Fabric Hunting

Luma and I finally put aside our work schedules to spend a hot crispy Saturday fabric hunting. On Berwick street we hit up six fabric stores, Liberty, John Lewis, and still had time for sushi and vintage store exploring before the sun went down. My favorite fabric store was the Cloth House, for its warm hospitality, its chic decor and wonderful fabrics (You can take a tour of their store on the Cloth House website). Me and lumbars found most of our fabrics from there, including some we didn't have on our long list. All the fabric stores had something new to offer; the Silk House had a great selection of Giambatista Valli inspired fabrics, Liberty won me over with thier vintage rolls of flower prints and large black/gold buttons, and John Lewis had a variety of fine jungle/animal prints plus a range of Cathy Kidston's famous fabric prints.

Cloth House

Pretty Trimmings

Lonely Buttons

Ribbon Mania

An Assortmet of Buckles and Buttons

I imagined stitching these buckles on a t-shirt dress

Buttons in Jars

Organic Fabrics

Warm Window Display, love the pegs+the sewing machine

Our choice of fabrics

The Silk House

This fabrics store was further down the road and not on our fabric store. Store had a masculine feel to it with thicker fabcris, and darker choice of colour.

The odd stop- Beyond Retro store in Soho

Browse shopping in Liberty

Dainty tights

At the famous fabric section in Liberty I loved..
Vintage Buttons

First Aid Stitching Kits

A wad of traditional fabric samples

Trimmings, Bits and Bobs, Ribbons

A million buttons

Thread colour swatch

A whole lotta yarn

Our final picks of the buttons

If only my house was Liberty

My With Love Ribbon - had to have it, no idea what I'm going to do with it

John Lewis
Recycled tags

Urban Love

Instead of taking myself to Graduate Week and making myself useful I went Oxford Circus + furniture shopping on the Goodge. Urban Outfitters is one of my favorite shops, even though Anthropologie comes pretty close. The Book Bar on the top floor is my favorite space, and the pick of their books are creative collectibles.

Lamp Collage

Letter Collage

Underwear dress

My top pics- The Mary Kate Olsen book is surprisingly well put together and creative

Ultimate Book Bar - Every House's Must Have

Portfolio Seminar

Today I went to a portfolio event specifically to attend a How To Make Magazines seminar that Richard Wilding was kind enough to get me a ticket for when I was in the states. My excitement fizzled over on my way there seeing the tube wasn't working (due to strikes) and the weather kept switching from showery to sunny every five seconds. I got to Central Westminster Hall, the same space where I graduated last year, to find out right before the seminar that Becky Smith the founder and creative director of Lula Magazine would also be amongst the other editors to share her magazine story. The one hour long stuffy bus journey and layered coats in arm has officially been worth the visit seeing as I am a huge Lula fan. I have the last four issues of Lula magazine on a corner of my beloved bookshelf on their own, like display pieces.

The Portfolio show had two large open hall spaces where you could view hundreds of illustration and photography portfolio's and talk to the agents that represented them. The show which was put together by Creative Review and Design Week also had an interesting project running at the space called Ryan's Boothnation project. Boothnation was no ordinary photo booth; it was a sophisticated photographic studio kitted out with state of the art photo booth and everyone who came along to the Portfolios was invited to have their picture taken in the booth to form part of a special CR publication. The Portfolio event was a great networking area, they even gave out massive creative review textbooks with all the portfolio's inside. I will be blogging more about the Magazine seminar in another post becauses I have so much info to sift through and share with you.

Portfolios - Central Hall Westminster

Becky Smith for Lula Magazine

One of the cool kitted out booths at the photography section

Jelly London - Cool Illustration Agency

Loved the frames

Creative Business Cards

Queing for the Boothnation at the Portfolio show

Styling Portfolio D

Kate Moss is huge in the UK, amongst other countries in the world. So when I flipped through the portfolio of the model, Sophie and saw a photo of her mouth slightly open I thought to myself- she has a Moss mouth! And as I pointed this out to the photographer and the make up artist we got super excited and Sophie kept pulling the Moss mouth drawl perfectly and so naturally. She resembled a young Kate Moss so much at one point we had to ask her to stop. Anyways this shoot collaboration was probably the funnest of them all. It was a shoot filled with hyperactive women, all talking on top of each other, criticizing, suggesting, and offering help. There was huge energy on set which made this beauty shoot run super smoothly. I am so happy with the results and already have Sophie in mind for another shoot. For Behind the Scene footage click here.

