, I even ordered some personalised trainers from the Nike website which enabled you to design your own pair of trainers. I had made mine black, pink, and with my name on them! I may put them on my blog once I feel it is not so cringe worthy!!Anyway, when I came across these loose vintage heart and oval glass charms with letters on them, I immediately purchased the lot, plucked out my initials and turned them into a necklace for myself. I then thought about offering them in my Etsy Shop, but I wanted them to be a bit more special. So, I made mini pouches and printed the initial on the front, in the same style as the charm.I love them! I think they're fantastic as gifts and I know I'll definitely be giving these out for birthday presents! I am now on the hunt for more initial charms and also expanding on this 'initial' phase that has suddenly seemed to resurface... I can't wait to show you my next idea!

Jessica Rosario.

If you visit my art collection you will clearly see what style I tend to go for, although I do occasionally get something in complete contrast! So, I think anyone could have predicted that Jessica Rosario's Etsy shop, rosario76, would get my attention! It had that same dark aesthetic, familiar in a lot of the other pieces of art I have collected, although still shockingly beautiful.When I came across rosario76 it was still very new, with maybe only 3 items available for purchasing. One of the items was a set of 8 postcards (6"x4"), my favourite format of buying art in! I whipped them up immediately and waited patiently as they came to me from America!I was over the moon when I received them. Each piece had been printed on such beautiful paper, that it looked like they had been painted on! All the dolls were sharp and I could see all detail very clearly which is one of the reasons why I had upgraded to buying postcard sized art from buying ACEOs (3.5x2.5").... if you browse the oldest entries of my art collection you will see all the ACEOs I have bought and information on what they are.Now, for some strange reason (or some strange function on my camera), the photos I have taken have a slight blue hue. So, if you like the look of Jessica Rosario's work, please do pop by her website to see her work in better quality or her Etsy shop to do some shopping!

Pantone.

Pantone is a universal colour system used in all industries and I probably use it every single day in my job as a Fashion Design Assistant... and when I first noticed (at the Victoria & Albert Museum) that you could get Pantone mugs, I couldn't wait to get my own! There are hundreds of colours I'd like, but I had to get one of my favourite shades of blue first!I got this one from ASOS.com for £7.75/$12.76... they don't have many colours but they had the one I wanted! After getting my mug (and absolutely loving it's simplicity!) I know that I'd like to get many many more in the future! So, I had a look on eBay and there is a lot more colour choice there if you'd like to get one of your own.

Lost Butterflies.

LostButterflies is a shop on Etsy showcasing the art of Mehgan Trice. I had bought four pieces of art from her over a month ago and never got round to showing them off on my blog, so here they are!These two are called 'Remembrance' and 'Falling Away'. The first thing that caught my eye were the colours, I thought the red looked incredibly striking against the blue... and that cold-hued blue is my favourite colour if you haven't already realised. I also loved the nod to surrealism, specifically in 'Falling Away' where I pondered what those masks symbolised.I found 'Falling Away' very eerie, especially when I watched a video clip of her actually painting it, although the background music did provoke a lot of the eerie-ness! I absolutely recommend watching it as it is so mesmerising and is so lovely to watch it all coming to life. In fact, when I first came across Mehgan Trice's work, I thought it was digitally produced as it looked so perfect. You can watch her painting 'Falling Away' and other pieces here.These last two are 'The Bringer of Dreams' and 'Whispers in the Wind'. Something else I adored about this bundle I purchased were the characters. Who are they? Where are they from? I gave up trying to guess where Mehgan Trice got her inspiration from to create these beauties (which are just probably from her mind anyway!) and decided for myself that they were a re-adaptation of Eskimos, but the scenery plays most of the part in this theory. I can't wait to get some more of her art to add to my growing art collection!

My New Cardigan.

Back in April 09, I introduced my love for cardigans and also showed off some of my most recent ones... you can read it all here! So it was natural for me to blog about my newest cardigan... this cream one with frill detail and contrast bows is from ASOS.com and was in the Clearance section for only £7/$11! I'm contemplating getting the plain black version too, which I wish I'd got at the same time to save on postage costs!

Film Review: Hellboy - The Golden Army.

I'd wanted to watch Hellboy - The Golden Army (which is the second Hellboy film) when it first came out at the cinema last year, so I was really excited when LOVEFiLM sent it to me about 2 months ago... therefore, it isn't as fresh in my head to write a full, accurate account about it but overall I loved it!The first one was excellent, just because it is pure fantasy and Hellboy (Red) was such a really funny and unique character. Selma Blair plays his love interest, Liz Sherman, who is a pyrokinetic. Her character was quite boring in the first film and badly introduced, but she had completely evolved in the sequel. Her hair was cropped and she had so much more 'spark' compared to her role in the first. The chemistry between the two characters was also very funny and endearing. However, I noticed one fault... in the first film, Liz Sherman would address Hellboy as 'HB', but in the sequel, she addressed him as 'Red'. I think I prefer the latter ('HB' makes me think of HP Sauce!) but I also prefer consistency and I was quite surprised that I noticed such a minute error!The Hellboy films are both directed by Guillermo del Toro who I instantly know best as the director of Pan's Labyrinth, which was such a surreal and intelligent film... therefore I was really looking forward to seeing all the new monsters and creatures. So, when I saw Guillermo del Toro's imagining of a Tooth Fairy I was in such awe. They were the cutest things, but had an appetite for calcium and would feed on the teeth to get to the bone, I loved it!I won't get too much into the actual story but it is pretty much a humans VS magical creatures plot, magical creatures will win (obviously) but Hellboy prevents this from happening. Prince Nuada (played very well by Luke Goss) is the Prince of Elfland and is the perceived 'bad guy' of the film. He goes on to retrieve three pieces of a crown that controls The Golden Army, which is a mechanical army that was originally created for Prince Nuada's father, King Balor to help defeat humans (this ancient story is depicted through an animation). The army was so devastating to humans, that a truce was formed between King Balor and the humans and the crown controlling the army was split into three pieces, one piece was given to the humans and two kept with the elves. However, I really empathised with the Prince Nuada character and understood his intentions... this was further emphasized when he easily gains the piece kept by humans at an auction (present day) which I felt was a subtle display of typical human recklessness.One part of the film that I found very interesting is when Hellboy's life is threatened when Prince Nuada strikes him in the chest with his spear. Hellboy is taken to the Angel of Death to see if he can be saved. Liz is informed that if he is saved, he will bring chaos to the world and she will suffer most from it... she accepts this and Hellboy recovers. The Angel of Death was such a fascinating creature, and I think I missed most of the dialogue in this scene as I couldn't take my eyes away from it! After finishing the film, I had to watch the Special Features which showed many of the creatures and the ideas behind them, you also get to see brainstorming sessions which was incredible to watch. This Hellboy sequel was much better than the first but I think it was the creatures in it that did this. Hopefully there will be a third Hellboy as it is revealed that Liz is pregnant, with twins... and of course, Hellboy is still supposed to cause havoc to the world!

Tutu Three and Four.

I first mentioned my adoration of tutus on my blog back in February 09 and you can read all related entries here... I am now introducing some of my most recent creations!This tutu is made from ivory polka dot tulle fabric and you could just about see a few tiers peeking out from the back which I created for a 'subtle bustle' effect! I then used some lace to embellish the waistband in a messy bow!

The second tutu I created was with the same waistband but different lace, and was made with organza and edged with cotton lace.
They're both available for purchasing here.