***Advent Calendar Gifts Giveaway-2014!!!***

Hello everyone!

The time has come for the return of the Crafty Advent Calendar Giveaway!!!...

I am once again giving away to one person 24 festive crafty gifts to countdown to Christmas- a crafty advent calendar! :0D

Here are the 24 parcels:

I felt like one of Santa's elves wrapping all of them :P

Image from: here

I had fun finding all the different little festive themed gifts that could be added to/used in Christmas craft projects over the whole of December :) 

If you win you can put them all in a fancy bowl, or a fill-it-yourself decorative calendar (those felt/stitched ones with pockets :) and then open the right one each day from the 1st to the 24th of December (like the choccy calendars) to get your little surprise!

Here is what was in the last crafty advent just to give you some idea (though I have got some different stuff for this year of course :-)......

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Giveaway entries are open until the 16th of November 2014 and the winner will be randomly selected and announced on the same day!

The giveaway is open to anyone, anywhere! :)

HERE IS HOW TO ENTER:

To be entered you must:

> Be a follower

> And leave a comment below with some way to contact you in case you win! :)
(e.g ravelry name, blog or email address etc...)

ALSO---- If you buy anything in my shop from now until the closing date of the giveaway, and/or link to this giveaway on your blog or social media (leave me a link!) you will automatically receive an extra entry :)

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I hope you all like the giveaway, and I hope you had a great Halloween too- I will bring you updates on mine soon :)

Talk to you later,

Bye xXxX

Back at college + I got a special mention!

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all well :) After my super long summer I am now finally back at college.  It was so long ago that I was last at college but after only 3 days I feel like I am just about back on routine and it has been nice catching up with people. Our first project for this year is a waistcoat (of our own design choice) that we make to fit a male actor. We made a 1/2 scale waistcoat on the first day, just to practice some of the techniques our full size one will require. Here is my mini waistcoat:

The fabric was donated to our college by the West end show Mamma mia. Apparently they have some stripy trousers which are made from it- if you have seen the show you may know the ones I am talking about.  I am going to see the show fairly soon so I will be on the lookout! I like it because it is a bit nautical and reminds me of John Paul Gaultier's sailor style stuff :)

In other news my clip art jewellry-in my shop if you want some!:

 I mentioned the jewellery quite a while back on my blog was featured on a really awesome blog called A Daily Dose of Art. Here is the link: http://daily-dose-of-art.com/2014/09/25/clip-art-4/

The author of the blog did a whole mini series (you will see if you visit the blog :) on art and stuff that can be created with paperclips and asked me if she could feature my work! :D It was very exciting as I was put in the post with some other people who I thought had some great ideas for clip art related stuff :)

I am off now to keep working on my waistcoat work,

See you all again soon,

Bye xoxoxo

London Fashion week and London Vodafone Fashion Weekend

Hi,

As most of you will probably know, not so long ago it was London Fashion week (It is Paris fashion week now and before that it was Milan fashion week  and before London FW was New York FW and Milan Fashion week!!!). It is a pretty exciting time as it means lots of designers showcase thier new, exciting designs and ideas (for SS15 this time) and if you love sewing clothes and interesting pattern cutting like I do the fashion weeks= fun and excitement!  :)

My mum and I were lucky enough to be in London on one of the days of LFW and we saw some pretty cool stuff. First, all the banners in Oxford Street (one of the bustling hubs during LFW as all the designer shops are there):

 

In the middle of Oxford Street a photo shoot with a model was happening!  I don't know who for but it was cool and I managed to get a snap:

I also saw the beautiful shop windows of Burberry,  containing thier AW14 hand painted coats, shoes and bags which I had seen in all my vogue,  marie claire and Elle magazines- They look just as beautiful in real life- which is impressive!:

Burberrys was by far my fave shop display in the whole of Oxford Street. I only window shopped down Oxford Street as everything is too expensive!  

For a while now Vodafone have hosted LFWeekend

the weekend after LFW. This September (there are two a year) was the first time I have ever been as it is only in the last year that I have studied the fashion calendar to work out when all the exciting stuff happens!

VLFW takes place at Somerset House (another hub during LFW as some catwalk shows do take place there). My mum booked for us too see both the catwalk shows on the day we went- designer and trend... On the front row!!!!! (Or F'row as it is known in the biz. Lol! )

It was so cool - like being a celebrity and it was the first time I have ever seen a fashion clothing catwalk before.

