A Touch of Glamour

Things are a little difficult around here at the moment, finances are so tight that I'm literally counting every penny. I've been out of work for almost two months now, with no real hope of finding anything soon. I've had to make the choice between staying in Wales and finding any job or moving back to London to continue working in television. I chose my house and Wales, I hope I won't regret it, it's going to be a hard thing to give up my chosen industry.

When things get stressy I tend to hide from everything else to deal with the thing that's causing problems, unfortunately this means the rest of my life suffers for it too and is something I really have to start working on. At the moment I've got three major things happening; 1) job hunting, 2) frantically decorating the house in case I have to rent it out instead of lose it, and 3) starting up my own business.

I'm a lover of the English language (so don't ever text or email me in text-speak because I'll lose all respect for you) and I've been writing since I was old enough to hold a pen. I've just started out as a freelance copy writer and already have a couple of clients who want weekly articles written for them. Unfortunately, in finding my voice for their business I lost my own voice and couldn't fight my way clear for a while, I'm still not entirely certain I have. This might mean the tone of the blog changes slightly whilst I get my bearings, I hope not because I tend to write like I speak but, y'know, fair warning.

But I didn't just want to post about the doom and gloom! Last month I inherited my Nana's vintage fur coat and hat, from what I understand she made both. My Nana was an accomplished seamstress, more through necessity in the beginning, and she used to refashion or make all my Mum's, Aunts and Uncle's clothes when they were growing up. My Aunt found the coat and hat in her closet and offered to send them to me, I very excitedly agreed. Malheureusement, the hat is a little too small but I'm hoping I can let out the seams a little to accommodate the ridiculous amount of hair I have.

If you follow me on Facebook you'll have already seen these so apologies for the repeat! I took these earlier this month, I've since had about two inches of my hair cut off to remove all the layers (thanks Mum!), strangely it doesn't look all that much different.

After a visit to Mum's last week I ended up going through her jewellery box that held Nana's things and picking out a few pieces. Somehow I ended up with four pairs of earrings and a cat brooch. I don't have my ears pierced, I can't abide the thought of metal through my body, so I'm not sure why I picked them but they're very beautiful and I couldn't let them go. I was thinking of getting some clip-on earring adapters, does anyone use them (or normal clip-ons)? Are they comfortable? Are they expensive? They'll have to wait until I have enough money to pay for the more important things like my mortgage and food but I can put them on the list at least!

I'm not very good at taking macro photos, so apologies for the slight blurriness. I plan to hang the embroidery hoop on my bedroom wall once it's all done, a nice display of pretties to smile at in the morning.

Thanks for stopping by,

A Light In The Dark

I'm currently knee deep in wood chip wallpaper as I strive to keep myself busy whilst out of work. Every single wall and ceiling in my house is covered in the stuff and it's been driving me insane since the day I moved in. Add to that a day full of power cuts due to high winds and biblical amounts of rain and I decided it was high time I took a short break to get a quick project over and done with and painted the candlesticks I'd ordered of off eBay before Christmas (not to mention an opportunity to dig out the candles!)

The inspiration for my choice in candlesticks came from a picture I'd pinned to Pinterest. I loved the shape and that they held larger candles than normal.

{ Source: Little Emma English Home via Pinterest }

I scoured eBay for something similar and came up with these.

Originally these were a green and gold, painted in a texturised paint with the gold coming through the green in places. A Christmas version of shabby chic I suppose. I liked the texture of them and so skipped sanding them down and moved straight in to repainting, you can see the texture in the photo above quite clearly.

I spray painted them white, thwarted by gusting winds (thankfully I remembered to wear an old jacket and left my glasses inside!) but the mildness of the weather meant I could at least spray outside because the stink was astonishing. And I own a wolf with the tootiest bottom in the world, my definition of bad smell has been drastically redefined.

