Thrilled again to be featured in Sew magazine – this months magazine (out this week) is all about the party prom season with a FREE special occasion dress that is super pretty and easy to make. See the pink dress on the cover? Yup that’s it! Definitely has a vintage feel too – comes with full instructions and can be customised any way you wish!
I just love it!
For your subscription check out the site www.sewmag.co.uk
So thrilled to have our glorious Guest Designer – Plum Pretty Sugar and their stunning range of kimonos feature in the Christmas Edition of our favourite Sewers & Crafters magazine – Sew.
Its a fabulous read – really great items to make yourself and helpful hints as well as featuring only the best design led, handmade, crafted and eco-conscious products.
Very excited to be inlcuded on the Sailorettes, Love and Rock ‘N’ Roll blogsite.
Do go and read about my influences, starting and running an online vintage business.
I’ve finished covering this 60’s swivel chair with some rather splendid bright green and crisp white fabric. Working with no pattern is really liberating itching to do some more make-overs now. I used some old cheap material to mock up first in order to get the right shapes, then it was a matter of simply stitching it all together, ironing those seams open so they stay nice and crisp, sewed a hem with elastic inside and pulled it taught over the chair. Lovely!
Still enjoying the focus that the Apartment Therapy Spring Cure is giving me, so inspirational to see others progress too!
Here is my update!
Deep Treatment
- Clean up living room and related closets.
- Repairs are being taken care of this week. Bathroom window edging fixed.
- Declutter books and all media. CD’s on Amazon -Check, DVD’s Ditched – Check, Beloved Books – Stay.
- Cancel 75 percent of the catalogs you receive. I did this with all the junk e-mails I get! Marvellous stuff. Will continue to do so too.
- Empty Outbox this week.
- Confirm what you need to increase or decrease color in each room. More apple green & fresh white in kitchen, more mustard and turquoise in the Hall
- Identify what you need to increase or decrease softness in each room. Fabric! Bliss!
- Cook three meals at home this week. We cheated as we went to my folks and ate, ate, ate. So this one is done!
- Send out your invitations. I will be combing the end with a Vintage Dressing Up Party! Invites to be sent. Date confirmed.
One-Room Remedy
- Begin Shopping List and enter all prices into a spreadsheet. Like I don’t already have one of these? Spreadsheets for everything including coloured columns… its the doing part that I’m still building up to!
- Decide on the total scope of work to be done. Step away from the spreadsheets…
- Consider hiring a professional organizer. What? Huh You mean there is a job for that *considers changing careers*
- Visit a paint store this week to find samples. It’s my secret shame to raid the colour samples…
If you are doing up your bedroom – don’t forget to treat yourself after all your hard work with some of my lovely scented wardrobe and drawer products!
Number 60
This weekend was the exhibition of the 100 t-shirts by JazzCakes, where 100 artists were handed a t-shirt and a number and the freedom to “do what you will”
Above is a picture of my offering.
Number: 60 ~ The flow of life.
I have taken the number 60 as two separate entities as well as the combined number sixty.
6 in numerology is the number of love and harmony, the upside of the all powerful number 9. The yin to the yang. The love of life. The perfection of love.
0 represents the symbol of eternity the ever perfect circle of life.
We experience so many things by our 60th birthday, we will have collected up many stories, situations and beliefs; catching them in the fine mesh of our own understandings, deepening our beliefs and occasionally clogging up our mind creating blockages if not dealt with.
The piece I have created incorporates the original framework of the T-shirt, using the net to indicate with its thousands of holes represent all the many situations and occasions that occur in our lives. A whispering doubt here, a misunderstanding, not taking responsibility for ones action all adds to a foggy state of being. Most of our emotions can be felt in the centre core of our body, in the heart, as depicted. Felt ventricles of the heart form shapes of “6” and “0”
This piece acts as a reminder to me to remain free flowing through life with love at its centre core, to embrace life with passion and excitement – letting nothing hold me back!
What’s clogging you up?
Materials used:
Mix of felt, netting, vintage, recycled & previously discarded.
JazzCakes are artist-led ‘arts collectionors’, currently based in Cardiff, founded by James Harper and Sarah-Jane Broderick.
Since 2008 JazzCakes’ aim has been to bring artists from across the arts together through various projects and events.
JazzCakes have strong roots in T-shirts and Cakes as well as Fine Art, but try to incorporate artists and designers in every area from theatre to graphic design, dance to architecture.
