Friday, August 30, 2013

Fairies Dance in My Garden Free Clip Art

I found these Fairy cards in a cute antique shop in Massachusetts. They're perfect for a summer clip art project.

The little diamond box says: 
Novelty
 Beauty and Fashion 
Maison Demorest 
agencies everywhere 
reliable patterns
 in sizes
 Illustrated and Described

He Loves Me A Great Deal



He Loves Me

He Loves Me A Little

He Loves Me Not At All 


Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Make a Quick and Easy Balloon Arbor

The sweet young couple next door were getting married so my neighbor Mary Marie, my Mom and I decided to make a fun entry for them when they came home and this is what we came up with. It's not perfect but it's sweet.

    We started with a piece of ribbon staked to the ground. Then we tied each balloon separately to it.


                We cut out hearts and wrote loving words on them then we tied them to the string.


We curled the excess ribbon. Then we moved to their yard,
and put in tall stakes because it was a windy day
 and we didn't want the balloons to hit the ground and pop.  

Buy extra balloons because I popped a few which left me a bit short. 
I wanted the arbor to look a little fuller.

                                                We tied the strings to the top of the stakes.
We decorated the stakes with white and pink tissue flowers.
We made these by cutting out circles stapling several of  them together in the middle then pulling them up and molding them to look like flowers.


                     The finished project was cheerful and welcoming and we had fun doing it.


Friday, August 23, 2013

Marrowstone Music Festival 2013 Music in My Garden


For the last two years I’ve hosted in my garden musicians from the Marrowstone Music camp. What a great experience it has been. The students come from all over the country and learn from leading professional musicians in a two week intensive performance and study session.
 The students are wonderful musicians. They are also kind and so polite it’s truly a pleasure to host them.
A Musical Bouquet
This year I thought it would be fun to add a few musical details in honor of how hard they work.

I decided to use all white hydrangeas and white table cloths (to represent the paper music is written on) and then I added notes cut from black paper to the bouquets.

A Musical Tea Party

Other details were in the cookies I made fudge shaped as whole notes and cookies shaped as different notes and then I placed them on paper with five lines across it so it would look like a musical score.

Music in the Garden

                   On iced sugar cookies I used food coloring pens and drew musical notes on them.

Musical Cookies
I set the tables with tea cut and plates. Then wait for my guests to arrive.

A Musical Tea
Photo by Polly Miller Tisdall


Music in the Garden
The weather was perfect warm and a little cloudy the fragrance of flowers accented the atmosphere.


Marrowstone Music Festival 2013 In The Garden
The house and yard filled with young musicians bring with them the excitement of a performance.

                                          

Guests were seated everywhere on the porch and in the garden.  I even ran out of chairs so I threw blankets on the ground.

Marrowstone Music Festival in the Garden
Photo by Polly Miller Tisdall

  Marrowstone Musical Festival 2013 In My Garden
Photo by Polly Miller Tisdall 

Beautiful music began to fill the air as musicians began to stroll through the garden. Then each subsequent performance was placed in a different area and enhanced the one before it.


Marrowstone Music Festival in the Garden
Photo by Leslie Katz

              Cookies filled the plates and smiles were found on every face making for a great memory.


                                            Marrowstone Musical Festival 2013 In My Garden

                           To learn more about the camp or Festival click on the link below.                    
                             
                                              http://marrowstone.syso.org/ms/index.html



Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Craft: Make Great Designer Sunglasses in Minutes




Dolce and Gabbana Sunglasses

While looking through the latest fashion magazines I found these great designer sunglasses. By Dolce and Gabbana, and Karlsson they’re sold at Bergdorf’s. Who can afford that? So let’s make them.

Anna-Karin Karlsson Sunglasses

                                                                     You’ll need:
                                 A pair of sunglasses (I found mine at Forever 21 for $5.80 each)

 Now you’ll need decorations:
You can fine these anywhere I found a pair of earrings for the pink glasses at a garage sale.
The roses for the red glasses I found at Michaels Craft store




Plumbing Epoxy Putty I bought at the hardware store (you only need a little)
I needed wire cutters to cut apart my earrings

1) Prepare your decorations I cut my earrings apart for the pink glasses 
and peeled the paper off of the back of the red roses for the black glasses.


Decorate Your Own Sunglasses to Look Like the  Latest Designer Sunglasses

                                  2) Now glue them on using the instructions from the putty.

Decorate Your Own Sunglasses to Look Like the  Latest Designer Sunglasses


                                                 That’s it and you saved $660 dollars! LOL!


                                                                         Enjoy the sun




Friday, August 16, 2013

The Night Watch by: Rembrant


Before watching this fun video look closely at Rembrandt's "The Night Watch".




                                                                          Have a great day!

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

A Summer Tea

On warm summer days I like to invite friends over to have tea on the porch. I love to use different things in my house or yard to decorate my table. This time I used my sweet porcelain pieces to make a fun center piece.