The candles were a gift from my friend, Ewa, and are the perfect shade of blue. They look great on my dresser, just waiting for the next time the power goes out ... or late night bath ... oooh, or Earth Hour! Maybe I should get some more, four would be a good number, right?

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose Red Dancing

Has anyone ever read the story of Rose Red and Snow White? Not that Snow White, the other one. I got nicknamed Rose Red after wearing a red tee to work when I lived in London, it's my favourite colour and I really should make an effort to wear it more often. Since then I've always thought my sister and I could be Rose Red and Snow White, she's fair where I am dark.

When my housemate moved out a couple of months ago, she left her red tulle petticoat. She's 7 months pregnant and won't need it for a while, she thought I'd get more use out of it. I don't have anything to wear it under, but that didn't stop me. If you follow me on Facebook you'll have seen a preview of these photos.

I got the ballet shoes for my bedroom, as wall decoration. Rather coincidentally they're also my size. I mean, if you're going to get pretty dancing shoes to hang on the wall, odds are you're going to want to prance about the house in them on occasion right?* I did ballet when I was four until about four and a half so, y'know, it's been a while. After the tiptoe shot I think it's going to be another twenty odd years before I do that again!

I have a very distinct idea of what I look like held very firmly in my head which, obviously, is nothing like how I actually look. I'm trying to change that picture to reflect the reality, because there's absolutely nothing wrong with the way I look (repeat after me!). I like these two photos because you can see all the tufts of hair I can never control for more than 5 seconds, all my freckles, the Grantham Bugle as it's known in our family and even a scar by my mouth that I never really realised I had. I like all my scars, to my mind they show I've lived. Blusher still isn't my friend though, but perhaps that's because I'm still not sure how to apply it. Something further to work on.

Oh, and don't be alarmed by the redirect if you visit the blog direct, I got myself a domain name! I'm now at girlmeetswolf.co.uk. It took forever to get sorted, apologies for the blog downtime whilst I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong (missing a full stop apparently). Everything's up and running again now but, as always, if anything goes pear shaped please do let me know.

Cardigan: Oasis via eBay

Petticoat: Vivian of Holloway

Ballet Shoes: eBay

* Or is that just me?

Thanks for stopping by,

Project: Simplicity 7773

One of the other things I want to do more regularly is talk about my sewing. In fact, I want to sew more. The idea in my head is that once a week there's an outfit post, a sewing post, and a house post and then once a month an essay on style. We'll see how well that goes, as you all should know by now I'm nothing if not fickle in my affections! I had hoped to be posting about a finished garment today, but I think an excess of stupidity got in the way.

My Sorbetto Surprise is on hold for the moment, I still can't get the collar quite right so I'm taking a break before it breaks me. In the meantime, I saw the below picture of Ale's Orla Kiely dress posted on her blog and fell in love (and, of course, pinned it to pinterest).

{ Source: Rosaspina Vintage }

I immediately scoured my pattern stash for anything that could work and found Simplicity 7773, a 60's A-Line dress with back darts for shaping. I then scored myself some burnt orange corduroy from eBay and was ready to go ... it should probably be noted that the pattern did not specify that corduroy could be used for this garment. It may explain a lot.

This dress has taken me a while to get through, I constructed the dress part quite quickly, trying it on repeatedly to ensure it was fitting. The button placket almost killed me, I had to cut it three times (as I was shortening it and kept making mistakes) and I've ripped it out twice. It's still not right. Unhelped by my decision to be incredibly lazy and use poppers instead of sewing button holes. Bad choice. The corduroy's too thick for the poppers to successfully join, of the two on the dress only one has both parts. Neither actually works.

I finally got around to adding the sleeves. Again, I couldn't face the fiddling of trying to set in the sleeves properly, unhelped by the stretch of the corduroy, so I pleated along the top.

All together, it looked like it would be quite a good dress. Miriam certainly rocks it.

Me, unfortunately, not so much. The colour's pretty good on me. As with jewel tones, bolder colours seem to suit my colouring quite well.

