Dress Up March 2011

As a child of the '60's I read the theme of March's Dress Up challenge and smiled... now this is my era!! Pop Art or Popular Art started in the UK in the late 50's and then later took off in the States with people like Andy Warhol.  Sadly, I think a lot of people think it all began with Warhol and it is his images of Marilyn Monroe that come to mind when Pop Art is mentioned.  Well, I am English so I thought I would use Peter Blake as my muse for this month.  Peter Blake is best known for the Beatles' iconic album cover Sargent Pepper's and England was the place to be in this period of history... we had Twiggy, Mary Quant, and Carnaby Street, we had The Beatles and Cilla Black.  Music, fashion and design were at their peak and we embraced it with everything we had.... no more post war rationing, no more austerity...
Paper dresses were actually sold and worn, people looked at different materials to produce even more outrageous (and ever shorter) dresses!!  (Unlike today's youth with their mutton muffin tops hanging over their hipsters, we were skinny and fit)!! LOL, now corrected... blonde/senior moment!! Dresses were made from weird and wonderful things and this is where my dress up idea came from:

Known as the 'dirty dirty dress' it was made up of photographs of men's bodies which were laminated and then joined together to make the dress.  I'm not saying it was the most comfortable thing to wear, as I can imagine it was not, but it would certainly have got you noticed, wouldn't it? LOL

I used chipboard circles in two sizes and covered them with paper, sanded the edges and then inked them. (and that was a labour of love, let me tell you)!! I then sat for an entire day and added the links to each piece and joined them into the dress shape (that was not a labour of love, it was sheer torture and one of the first times I have had to resort to using my reading glasses for close work and you have no idea how many of those little links litter the scrap room floor because they had a life of their own and kept pinging off my desk).  I then went on and made her a shoulder bag to match and my 'dedicated follower of fashion' just had to have a copy of the Beatles' LP, didn't she?  (Anyone now humming the song by the Kinks?  I had it going round in my head for days)!!

This is the back of the dress....

and this is the little Beatles' album, I even made the little white sleeve that protected the LP!!  LOL

I would like to think I would have worn a dress like this but the reality is that my Mum wouldn't have let me leave the house!  It was bad enough when my best friend, Sherre, gave me my first pair of jeans with the fly zip.  Mum was horrified and said I could only wear them indoors!!  Anyone reading this who is under 30 is probably scratching their head about now, but really, ladies trousers always zipped at the side on the hip, it was deemed pretty racy to wear them with the zip at the front like men!! Aaah, the memories.... 

If you want to look at all the other dresses, pop over to Angela at Sew Loquacious and check them out.

Dress Form TLC

The other afternoon Chris and I had a hour to waste before an appointment so I suggested we pop into Winners (love that shop) and I found this in the final sale section - it was damaged and reduced from $14.99 down to $2.00!!

A couple of the wires had come loose and it looked pretty drab and Chris pointed out the damage but I thought some TLC might give it a new lease of life...

I think she looks quite regal now.  I gave her a coat of a lighter shade of blue and then some crackle paint and   a final coat of pinky beige.  Added some inking to shade parts and a touch of gold to the frame lines then added some beading to the skirt lengths with the words 'tempest fugit' and 'carpe deim' and finally gave her a little flying clock as a necklace. Some rub-ons at the shoulders and sides of the bust with a flower and some feathers at the waist finished her off.

I think I might pay for $15 for her now... 

and is living happily with the other dress forms and birdcages on the high shelf above the stairs.

Dress Form.... work in progress!

I have been playing with my dress form... I thought I had made quite a few pieces of chipboard but once they are tied onto her I realised I need to make a heap more!! LOL

I'm now thinking that perhaps I should have got a smaller one?  She stands five feet tall!!

and I tried to use some ribbon reels for my snippets but it didn't work because they are made of chipboard so I have slung put them on here too! ;)

When I was shopping and the dress form fell in my basket, I also found this...

Isn't it great?  I picked it up for my son as a 'talking point' in his flat....

It's made of old yellow pages or newspapers and laser cut... it won't go in the post so he will have to wait for it... 

I have nearly finished the snippet roll...  they are perfect for when you are sitting about waiting for appointments as they take up no room and you just need a needle and cotton and some buttons and beads to decorate them.

