Dita von Teese make up

I bought my first liquid eyeliner a weak ago, and today I decided to take the time to learn how to use it. I want to be able to make a 50's inspired make up, that's why I bought it. I found a couple of tutorials online how to make a Dita von Teese makeup, and mimicked it the best I could with my limited make up supplies. I also tried a new style with my new haircut, using my Babyliss Icurl. This is the result:


And an outfit picture:

This is the style I sported while sunday shopping at the grocery store with my boyfriend and then cooking a sunday dinner at home (minus the shoes though, and plus some tights and a warm jacket cause it's freaking cold outside). :-)

Now I will do some sewing, I have to push a cancan-skirt project before the apron project, because I need it for a wild west party this Friday. Pictures will come.

Love,
Helena

New haircut!

I have been dreaming about cutting my hair short for a while now but I have been to much of a chicken. Pondering back and forward, should I do it, should I not, maybe I should get bangs instead... But then, last weak, I decided I have had enough of the stupid long hair. And today I went to the hairdresser and chopped it off! She kept 20cm of my head-fur.
This is the before:

And after:

I don't regret it at all. No grief, only relief. This hair will be so much easier and more fun to style, it won't take 2 hours to curl, and it won't get caught in car doors and backpacks. It suits my vintage clothes better. And I think it looks pretty as well! I'm happy. :-)

The apron project has been on ice due to some stressful weaks at work. Things have calmed down now though, and I'm feeling the urge to sew again! I hope I will have some new sewing pictures to show soon.

Love,
Helena

Vintage apron coming up!

I bought a super cute apron pattern from 1955, simplicity 1359. I really like all three versions, but most of all the simple view 1 which will be the first one I make an attempt on.



The main fabric will be the one with the flowers, an old curtain. The contrast will be in the red fabric. Quite similar to the picture actually. :-) I really look forward to cooking and baking with this apron over a pretty dress. And high heels of course. House chores are always more fun in heels. Everyone knows that.

Love,
Helena

Long time no salsaing...

which is probably not a word. Today I heard a spanish song as someones ringtone. And suddenly i felt Salsa moves trying to break out of my body. I had to listen to salsa music the rest of the day while working, and also decided to go to a Salsa social tonight. I haven't danced Salsa in over a year, and not regularly since about two years ago. Man, it was much harder than I remembered! Especially since I have been dancing Lindy Hop a lot lately, and it was hard to switch the brain into latino mode from jazz mode. :-) But it was a lot of fun. And a good work out. I should do that more often.



Now I'm winding down after the dancing by enjoying som Kent...

För sista gången på nära håll
står vi som frusna mot varandra
Och våra händer möts affärsmässigt snabbt
som i förvåning
Över en elektrisk chock genom skelettet
Som slog sönder våra liv till ett fullständigt normalt
tillstånd där allt är trasigt

Ooh, goosebumps. I love that song.

Love,
Helena

Busy little bee

Wednesday is my boyfriends World-of-Worcraft-Raid-Day. That means I had to amuse myself for 4 hours, which is great because I had a thousand plans. And as usual, I tried to do them all at once. I was watching Midsomer Murders on TV while assembling an IKEA shelf, and in the commercial breaks I was trying to clean up the kitchen and also do a photo shoot with my latest finished project. After a while, I realized that the commercial breaks where not long enough and decided to have the photoshoot in the livingroom while assebling the shelf.

So here is my new striped skirt (I know it looks like I'm posing, but I am actually working hard on that screw!).



Here from the back, you can see the little golden buttons!



And finaly, testing the sturdiness of the construction.



The shoes are new too by the way. Aren't they cute? (I didn't make them though, but that would have been cool...)

It took me a while to finish this project. Not because it was hard to make, but because I was lazy. Sometimes you need to be lazy. It is good for the soul. :-)

Now I'm going to poke my boyfriend silently in the belly until he realizes that bed time is upon us.

Stay tuned, new project coming up very soon!

Love,
Helena

Shopping wohoo!

Ahh, sweet sunday. No plans, no musts. So I decided to treat myself to a shopping spree. I haven't been shopping in forever! At least not in places where stuff is not pre-used. So I dressed up in my new lipstick and went to the closest mall.
Todays outfit:


I bought the pants on sale this thursday, and the blouse is something I found at my grandma's place. It was probably worn by my aunt in the eighties. Oh, I had such a lovely day. This is what I bought:

Cute dots



Butterflies and harts and stuff



And a rubber duckie sink plug



The sink plug did not quite fit in our sink, it was kinda leaky. But who cares? It was cute and we don't do much dishes anyway.

