SOME MINOR WORDS OF WISDOM

Because you know, a small little set of of lovehandles is just fore the better.
More to love baby!



And now it's time for me to take a short break from everything; work like hell for a couple of days and also try to figure some things out. I'll be back soon with this promised tutorial and I might get on with some tags I've received too. Have fun until then ok!

TODAY'S DESSERT : ICECREAM

This time I dressed like strawberry icecream and raspberry sorbet. Or like a big fluffy pastry with lots of jam and frosting, cream and meringues.

Ok, I didn't actually dress with dessert on my mind but I did come to think of that afterwards. (Even though I've had dessert on my mind a lot lately. Don't know what it is but I've developed a huge sweet tooth lately). And It's nice to sometimes dress like an overdose of sugar (even though I cut it down a bit with black accessories). Then I went out and did our best show ever! After which I had one of the, um, craziest night ever. And managed to loose my newly thrifted belt (how the hell is that possible) and a whole bag of my stage make up, buuh.

Dress - Vivien of Holloway,Cardigan - GinaTricot, Shoes - O.I.S, Seamed Stockings - H&M, Belt - now gone :(

STRIPES - DOTS - CANDY

It seems spring is the time when I dress inspired by candy.

But as said before, I don't even like candy that much, other than to look at it. I'd much rather have an apple.
(Or chocolate. Lot's of it. That's not candy you know. Chocolate has a category of it's own!)


Skirt - My Mother's old, Leather Jacket - My One and Only...
the rest is old stuff

DEER AS CUPCAKES

I have been awarded by Parapluie with this cute cupcake-y award. Thanks!

PRINT OF THE DAY

Andy Warhol. Six Bags in a Frame 1958.

HOW ALL GIRLS SHOULD SPEND THEIR SUNDAYS

Photo by Taina Kerttula.

PS. Next Saturday it's time for Club Wanted IV! Togheter with Sally Vanilla we will do our craziest spectacle ever; an odyssey in to the prairie: The Good, The Bad and The Pretty! So if you're around Hell-sinki see you there ok!

I'M NOT SAD, JUST THINKING (BUT SOMETIMES THAT'S THE SAME THING)

You know that 90 % of the time you come to my blog the first thing you'll see is me and my face. Ha! Me me me me me. Well, it's my blog of course. But if you think about it, it's a little...funny. Especially since I talk about my blog as concerning things I like. So then it would seem I like myself quite a lot. But then again I do like myself, most of the time at least. And you should too you know. Like yourself. Narcissism ahoy!



Well enough on the blogsistential crisis and back to business. And since I had nice colours on me today, here's even more pictures! (wohoo.)



(Some years ago I considered brown stocking to be too grannylike, but nowadays they've even beaten the black ones for me.)

Tara Starlet dress, old H&M jakcet, quite new ModCloth shoes and a newly thrifted bag.

THE MASTERFUL LINE OF GRUAU

I'm continuing on my very un-chronological and no-logic-whatsoever series of featuring my favorite fashion illustrators. (Previously mentioned are Erté and Ohgushi.)

Today it's time for perhaps the greatest of them all; Renée Gruau!

I've always admired the 'less is more' when it comes to illustration (that is, if you know your way around the paper and pencil) and Gruau is a true master in the use of negative space, somewhat continuing the japonisme-inspired style of Touluse-Lautrec. Gruau was also a master with his use of color and patterns, but most of all, his trademark line - strong and simple but total perfection.

RenéeGruau (1909-2004) was a French-Italian artist and illustrator who worked mainly in Europe but also in New York. He did numerous high style magazine covers, ads and haute couture illustrations for such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Flair, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Dior... He also did posters for The Moulin Rouge and Lido for years. At some point he even did some fashion design himself.

Gruau worked with Dior from the fifties until the late eighties, even at times when fashion photography and digital art had already taken over. Images above from the sixtes.



Obviously an inspiration for the iPod ads?


Great work of pattern and space from the sixties.



I had a hard time picking out images for this post leaving a lot unshown here, so be a darling and go google up images by Gruau! Do it! Now!

THIS IS ONE OF THOSE POSTS WITH NO HEADLINE

I can't really help it but, whenever I wear my hair like this, tucked in to my beret, I walk around feeling like I'm in an old movie. (Preferably a French one).

(Dress - Wings by vadumsrum, Shoes - Bullboxer)

DID YOU KNOW...

...that once you can roll your hair right and do a proper pin curl, you can manage any hairdo you want (well, almost).

Roll your curls in different direction, twist and turn them around to try out different styles and results. The trick is not only to roll it right, but also to learn how to fasten the bobby pin in such a way that it does not miss-shape or flatten the roll, and without showing too much. Bobby pins are easier to hide in dark hair, but you can also learn to cover them in blond hair like mine. The thicker the hair, the easier to hide since there is more to stick it in, but I suppose thinner hair has the advantage of fewer pins since it is lighter. How well you hair turns out also depends on it's level of cleanness or how fly or heavy it is, but in the end it's all about one thing: practice makes master!