But for those looking carefully, you'll perhaps notice that it's too big. The sleeve seam is falling off my shoulder, a sure sign I got the size wrong. Although, I'm unsure if this is simply because it's not done up or if it is actually too big. When I was trying on the dress, sans sleeves, the bodice seemed to fit properly. And why yes, those are my new glasses*.

The dress appears to be electrically charged and keeps sticking to me. This may be a symptom of my tights or it just may be a new quirk of mine I've not noticed before. And it's very loud. A strange complaint for a dress you might think, but I like to be able to move quietly (and it's one of the reasons I don't wear jewellery too). Yes, I'm weird.

AttenSHUN!

In all it's awful glory. I'm unsure if this can be rescued or not. What do you think?

* One of two pairs my Mum bought me for Christmas, this pair are the ones my Step Dad refers to as 1950's news reader

Thanks for stopping by,

Ain't She Sweet

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda i bawb! I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve, how were the fireworks? I have to say, London's were amazing! If you've not seen them there's a great vid here (via youtube, courtesy of the Beeb), they're well worth the watch, I think they rivalled Sydney's!

It stopped raining for a few hours this morning (we've had about 5" in a couple of weeks) so I took advantage of the slightly increased light to take some photos in my new studio*. I feel like I've not really put as much energy in to this blog as I've wanted, this February will be my second blogiversary but there's still so much I want to do that I've not really focussed on yet that I'm struggling to decide whether to celebrate. We'll see. Mind you, I'm in overwhelming agreement for any excuse for cake!

A couple of the things I wanted to start doing more regularly was outfit posts, although my wardrobe still fails to hold many items I'm happy wearing. I want to start using Lookbook.NU and Chictopia and adding photos to my Flikr account, some of which won't be posted to this blog (but will be part of a photoshoot that has been posted here). I've also gotten myself a Facebook page, for better or worse. I'm not great with Facebook, but it affords me an opportunity to interact with people outside the more 'article-based' structure of the blog. Again, content will be posted there that won't be available on this blog. Let me know what you think about that, does it work? Does it piss you off you'll have to go elsewhere to see extra stuff?

Okay, housekeeping over, on to the good stuff! For some time, I've been mentioning the Dress of Fabulousness (aka the Ain't She Sweet dress from Shabby Apple, who are currently offering 20% off everything** using the code NEWYEAR until the end of Jan by the way). I wrote a review of the dress on Sew Retro a while back when Shabby Apple contacted the owner to offer a dress as a giveaway. I cannot tell you how much I love this dress, hopefully when you see the photos below you'll understand why!

The Ain't She Sweet Dress of Fabulousness

Note to self: Don't lean! This is a very flattering dress, with a midriff panel that helps define my rather rubbish waist, enough stretch to move but enough wiggle to look good. I adore the colour, jewel tones are fast becoming my favourite clothing colours - a far cry from where I was a year ago. It's a beautiful emerald green, pencil-skirted with a hem length that hits below the knees perfectly. I was a little unsure how the length would work out as I'm in the petite range on overall height but have a 30" inside leg, thankfully it's exactly right!

And look! I'm even trying out blusher and red lipstick! I took my make-up from Keiko Lynn's tutorial for her Here Kitty, Kitty look which has quickly become my go-to daily look sans lipstick and blusher.

Sadly, I didn't wear this outfit last night. I'm not a huge fan of NYE so instead went to my ex-neighbours who now live across the road, where I hung out watching bad movies, gossiping and watching the wolf and their spaniel run around creating havoc. However, I can assure you, this dress will be seen again. Not sure where, not sure when, but it's far too pretty to hang in my wardrobe for long!

Dress: Ain't She Sweet by Shabby Apple
Shoe: New Look via eBay
Hair: Back roll
Make-up: Here Kitty, Kitty

* Also known as the spare room, which only gets light in the mornings if I'm lucky. Perhaps a bad choice ....
** Except the Side Saddle line

Thanks for stopping by,