Friday, August 9, 2013

All Dolled Up a Disturbing New Trend



Anastasiya Shpagina and Valeria Lukyanova
While reading through my Marie Claire June 2013 magazine I found this article that you see below. At first the photo in the article made me feel a bit queasy and then really sad. I couldn’t believe the dolls in the photo were real living women.
This is definitely the dark side of fashion. It makes a corset look like nothing. Why would anyone feel the need to turn themselves into living dolls? What does this generation see as beauty? The human dolls have thousands of followers on their social media pages. They're also getting lots of modeling jobs mostly in Japan.

I've included pictures and links to the stories about each of the girls I have featured. It is a shocking new trend in Eastern Europe but it is also showing up in the US and England.

 Valeria Lukyanova


                                                                          Valeria Lukyanova


Valeria Lukyanova and Olga Oleynikn

Olga Oleynik


Anastasiya Shpagina
Anastasiya Shpagina


Venus Palermo

                                                           15 year old Venus Palermo
      Men are even getting involved.  This is Justin Jedlica.  He
      has spent over 100,000 dollars on plastic surgery.

Justin Jedlica and Valeria Shpagina.


Tuesday, August 6, 2013

The Corset: "Don't let any opportunity go to waist"

St Pauli Girl Beer Mascot


I thought it would be fun to write a few blogs every once in awhile starting with looking at the different things women have done throughout history in the name of fashion and then take a look at what we are currently doing in the name of fashion.

Fashion has and always will have a dark side. I think this dark side is not only very interesting but also something we should all be able to reflect on.

So, let’s start with the corset. The corset is probably one of the longest running torture devices in fashion history. The earliest indication of a corset was found in an image from 2000 BC depicting a Cretan woman wearing what appears to be a corset as outerwear. When the word corset is mentioned, however, we don’t think Cretan, we immediately think Victorian. Just as the exaggeratedly broad shoulders began to fall from favor in the mid 1800’s a clinched waist was another way to get the same hourglass appearance. An hourglass appearance that not only has been tied to hysteria and liver failure but also that remained in fashion until the 1980s when I found myself working as a hostess in New York City. That’s when I had my first, and thankfully only, experience with the corset.
Corsets

It was during a small modeling job in New York as the Saint Pauli Girl (she’s a beer mascot). I was initially “discovered” hosting at the front desk of a restaurant called Luchow’s in New York City. They thought I looked like the girl on the bottle and my short, corset filled career as a model had began.

I had to dress up as a German barmaid on the Saint Pauli Girl’s bottle. The job included photo shoots and parading around at promotional events. It was a great gig while it lasted. At one of the events I ended up on “Live at Five”, an evening TV show in the New York City area. A man with a funny bow tie (I forget his name) was the interviewer, everyone in Manhattan would be able to recognize him. The room was crowded and slightly hot, and despite it being my interview I had been told exactly what to say and when to say it.
Me as the St Pauli Girl Mascot

I see him strolling towards me with a camera man tailing just behind. Strangely I didn’t feel nervous, probably because I was twenty at the time and felt quite invincible. After some small talk he started the interview with the big question I had been rehearsing over and over in my head. “Why do you have radishes hanging off your belt?”

My big moment was here at last! “Because,” I said with confidence in my voice “in Germany we eat radishes with our beer, instead of potatoes chips like here in America.” I did it perfectly with a beautiful smile and all.

“Did someone tell you to say that?” He mockingly questioned further.

“Yes,” I laugh “of course they did, do you think I would have known that?” I continued laughing until I notice the small red light is still illuminated on the front panel of the camera. It was still rolling and I was going to be in big trouble. “You’re not going to use that are you?” I fumbled. He just smiled and adjusted his bowtie.

Hours later, I’m at my restaurant job preparing for the waterfall of trouble that will stem from “Live at Five” when it airs. I think about how much trouble they must have gone through to get that spot on his show and they’d soon realize how badly I had botched it up.
Looking at the outside of Luchow's

These worries are interrupted when the front desk phone rings “Luchow’s,” I answered “what can I do for you?” To my surprise, however, I hear my Saint Pauli Girl Beer boss’s voice. Before he can say anything I feverishly start apologizing for my mistake. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, I know how hard you…”

Inside Luchow's Restaurant
He interrupts me with laughter and says “that’s the most free airtime we’ve ever gotten!” We both started to laugh, completely ignoring the fact that I had just embarrassed myself in front of most of New York City.

So, I have totally digressed from the subject of the corset. What I was going to tell you before my story is that it doesn’t hurt too much when you put it on, you’ll need to find a sadistic friend to help tighten it, otherwise it won’t pull in your waist very much, and that the pain occurs after you take the corset off. You start to gasp for air and the pain is immense as your ribs expand. I don’t know how Victorian women could have worn corsets for years.

Below you’ll find an image of what a corset does to your inter organs if worn for a long enough period of time. 
Illustration of the damage received from wearing at corset long term.


                                         Click on picture below for a brief history of the corset.


Illustration of the damage received from wearing at corset long term.
In my next blog I’ll talk about a disturbing new fashion trend in Eastern Europe which involves a very small waist. 







Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...