In the picture above is, apart from a giant arm of mine, also my 30's inspired "faking short hair" -do, which always gets a lot of appreciation. If you have long hair like me here's a simple descriptive drawing and a quick tutorial of how I did it (if you already have short hair just roll the hair around your face inwards -step 1,2, 3 and 6- and curl the rest in the back with a curling iron or so):


1.Sleek your hair in the front/your bangs and fasten it to the side (in this example to the left). My bags are so long for the moment they need only one pin to stay in place.
2. Take a sling of hair from the top left and roll it inwards towards your face and place it so that it covers the pin which you fastened your bangs with. If you have shorter bangs and needed more pins, never mind - but then you can place some decorative pins to hold the front hair instead. Try pulling your hair slightly downwards between the pins to create the image of finger waved hair (you can of course do this with longer bags too).
3. Take the a little hair from the back togehter with the hair hanging on the side, roll it in the same direction as the previous curl and fasten it just beneath, leaving the roll 'hanging' on the ear.
4. Roll the hair under the ear inwards and fasten it just above the hair line in the neck, so that half of the curl 'hangs' in the neck.
5. Roll the rest of your hair in the back the same way (I make four more curls) going from the left to the right
6. Roll the hair on the right side of you face inwards in one roll (which will be in the opposite direction of all the other rolls you've made) and fasten it just above the ear.
7.Finish off with a high-shine spray.

PS. the promised tutorial of this 'do is coming up soon :)

SOME SUNDAY BAKING, pt.1

Now we're going to go all domestic here and kick off the week with some baking!

Ever since Ina read "Den Hemliga kocken" (the secret chef) by Matts-Eric Nilsson she's been making all of her bread herself, to avoid all the artificial additives that industrially produces bread contains. (The book is about "the unkown cheatig with your plate"; what chemicals and other man produced products our food contains - and that's a lot but one rarely thinks about it). Since I'm a lazy biatch I haven't read it (yet); I don't really have the time for all-home made cooking, even if I would want to.

Yesterday however we had ourselves a nice soft Sunday baking and listening to old records in Ina's original 1950's kitchen, which is very small, but still very functional (and manages to just fit us both in the same time). We made some bread on spelt and rye, and here's how:

The total baking time is about two hours. Basically you can use any kinds of flour for this recipe, but I think spelt is a winner both when it comes to healthiness and taste.

1. Mix the wheat germs, linseeds and speltbrans with the oil and the honey (of course you can use syrup, too, but honey is healthier so we go for that).

2.Mix the yeast into the fingerwarm (42'C) water. When using spelt flour, the water should maybe be slightly warmer than normally. With spelt you need less yeast, so if you decide to use some other flour you can consider to take a little more yeast than in this recipe. If you use dry yeast you should mix it into the flours, but note that dry yeast contains emulsifiers so then your bread will have unnecessary artificial additives...

3. Pour the water into the mix, add the salt and stir well. If you want variation, you can also add some herbs (like oregano or fennel seed) or why not some grated raw carrot, or chopped hazelnuts.

4. Mix the rye and spelt flours. Add the flours little by little into the mix. The dough is ready when it comes easily off the brims of the bowl. Don't, anyhow, let it become too "heavy" or firm.

4. Let the dough rise under a piece of cloth for an hour in a place free from draught.

5. Turn out the dough on a well powdered table and knead it well, it's important for spelt to be well kneaded. Make either two round loaves or smaller bread rolls/buns. (I prefer making many small breads and putting the ones I will not eat right away in the freezer.) Let the bread rise again at least half an hour.

6.Put them in the oven at 200'C for 30 minutes.

If you want the bread to stay really soft for a longer time, let them cool rolled into a doubled cloth, and when you put them in bags roll the cloth around the bags and keep it over the night.

(And yes it's fun to play around with Poladroid. Even though it made the bread picture look less tasty than it is :)

MY GLITTER-HEAVY HEAD

I don't think I've ever had so much glitter in my face before!
(We had dinner backstage in between our numbers and I think we ate more glitter than lasagne).

I love doing a full show make up (even though I sometimes slightly resemble a drag queen. Not that there's anything wrong with that, really). And then it's always really sad to wash it off afterwards.

SOMETHING TOTALLY DIFFERENT

(Picture borrowed from here)

Today was good.

The sun woke me up before my alarm clock did.

It was so warm could go out in my spring jacket, finally.

I met up with two good old friends and ran in to a third one I haven't seen in a while.

I'm working on a job that's going to turn out really good and I got myself a good burlesque gig for summer.

I also managed to get my company's tax declaration done and got it to the post office five minutes before closing. Good, since today was the last day to hand it in (I'm very good at last minute-things). It also made me wonder why some people want to become accountants? (No offense to all the accountants who happens to read this though.)

And I've been wearing a black and white polka dot scarf and my purple pumps. Polka dot scarves and purple shoes alone would make any day.

WEDNESDAY BLISS

What better way to arrive back south from the north and its snowy slopes than to arrive to a warm and sunny spring day? And even better; to find a small package from lovely Rascal Kosher waiting for me at home? With a lovely pink brooch of a small kissing couple and matching earrings in it, form her etsy shop! In fact, it was all so nice that I did not update any software or fill in my company's tax declaration like my schedule said. Instead I had a long lunch with K, enjoyed some carrot cake and ginger tea with Ina and spent the rest of the day looking at my favourite books.




One of my absolute prettiest books is Rob Ryan's This is For You. I think a lot of you know it already, but if you don't, go get it, or at least take a look at it it! Rob Ryan is an artist who cuts his work out of paper and they are amazing. (So amazing it almost gives me a headache, you know, thinking if I were to do that. But I try to forget about the making-of-state and just enjoy his results :)

(Bolero - customized H&M, Skirt - vintage, Scarf - from a left over piece of fabric, Brooch and earrings - Rascal Kosher)