These top 6 pictures are from a shop called Kee Boutique from the United Kingdom. I love looking at all of their photos they're dreamy, raw, cute and fun. Looking through the shop is a delight, filled with pink, lace, ad floral, there is kind of a 90's grunge vibe going on with some sixties shapes and peter pan collars, I say check it out!
I am so jealous of the etsy shop owners that live in the U.K. and around Europe. The pictures are a delight to go through and the dresses are adorable. I love the drop waist scalloping on the creme dress and the little heart applique on the pocket of the polkadot dress. They also have some cute hair pieces made out of felt and buttons.
This shop makes me so happy, another designer from the U.K. ( I think I have an obsession) with more of a gothier backed up by christmas lights and posters, it looks like a still out of a teenage dream movie. Lace, Inverted crosses...
They've got shoes and accessories as well as plenty of cut up band tees and floral.
I really like this shop because there is a flood of pink as soon as I get to the shop, this designer and vintage finder of goods is from Oakland, Ca , right across the bridge from me, I'm still waiting to see this girl on BART one day.
Tons of cute vintage items and amazing slips and babydoll dresses. There are also a few original designs that you should be sure to check out!
Love this dress/top!
This is a store I thought everyone should know about, resin and bejeweled necklaces of famous people in history, such as the below necklace of Lizzie Borden
(who on a side note was acquitted for the murder of her father and step-mother, and lived with her sister after the incident going by a different name until they separated and she went on living alone until the day she died.) Also below Beethoven, Anne Boleyn and Marie Antoinette
Big hair bows and gingham, and these amazing creations. Below is a silk oil rig printed crop top that I wish I could afford. And red sailor shorts. Ca-ute!
And to wrap it all up, here is one of my favorite items I've seen on etsy all together, this hand printed cat baby doll dress is a dream come true! ooohhhh I wish I could have it....did you hear me Santa? Can you get your elves to make me one of these please??
Sometimes one can not afford to go shopping and come back with a present (we call that window shopping and I do it all the time) and most of the time I come home with a magazine instead thinking "hey now i get to come home with a hundred pretty dresses that I can't afford, but I still get to look at them!" and other times I end up trying to find the time to make things for myself out of clothes I find in the street or from cheap thrift stores like Salvation Army. (just a tip if you are ever in the haight ashbury district the goodwill is terribly over priced! anything and everything that looks vintage is sent there and marked up, Wasteland is most of the time cheaper or about the same price for something that actually is vintage and precious)
But times like these when the window begins to glare a picture of myself in black leggings and a band tee with a mildly wet and cold ripped jean jacket , no longer the picturesque 6' chiffon and lace draped mannequin with no rips in her textured tights and no holes in her leopard print platform wedges, and her hair forever perfect, times when thumbing through beautiful women in clothes that are 4 times one months rent for you and they're just getting paid to walk around and be beautiful, saving money on food by never eating, well you start to get a little depressed, but that's when the kick to change things comes into play and that's the fun part.
Getting into moods like this I could very well go to my sewing machine and spend hours creating one garment that I'm really proud of and will never let go , or fuck up and get into a deeper depression or I draw.
Drawing has what started my drive for starting a magazine for girls that are similar to me. When someone says "I want to see a real girl as a model" they are usually referring to a beautiful hardly plus size woman, in my case when i say I want to see real girls in magazines I mean short, tall, medium, whatever build, marks, scars and pimples, crooked noses, lazy eyes. those are real girls, 6' plus size beautiful women are still beautiful women.
I remembered saying when i was a kid, that when I grew up to be famous one day I would go on the cover of a magazine with no make up or photo shop . I have scars on my cheeks that i pretend to be a cheek bone enhancer, and remnants of a hated teenage curse. My teeth also have fangs that I always felt made me look terrifying anytime i smiled. But there was a point when I was about 15 I realized this is my face , these are my teeth, this is me and I'm stuck with it forever. I had a good cry told myself I wasn't stuck, I could never be stuck, stuck is something I won't allow in my life. I went with it, sure over time it was hard, my first impression was either meth head/ junkie or a picker. which i was never any of those things. When I was younger my mom thought it would be a good idea to help me out with my problem but knowingly/unknowingly made things for me worse.