Love,
Helena

Cooking and baking

This weekend I have been inspired to cook and bake. Haven't touched the sewing machine though. Yesterday I went for a jog in the nature reserve close to our place. While I was already in the forrest, I took the chance to check out the state of the blueberry sprigs (and by blueberries, I mean bilberries. Which we call blueberries in Sweden.). I thought they would be ripe by now, but they were far from it... At least to weeks left. But I had blueberries on my mind, and got obsessed with the idea of blueberry muffins (probably a little inspired by my friend Maria and her muffin baking of lately). Luckily there are always frozen berries! I was baked some wonderful blueberry (and now I actually mean blueberry) and rasperry muffins while listening to my new favourite Timo Räisänen. Then me and my boyfriend had tea and muffins, scraped some lottery tickets (no wins) and played Yatzy and Munchkin.



The muffins had a lot of berries in them. Yum.



I lost in yatzy twice, but won in Munchkin. It was such a nice and cozy night. Playing games is the shit.

Then, tonight, I made Borsjtj, Ukrainian beetroot soup. We even found Smetana (russian sour cream) at our lokal supermarket.



I have been wanting to make that ever since I ate it in Russia like eight years ago. It was yummie! And much more filling than you would think. Now I can only sit in the sofa with unbuttoned pants, gasping for air. Feeling sexy.

Cloverfield just started on tv. I'm gonna check it out.
Good night people!
Love,
Helena

New adress, new name, new design

I changed the name and adress of my blog, 'cause I was never really happy with the old one and it has been bothering me since I started it. I think I will be motivated to post more regularly now that my blog is so pretty and pink!
Love,
Helena

Remake dress finished!

The remake project was put on hold during my vacation, but now it is done!



I lifted the waist line to match my waist, and thus made the skirt shorter. I also altered the neck line to make it less matronely and boring. And removed the stupid bows on the shoulders. The only regret is that I wished I made it a little shorter. But I already moved the pockets to a proper height for this length, and I don't want to change the hem since it is a pretty seem made with an overlock machine... *sigh* Wish I had one. Other than that I'm happy with the results. And I'm especially happy that the belt I bought in a second hand shop matched so perfectly!

In other news: I got my first contact lenses yesterday! Yay! I love how I can see good in my whole field of sight. But man, it's much harder than I expected to put them in! It looks so easy when I have seen friends do it.

And then, the next project. It will be something simple again. I'm making a skirt out of this fabric.



The plan is to make is to make it look something like this skirt, but a bit less short.

My next project

After making the prom dress which was quite complicated and demanding, I wanted a nice simple project. So this one will be a remake. I bought this eighties dress in a second hand store some months ago.



I thought the floral print is cute, but the model is a bit dowdy. The dress is right now in pieces. I will change the awful v-shaped waistline to a normal one, and i will take it up to where my waist actually is. I will also shorten it, and probably remove the bows on the shoulders. As a consequence of the shortening, I also have to move the pockets down. Ah, I love a dress with pockets... And finally, I'm thinking about changing the neck line. Maybe making it deeper in the back. This is the back:



The front feels harder to change. I don't know. Any suggestions?

Right now I have only 4 work days left, then it is Midsummers Eve, and the start of my vacation! Yay! I will go back to my lovely home town Boden then and stay for two weeks. I bought a nice white fabric whith small pink roses (that used to be curtains) when I was last there, and it is in my old girls room waiting for me to make it a skirt. :-)

Ooh, and tomorrow, we are going hot air balloon riding. Maybe. We have had our flights cancelled five times so far, so I'm trying to not get my hopes up to much. The wind speed has to be less than 5m/s and no risk for rain to be able to fly, which is apperently pretty hard in this country. Weather report looks promising tomorrow, so I'm crossing my fingers... If it actually happens, my next post will be some nice pictures of Stockholm from above. In the mean time, here is a picture of me disapointed the time our balloon ride got cancelled just before we went up in the air (due to changed winds).



Hehe. :-)

Love,
Helena

The Prom Dress

So, here is the finished prom dress!

And from the back:


It was hard to photograph the train properly, because it was really windy that day. Anyway, I think the dress turned out quite beautiful. What do you guys think? There were some details that were not perfect, but overall I'm happy with it. And my sister liked it, which is the most important thing. She looked so beautiful, hugs to you little sister!