Formed in 2008 as t-shirt designers/street artists taking part in various monthly markets such as Milgi’s Northcote Lane Market and the Amersham Arm’s Jumble. From there we began to sell works by our friends such as T-shirt designs by Dan Cansfield and prints by Charlie Ridler. At the same time beginning to organise Guerilla Tea Parties on the streets of Cardiff. The tea parties became a kind of anti-rave, a civilised approach to socialising on a weekend where people would come, drink tea, eat biscuits and generally just talk.
Now organising and curating projects and exhibitions with specific briefs designed to highlight the vastly different approaches to making from artists working in their respective disciplines.
The JazzCakes website serves as a directory of all the events currently organised and lists profiles of all the artists who we have associated with since its inception.
Ah so today they arrived! What joy you bring oh sparklery green…
Since I’ve changed my hair colour, I feel like I need a new glamour-puss wardrobe to accompany me on this mind, body, hair transformation…. so NEW SHOES!
Of course I advocate the second hand and vintage shoe buying, but when nothing quite hits the mark I recommend going after exactly what you want – no ifs, no buts, no I’ll get them when I’m thinner/richer/blonder etc..
These Killer Kurt Geiger Shoes called “Dolly” in pretty emerald sequins (I actually squealed when I first saw them) are superior in quality, stopping buying cheap imports, shoes from supermarkets that don’t last a month and tat from down the market is particullayry fashion savvy and v saving the planetesque. Lets blend old with new (and sequin shiny…)
*Be still my beating heart *
We’ll be together for ever…
Wedding gifts can be a tricky business.. but as if by magic I stumbled across the greatest little tea set for my good friends Nic and Debbie and wished to share it with you too here now….
Undergrowth Design with its sweet, quirky darling designs are simply scrumptious!!
British Hand Fired Design manufactured to an incredible fine standard.
xxx
A note from Tina Tsang – Design Director
Heat that penetrates where the eye cannot go,
where the hand cannot reach.
Heat that animals the interpretation between people,
between their imagination of the world,
heat created when two things rub together……….
Who but Barbie can look great, sexy and fashionable in gold larme all at the same time? It’s no wonder 50 years on, women around the world, still want to be like her, be her friend and have her clothes!!
I know I do!
It’s where (like for many – oh god I’m a cliche!) I started my love for clothes… making a boob tube out of white and lemon wool (must of been itchy) for her back in the 80s, quietly thinking, Mmm wonder if I can get this in my size…
Never in the same dress twice, every colour suits her, every hairstyle works – I can see my work will never be done here…oh to keep reaching for the ultimate barbie costume!!
Happy Birthday Barbie!
X
One St. Valentines day I remember… I was in Paris, all by myself, I remember there being heart balloons outside a few boutiques, I walked the city, visited the Roden Museum, took pictures, watched beautiful french couples act out their mini art house filmic lives… it was truly a stunning experience as I walked back to the Marcadet Poissonniers and bought many types of olive and 2L bottle of french style orange fanta. It was my best St. Valentines day ever.
Extinct is celebrating St. Valentines Day by including rare vintage earrings – sent from lovers from far off distant lands…
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze…
…and that is exactly how it happened. You know, sometimes when you think to yourself “hmmm wouldn’t it be nice to see some say, wooden stags” and then you look, and seek and find a couple and then a whole family of beautiful vintage carved wooden stags come along…..as if my magic! Come and visit them now!
window shopping
Spent a lovely night over at my friends fair-trade coffee shop, window dressing with some lovely new items and Christmas decorations from extinct. We had the help of little Jacob (elf in training) who was overseeing all important artistic decisions from which colour pegs to use to what sweets to stuff in the nordic cones!! Yum!
Jacob’s Ladder Coffee shop can be found in the pretty Cathedral city of St. Asaph, North Wales, possibly one of the smallest cities in the world, I’m just starting my extinct take-over one city at a time!
New paper goods at Extinct Design
It always seems to get to this time of year where I allow myself to dare to think about a new diary, perhaps a notebook, those cute notelets I dreamed of….yikes – I’m all of a quiver!
If you’re completly mad on stationery and all the pleasure it brings, you will be happy to learn the new Extinct Design category – Papyrus- now carries some of the best 100% uncoated recycled papers, notebooks and cards!!
This is something that will be added to over the coming months…. feast your eyes little ones
The beautiful Huia bird, now extinct.
In honour of such fleeting beauty I invite you to post pictures of you in your extinct vintage best, your favourite household items or even your most beloved scrap of cloth!
Every piece will have it’s own story, whether it was handed down, stumbled upon, bought for a penny or discoverd after discarded – share them here!