With all of this I noticed that magazines had articles on the minor flaws and zits on the humans we call celebrities, and that's when I wanted to be my own role model, and maybe a role model for someone else one day. Because the models I was seeing in the magazines had no role, they were just playing a part.
With drawing I can create my own fantasy and reality and that's what I am hoping to do with this STAINS.
Hope you enjoy :)
Some copies of pictures from my fashion illustration class.
my hand. with my favorite ring
steve blatt is a character I created for a comic I was making about kids in high school, but then Blatt became my favorite character and I started a comic of just Blatt, it shall be done soon,a nd maybe featured in STAINS
above is a comic i drew about my life living in the pantry of a house occupied by many.
I meant for this picture to not be sideways but oh well. These are the characters from my band Statutory Apes
This show we played last, which we weren't used to and got drunk so it's a little sloppy. But we do have tapes, please inquire if interested!
maxine and blatt (statutory apes)
This is a little bit from my circus phase, I am obsessed with elephants turning them into bows, and implying them as little dogs, also from my babydoll dress phase.
these are some sketches i did as a marie antoinette ballerina inspired ensemble, bows lace and ruffles. in love
This is a dress I made for my weekend in reno with my buddies, I didn't know it was goign to be 40 degrees when we got there though, the worst part was that I had horrible bug bites all up my legs so it was hard to wear tights, let alone two pairs. Below is a picture from 4 days after I got bit, those mutant bugs gave me bruises!
This was colored with concealer, mascara, eye shadow, lipstick and rouge. I was so excited to learn that it was a common thing for fashion illustrators to use real make up for their drawings because I used to do that as a kid, I was happy to know that I wasn't just a kid playing with make up and that it is what grown ups do too.
cute bow sent to me as a gift with my inverted lace tank top I bought from this lovely seller on etsy. She's a 19 year old selling on etsy to pay for school. At least check out her rad pink hair
My last post consisted of sixties influences, and I don't know how I could forget my grandmothers. I love looking through their old photos of them, they are both so different and beautiful, I just wanted to talk about them for a second since I never properly got to say good bye. The Above picture is of my Grandma Tonya, she's from Arkansas and revolved her life around art and music, I say she's from arkansas first because in her time, I don't think that was what was on most girls minds. She loved Dolly Parton and decided to teach herself banjo and guitar just as Dolly did. She also sang, in church choir and on her own at home with the piano. Looking at her photos she was the most fashionable woman I've seen from the 60's. Her hair most of the times teased in a beehive or down like in this picture. She was about 20 when she had my mom in 1966, here she is with my mom in her lap. before she died 7 years ago she was an art teacher in Arkansas, the last time I saw her was during Christmas the first year after my mom had moved to Nevada. She had just been through khemo and the biggest curliest blonde wig is the first thing I saw of her I bolted downstairs where we spent hours talking about music and art, she was so interested in my life in the big city of San Francisco, she asked me so many questions. I mention this last time because I remembered when she pulled out of her wallet stuffed with pictures of her students and each one had something wonderfu to say about her on the back, and all I could think was "I want to be just like her when I grow up"
This is my Grandma Nancy, I don't know much about her life before my dad came into her picture, maybe because I was too young to ask. She was from Pennsilvania, Pennsivlanian Dutch. Grandma Nancy was my grandma, she sent me christmas cards, birthday cards and we visited her all of the time and every time her house smelled comforting and warm, with hints of dinner. She played nintendo with me, and dressed me up as a flapper for my 6th halloween, I had no idea what a flapper was, she had me at "tomboy" ( i was a huge tomboy at this point). She had a room dedicated to board games and puzzles of all kinds. I loved that room, she also had an ally looking cat that stayed in the backyard with a covered caravan. I feel like my time with her was snatched short. She suddenly fell with cancer and didn't want to be seen sick, and I was not told about her passing away until after her funeral, so ..
Good bye grandma Nancy, I love you so much
Good bye Grandma Tonya- I love you just the same
She looks so happy here, i think i also love this picture because my grandpa looks so much like my dad, it just makes me happy
I think i wanna play with masks in pictures sometimes