WOYWW 23 February 2011

Here we are at What's on Your Work Desk Wednesday again... time flies and policemen look like they should be in school... both definite signs of getting old!!  If you have chanced upon this post and are wondering what I am waffling on about then please go to Julia AKA Specialist in Snooping and keeper of the blog roll where all will be explained! In short it is the day when many peeps from around the world take a peek into the craft spaces of others to see what sort of mess their desk is in and what they are up to, it's fun and it's informative, so join in if you will!!
My desk this week just has some chipboard pieces I am working on, the plan being that I will hang from the dress form of last week, though that idea may change in the next day or two as Chris came up with a fab idea that I might have to try out!!

The now notorious d.stress is evident, it is a whizz with chipboard!

Here is a close-up of the chipboard pieces, they are a work in progress at the moment.

On my other desk is another snippet roll that is awaiting the sewing machine.

I have more snow... shovelling snow from the path and driveway has become monotonous... no sooner than I have it all clear and looking nice and some more of the stuff comes down - and today was pretty nippy, -15 degrees C but with a bit of a breeze that made it feel a lot colder!  

The sides of the driveway just keep getting taller and taller...goodness knows what will happen to it all when it thaws in the spring - I think I will invest in some sand bags - just in case!  It is completely white out there again now... and still snowing, in fact, I could have saved my energy as nobody would be any the wiser but the local government bylaws say that you have 24 hours from snowfall to clear your path in front of the house or they will come and do it and then bill you! Why this worries me I have no idea, as there are houses on my street that haven't cleared the snow since November and nobody has been and cleared it for them.... but SOD's law says if I leave mine....  LOL

I'm doing the happy dance!

Not just once....

but twice!

I hardly ever enter anything that involves winning because I don't win (some might say that you have to be in it to win it.... but it didn't work in the past so I am not a slave to entering any more) so though I did a lot of visiting during the One World One Heart blog hop and enjoyed finding loads of lovely people with such a huge variation of interests and talents, I didn't actually leave my name except for a few and guess what?  I won Elizabeth's grand prize and Hels' prize!! Thank you ladies, I am super chuffed!! Heck, I wish I had done the lottery that week too! LOL

Yesterday, we were having a play day at Odelia's, well, Brigette and Odelia's kids were having the play day and we were going to drink coffee and eat calories!! I decided to bake a cake... an angel cake to be specific, as I had never baked one before, I wasn't really sure how it would turn out and of course I wasn't equipped with an angel cake baking pan with the funnel thing... and I couldn't really see the necessity for the funnel bit so opted to use a couple of loaf tins instead.... what could go wrong? LOL  I was chatting to Brigette on the phone shortly after putting the loaf tins in the oven and mentioned my baking and lack of funnel pan thingy and she says 'watch out they don't overflow'..... so when I came off the phone I thought I would have a quick check of the oven contents...

Oooeeeeerh 'eck!!  What happened there? A definite case of the 'too much mix for a little loaf tin' perhaps? Now the weird thing is when faced with this you have a tendency to panic... so I did, panic, that is.... with cries of no, stop, flippin' heck.... and there really isn't a darn thing you can do but let them continue baking!! (oh and I have an oven to clean this morning).... and I have also learned why you are supposed to use one of those cake pans with the funnel in the middle...

Once they had baked and cooled I prised them from the loaf tins and ate all the crunchy bits that fell off the edges - which were exceptionally yummy and I figured that little people will be perfectly happy to eat angel cake no matter what it looks like and the bigger people will be quite happy with the sugar high and not worry about the aesthetic beauty aspect of the whole thing... 

For Valentine's I got some new tools from Chris - one of them was the d.stress by imaginisce which seemed to bring out the gutter mentality in a few folk... (you know who you are) ;)

Of course, whilst at work some of the men were asking each other what they had bought their wives for Valentines..... and Chris blurts out that he had bought me a battery operated de-stress tool in pink....  no.... no, no, no.... I will never be able to show my face near the office again!! It's a scrapping tool.... honest!

So... other than the fact that imaginisce may have not quite thought through the actual shape of their new tool

I could hug them because it is brilliant and it is battery operated! I have now got their i.rock and their hot glue gun, also all battery operated!!  The joy of this is that they are then supremely portable - great to take to crops where you have no idea if you will be seated near an electric socket and for me?  Well, all my tools were for the UK so I can't actually use them here in Canada and it becomes an expensive exercise to replace them all, especially when you know you won't be able to take them home again!  So this is the perfect solution... 

Who would want to sit with a nail file and go around all the edges of a shape like this in chipboard? Well, the d.stress did it with ease and in a couple of minutes!! 

So guess what I am doing today?  Yep, no chipboard is going to be safe... it will all be d.stressed to within an inch of its existence!