Here was my view from the first show:

The first show was a trend show(what you should be wearing now :p AW14). I won't waffle on, I will let the clothes speak for themselves. But I will say that the catwalk was arranged by outnet.com so if you see anything you really like you can go to thier site and pick it up :p:

The last look was an Oscar De Larenta  dress, very pretty I thought:

The next catwalk we saw was a Nicholas Oakwell Couture show. I will definitely be letting these clothes speak for themselves as they were amazing!  Couture means 'high sewing' and relates to pieces which can take hundreds if not thousands of hours to make due to highly technical construction and or lots of intricate hand sewn embellishments. I felt very lucky to see such things in the flesh moving past me- not behind museum glass as they usually are:

Amazingly technical beading went into this dress!:

And the designer himself came out at the end! :D He was very interesting to listen to and he told us about how detailed his design process was down to him even imagining the perfume the lady he is designing for would wear!:

Here is the entry to the catwalk:

Hehe,  and here are the queues outside of it:

Another cool thing I got to do at LVFW was get a models headshot done :) and try a 4D virtual reality experience to see what it was like to be a runway catwalk model! I put these big goggles on then when I turned my head I could see photographers etc.. to the sides of me etc.. and you walk on the spot whilst you see the runway and everyone to the sides of it- it was very fun and super realistic but kinda hard to explain :p

The tote bag for this year was designed by Lulu Guinness. It came full of little goodies which I have been using and enjoying:

I think that is about it for my account on VLFW :)

But... I still have one last thing.... You have made it through my post so I thought you deserved a treat.....

*****A GIVEAWAY*****

To let a special winner get a slice of the action of VLFW I am giving away a selection of goodies from the day!!!!!!:

- An essie 'Naughty nautical' nail polish

- Maybeline 'Great Lash' mascara

-A catwalk guide from the day with pretty pictures and more explanations on the trends

- And 2 pretty picture cards/business cards too :)

The giveaway is open to anyone anywhere. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment below- let me know your fave fashion magazine for fun If you want and if course some way to contact you if you win!

To get two extra entries post a link to this giveaway or my shop via your twitter or Facebook or a blog, anything really! Also if you buy anything in my shop you will also automatically be given 2 extra entries :)

The giveaway will close on Friday the tenth of October and the winner will be announced on the same day.

Well done for making it all the way through this super long post, I hope you enjoyed the flurry of fashion and good luck to all those who enter the giveaway :)

See you all soon,

Bye xxx

You may notice some changes...

Hi everyone,

You may have noticed that some changes are taking place on the blog...

I hope you think they are nice changes as I would hate to upset you lovely readers, just as I have mentioned before I like my blog to grow with me, so as I feel the main content of my blog start to shift, i.e. from knitting, to Kawaii crafting to fashion, costume and bridalwear, I like to update the look and style of my blog.

I like this approach rather than starting again, as what has gone before is my history and the growth of my knowledge and interests as a person- not things I want to delete and remove or sweep away to be forgotten!

I hope you will stick with me and follow me further on my journey as I enjoy talking to you all,

speak to you again soon!

Bye,

Jordan xxx

p.s. the blog address will remain exactly the same, and please do leave comments of what you think of the revamp below :)

P.p.s the giveaway enrty deadline day for the recent vintage style giveaway is coming soon- don't miss out! Enter it now if you haven't already :D Good luck!

Byeee xxx

A post that is bursting at the seams! (no pun intended :P)

Hi everyone,

I hope you have all had a brilliant week :) There is quite a lot in the post so I recommend grabbing tasty treat before you start!

First up I would like to apologise for posting about finishing my Kameez (my friend told me this is its actual name :) twice- I got so wrapped up in all the work I have got going on at the moment that I forgot I actually had already posted about it.

 

Now I actually have some NEW photos/news for you :P

 

First up here are the pictures of my finished early 16th century foundation wear (wheel farthingale, bum roll and petticoat) and corset, being worn by my lovely (and very patient may I say!) model:

 

 

This is effectively early 16th century underwear so wandering around like above in those times would have been pretty obscene, lol! But my model looks beautiful and I loved working with her on the project so thank you to her! XXX

I enjoyed my time of being a model too, I got to put on my pretty corset, bum roll and petticoat and prance about outside among the trees on campus in the sun- so fun!