Credits

Title: SOPHIE GIRL
Photographer: ANNA FAYEMI
Stylist: WAFA ALOBAIDAT

Hair stylist : MELLI CENGEL

Make up artist: KETI NIKOLOVA

Model : SOPHIE DICKENS @ MODELS ONE

Styling Portfolio C

I was just about to press the publish post button for Styling Shoot B when I remembered that Prim Magazine will be using it in their next issue and stopped dead in my tracks. Phew. Really want that shoot to be first published into the mag than unto my blog. So I'm skipping to Styling Folio C, a shoot in Kentish town's finest industrial warehouses and studios. Working with the model Angie was such a great learning curve for me because she moved moved moved. She walked into pitch black dark spaces filled with construction material, she climbed high up a ladder with Basso and Brooke platforms on, she curled on top of a Piano, and tested out every position we asked for. She skipped, flew, squealed and did about everything twice as hard as any other model I've worked with before. After working with Ng I started to expect a little more from models I began to work with. For behind the scene coverage of this shoot click here

Credits

Title: STRUT SEQUIN WAREHOUSE
Photographer: ANNA FAYAEMI
Stylist: WAFA ALOBAIDAT
Stylist Assistant: RAMBY
Hair and Makeup: Artist ANGELA DEVIATOVA
Model: ANGIE AT BOOKINGS MODELS

Styling Portfolio A

I was saving all my styling folio work for my website but since I treat my blog as an informal carrier of my work it might be worth posting some of my most prized collaborative projects on here too. I am never going to forget the day of this shoot because it was such a great experience. We were a group of girls traipsing the streets of the Southbank with clothes, hangers, and photographic equipment in the freezing cold. It was outdoors, it was chaotic, it was what being in London is all about. For more behind the scene notes click here.

Credits

Title: SOUTHBANK DAY MUSE
Photography: ANNA FAYEMI
Styling: WAFA AL-OBAIDAT
Make -up: CHARLOTTE FISHER
Styling assistant: LUMA BASHMI
Model: Rosanne Ferraccu at Premier Models

DIY 101

I have the longest list of DIY projects that I have put on hold forever. They include ripping my white jeans at the knees, ripping my grey tights with house keys, and deconstructing a grandma's knitted sweater with a needle. I also have a pile of clothes I need to take to a charity shop and recycle all my old magazines but that's another list of errands I have to tackle. For now settling into my new flat is a priority and some new art needs to be hung on the wall. Intead of oil canvas hunting I opted to rack my own art.

DIY Art Guide
Step 1 - Buy the book of illustration, Mistakes in the Background by Laura Dockrill from Urban Outfitters (8.99)
Step 2 - Buy two A2 gold frames from the local furniture store.
Step 3 - Rip out the funnest pages from the book.
Step 4 - Tape them together in some sort of story-line, the visible the tape the better.
Step 5 - Seal the frame and hang.

Mickey Mouse Ring

Subscribing to the East End Thrift Store newsletter means I get dibs on jumble sales and vintage store slumber parties where you get to try on all their new gear over free drinks and social chatter on Thursdays. So I took my wee self and my vintage partner Luma to the East End Jumble Sale to the rummage around through piles of clothes on the first floor. We found poeple rolling up vintage finds into ten, twenty, and fifty pound bags. Unfortunatley there wasn't much to my liking so we opted for the designer sale on Brick Lane to find that wasn't very interesting either. After a quick macaroni and olive snack I came across a stall that sold the funkiest rings. After trying all of them on I chose the huge unusual Mickey Mouse ring which has gotten a lot of attention everytime I took it out so far. Too bad the stall was nameless and I can't credit the designer but I am going back for the 3D camera necklace.

East London Thrift Store - Jumble Sale

Mickey Mouse Ring Stall

Vintage Partner -Lumzster

Find of the day - Mickey Mouse Ring