Love,
Helena

A sad sad day

This day is a sad day. Anna Bergendahl lost in the semifinals, and will not be singing tomorrow in the big finale. For the first time in 34 years, Sweden will not be represented in the Eurovision Song Contest Finals. She had a great performance and the song was good, a lot better than some other crappy songs we have sent over the years (our dear Lena PH for example, hurts, oh it hurts, really hurts to hear that song). But it was not enough. I'm not going to blame anyone though, just conclude that the competition was stiff yesterday, and Azerbadjan and Ukraine that followed Anna kind of put her performance in the shadow by just being a little bit more and bigger and more memorable. And also, you have to acount for the fact that even people with bad taste are allowed to vote (come on, the Cypriotic song... "tell me about your feelings" they sang in the refrain... how cliché and stupid and unrealistic... How many guys likes to talk about feelings, or better yet begs a girl to talk about her feelings? Denmark kind of sucked to, but they had a typical Schlager that will probably get a lot of Swedish votes.).
Uhm, long parenthesis. Anyways. I will look at the finale tomorrow nevertheless. Just need to find some other country to root for. So far, I like Belgium and Ukraine, and Germany seems promising too. Be sure to watch it, extremly important for monday lunch room conversations. :-)
Love,
Helena

Dress progress and stuff

Hello hello. I had some busy weeks. Big presentation at work, important fitting of my sisters dress, my boyfriends father and his girlfriend visiting... And at the same time weather in Stockholm has been amazing! The russian heat was here.
But okay, first things first. My sister was here to model in a fashion show last monday. This is her on the catwalk:


And while she was already here, I worked as hell to get the dress to be in one piece and try it on her. This is what it looked like from the front...



...and from the back



I especially like the back. It will even nicer when it has a zipper and is not just pinned together. I do need to make some changes though. I streched the fabric to tight when draping the bust in this version, which made the lining peak out. So I'm whipping up a new bust part right now. And then lining of the skirt needs to be sewn in, but thats easy peasy, and then it's just the hemming and zipper-attaching. In a week this dress will be worn. I'm both nervous and excited. I hope the dress will be beutiful, and that Smulan will love it! (Smulan is my petname for my little sister, I have called her Smulan since she was a tiny toddler. It means bread crum.)

After having my big presentation last Wednesday I was exhausted from working all day and night for two days. I rewarded myself by leaving work early and visiting the closest second hand shop. There I tried on some dresses.

I fell in love with this lovely seventy's dress. Unfortunately it did not close in the back. Partly because the zipper was broken, but a bigger problem was the missing 7cm of fabric...


I liked this sweet dotted thing to. But it also had a size problem. I could definitly close it, but I could only raise my arms about 20 degrees. Might be a problem as I intended to use it for dancing lindyhop.


Nope, both of them had to stay in the store. But I did buy this one:



I'm not sure when I will wear it, but I think it's fantastically whimsy and fun but still whith a classy silhouette. I imagine a sophisticated Italian lady in black wavy hair, red lipstick and black gloves wearing it for a shopping spree... in the eighties...

On saturday I was barbequing for our visitors. It was a sunny and wonderful day.



The next day it was raining and thundering. But I was happy anyway. It was nice to be able to stay in and sew with a clear conscience (since warm days are rare in this country, I feel obliged to be outside when one arrives). And I could listen to the rain hammering on our abatjour (is that the proper term? I looked it up in a dictionary, and chose most beautiful synonym).



Oh, that's it for now I think. I will try updating more often so I don't have to make these massive posts.

Need to sleep now.
Love,
Helena

Let's start the show...

... as Heidi would say. I'm watching Project runway while writing this post, my favourite show! Anyways, now I would like to introduce you to my current sewing project. I am making a prom dress for my little sister, and it is slowly but steadily coming along. She wanted a dress that looked something like this dress, worn by Eva Green in Casino Royale:


Isn't it nice? And also fairly complicated. I have been working on this dress for a long while now, designing and re-designing and making endless lines of muslins. But now I have finally cut into the real fabric. Yay!
This is where I am at the moment:


Whew, draping is hard. Not quite my forte, but I'm learning. One thing complicating this sewing process is that my sister is living 1000km away (literaly, not an exaggeration). But hopefully, she will come visit me on sunday. Looking forward to seeing her, and fitting the dress on her! Therefore; hard work awaits this weak to have a fairly finished dress by sunday.
Well well, work day tomorrow, time for bed. See ya!

First post

This is my first attempt at blogging. It is a little bit scary. Let's see how it goes. More info coming up, stay tuned.