 

Next point on this whistle stop tour of all my weeks news is my finished Mens period shirt:

 

 

 

This was the project we have been doing this week and are meant to do next week. I finished my shirt this week (like some of the other girls) so next week we will be making a period womens chemise. Hehe hopefully I will finish that too  :P

 

Now onto my last bit of news- The wedding fair catwalk show I got to help out at as a dresser!!!! I had such an amazing day- chilling backstage with the models (hehehe, I love saying that as it makes me sound really cool! lol :P), then helping them to change into each wedding dress really quickly before they had to head back onto the catwalk again :)

 

Here are the beautiful ladies in their finale dresses:

 

 

These were all the hardest ones to get them in as most of them were lace up and not zip ups!

 

Here was backstage all the space we had for the dresses, the 5 girls, me, and the bridal boutique owner and her daughter. It got pretty hectic :P:

 

 

We had to lay the dresses next to go on the girls on the floor like big meringues so they could just step out of their other ones and step straight into the new ones and we could them pull them up and zip them up quickly, before finding a veil or fascinator to match: 

 

 

Here are all the models in their 2nd wedding dress each (they had 3 wedding dressed and one bridesmaid dress each- times this by 5 and there were 20 dresses overall!):

 

And here they are coming off the catwalk:

 

 

We did two shows, one at 12.30 and one at 2.30. I think we did really well as there was only 3 of us dressing 5 models and we managed to keep a constant flow of dresses- the catwalk was never empty. Without a rehearsal this was really good. The models were so good and all really nice which helped as they got their walking routine and order of going down the catwalk sorted pretty much by themselves which meant we could focus on getting all the ensembles and order of dresses ready in time. I have been invited to help out at the fashion catwalk the lady who owns the bridal boutique is going to host when she opens her new shop- yay! I am sooo excited :D I can't wait to do it all again with all new dresses!!!!

 

Wooo, after that long post I think you deserve a rest. Thanks for sticking with it and reading all my news, I better let you go now and I better get in bed as I have quite a bit of work to type up this weekend for college, and also tomorrow me and my mum are going on a cupcake an macaroon walking tour of London and I would hate to be too tired for that :0)

 

Speak again soon,

 

Bye my lovely friends XxXxXxXxX

 

I finished my salwar (quite a while ago now :P)

Hilloo,

 

Just a quick post today as I didn't want to neglect all of my lovely blog friends but I just finished my corset and foundation wear project at college Pictures coming soon :P) and have been hard at work getting all of my written work ready for Tuesday when I hand it in and my presentation on Monday, but anyway enough of my business and cue the pretty pictures!.....

 

I remembered the other day that I had forgot to post up any pictures of my Kameez that I actually finished a couple of weeks ago now, silly me :P

 

I thought better late than never though so here it is:

 

 

I am really pleased with it and it fits me really well. I started scratch from looking at pictures in the magazines I picked up at the Asian wedding fair all the way through making the pattern and toiling to finally making it up in the final fabric so it was nice that it came out exactly as I had imagined it in my head :o)

 

A tiny bit of quite exciting news... If you remember the wedding fashion show I was invited to help at was cancelled before, well, this Sunday I have been invited to do another one- an even bigger one with a full dress rehearsal and two catwalk showings! I am supppeerr excited as it will be such great experience for me. I will post pictures and tell you all about it after. I can't wait :-D

 

I'm off to bed now to get a good nights sleep ready for the weekend- The Eurovision song contest (Yay!) Saturday and the wedding show Sunday.

 

I hope you all have a good weekend planned too,

 

Speak soon,

 

Byeee XxXxXx

 

 

I won a giveaway!

Hello everyone,

 

Last week I was very happily surprised to find out that I was one of the lucky winners of Stephs mystery giveaway prizes!!! :oD

 

I was soo excited and was not at all disappointed when my fantastic parcel arrived a couple of days ago- look! :D:

 



 

I really really love the nakd bars so was very pleased when I pulled one of them out of the envelope!

 

The brooches Steph made are absolutely beautiful- they go perfectly in my brooch collection :) I can't wait to start wearing them :-)

 

All the little charms are super kawaii too:

 

I have lots of ideas of how to use them :o)

 

Thank you Steph for organising the giveaway and thank you for my fantastic prizes xxx

 

In other news I finished my mums kindle case:

 

She really liked it and hasn't stopped using it since I gave it to her :) Hehe, I was pleased with the fit seen as I didn't get a chance to do a 'fitting' as I made it whilst I was away at uni.

 

Im off now to keep working on the new items I am working on to go in my shop soon....

 

See you soon,

 

Byeeeeeee xxx