A little move west

Very eager to be coming home! I'm at the airport waiting for my connecting flight after a very very very big week in Cambodia. Ups and Downs (the largest ups and the deepest downs, unfortunately) and loads to share with you when I connect my camera to my home computer this week.

I'd uploaded these flower photos for you in a draft blogpost, and I honestly can't remember why... but they're from my Westie Bestie's garden and we'll soon be closer neighbours. Husbie and I are moving into a new home in a few weeks, and I'm super eager to join him tomorrow morning to start Our New Life Together. Being apart for less that 2 weeks is heartbreaking, but an airport reunion will be delish.

Thank you all for your well wishes and darling comments on my Rizzo outfit! I thoroughly enjoyed Cambodia! I was on the hunt for TDF jewellery Gail, but instead found TDF karma shopping! And WOW can the Cambodians refashion.

Happy Sunday, what's left of it, and I'll see you during the week sometime. xoxo

Sew Weekly: RIZZO

My Grease and Amy Winehouse inspired creation! It's my first successful shirt dress! As I'm in Cambodia typing on my iPhone using the hotel's wifi, I'm not sure if this will publish! But hope you're having a great weekend!

Time to take a break!

Bye bye Melbourne! Time for a holiday to Cambodia!

My friend invited me along, and I'm so looking forward to seeing her! It's been ages. We travelled a lot together when we were younger, and I've forgotten a lot about being on the road. (LOL) Because I'm a 'glamper' (ie. glamourous camper) I've chucked my big old backpack from when my friend and I travelled Europe, and was actually considering wearing heels on the plane. My gigantic Melissa heels. Husbie politely pointed out one does a lot of walking at airports and carrying things. Perhaps I'll wear my Melissa flats instead!

Not sure if I'll have time or internerd access to post, but if you're into reading wonderful blogs regularly and will miss me terribly (LOL AGAIN), here are blogs that I like to look at:

Inner West Mum - my friend IRL in gorgeous Newtown!

By Gum, By Golly - just started reading this vintage gal's story, so cute! Thanks Franca for the linky dink!

Kat's been posting heaps at Petticoats & Peplums and is getting married soon and is pretty much DIY-ing the whole amazing affair!

Gail's doing Frocktober, and always makes great stuff to wear to work. Glamourous in the office!

And Blue Milk is just being awesome as per usual. With moving house stories as added bonus.


See you soon darling darlings, and I'll have some moving house stories to share once I return! YAY!

xoxo

Shooting A Wedding

Husbie and I shot another wedding on Saturday; a lovely couple of peeps and we spent the day in the Botanical Gardens! It was looking like showers but, as we got set up before the bride arrived, the sun came out and stayed all afternoon.

Just lovely! Happy Tuesday!

Sew Weekly: Yum Sangria!

Happy Monday! I'm on HOLIDAYS!

Of course, being my first proper day off for a while, I'm going to spend it sewing, playing video games and blobbing around (just like I would have during school holidays but without the sewing part... watching RAGE video clips that I'd taped was probably my whole Year 10 school holidays!) and thought I'd show you my 'Spanish Harlem' themed dress from last week's Sew Weekly!

My post at Sew Weekly explains how I came about sewing this dress, but I wanted to gush over my friends' bar in Brunswick East! It's called Mr Wilkinson, and on Lygon Street, so if you stroll past that area near the East Brunswick Club, you'll spot it across the road.

I gush because it's a great place for Sangria, and where we took these gorgeous photos last week. I gush because it's the local hang out for most of my friends. I gush because Ry Ry made such gorgeous Sangria for these photos! And I gush here, because they don't have a website, or facebook or twitter and hey, they probably don't need all the online stuff, because it's really the face to face, good conversations, good wine and food IRL stuff! BUT, Lucy from the Design Files wrote up a great piece after the it first opened, so you can see a few more of the designery shots, as her partner runs the place with my friends.

Now that it's daylight savings/summertime here in Australia I'm just HANGING out for those warmer evenings to spend chit chatting, and hanging with friends. After my trip to Cambodia, I reckon it'll be just right for that kinda stuff!

Once again, I've sewn with a stashed thrifted floral material, it's stretch knit but has a little more synthetic feel to it, I didn't need to hem the edges for the hem or the floppy sleeves so it's quite hardy and not frayish! I've got more fabric left over, so thought I'd keep this dress longer and make a super short and tight 80s skirt as well, to wear with boots!

xoxo

Lightroom Kudos

Recently I updated my computer, and also updated my Lightroom software. I've spoken about Lightroom before, but just a reminder that I'm in no way a professional photographer, or colour person but I tend to only use Lightroom for ordering, processing and colour grading my photos. Some peeps use online software, some use Photoshop (or Potatoshop - thx Franca!) but my photographer friends told me about Lightroom, and for simple things and great colour photos, I totally use it and love it.

The above is a normal photo from my Lumix camera. We shot another wedding yesterday, so I've been taking it around with me for a few weeks to remember how to use it (which is pretty straightforward) and took this photo of tramlines, lights and towers near my work. Great clouds too right?

I've then updated my 'presets' with Lightroom, and thought I'd show you these 'filters' or 'colour grade' presets that are FREE to download to add to your Lightroom. Have a look at these two diff looks:

 

One is a bit stronger in the blue than the original, and the bottom photo is so vintage-y and cute, and these are 'preset' filters that awesome people design and you can flick between them and choose what looks best! OMG EASY!

Because awesome people make these presets, I thought I'd do a shout out here:

Here's some Perfect Presets for Lightroom by OnOne Software (I used their free filter for the middle photo) and there's over 50 filters to use... maybe even close to 100 different things from borders, vignettes, colours, vintage looks etc! YIKES and all for free!

Pierre has made 6 new presets to WOW your photos and I used his WOW vintage filter for the bottom photo.

And I googled up these great free presets as well!

Not to get too nostalgic about things, but when I first studied hypertext theory (I won't even begin to explain, it's way too boring and complex and too 1998) we were all about researching 'shared knowledge' and the library that is everywhere. I guess that's open source information, and freeware and the amazing thing about the internetz today! I'm in love that amazing people make these filters, and share them with us! AND, if you're just starting to explore photography and Lightroom, these pages are also really great in helping you use the photography software for your needs as well! There's probably plenty of great shareware/freeware stuff out there, but just wanted to share it with you and say thanks to these designers!

xoxo

Self Stitched September 2011: TICK!

My handmade month; it's Self Stitched September according to Veronica Darling!

I've never used Kaboodle before, so I know this is not uber 'designer' like in my layout, so please just LOL at me! This is my 'image board' for the outfits I wore twice during September:

And the above 'image board' is the rest of the outfits, all handmade but outfits I just wore once during the month. This is my second Self Stitched September, and compared to last year I found it really easy to select and make up outfits. Last year I had the feeling by about 20 outfits in that I didn't have enough 'lounging about' clothes, or I only had 1 really fun dress to wear out... and I'm not sure about you, but some times of the month, I just don't want to wear tight fitting clothes, or high heels or high necked restricted clothes. And then other days I only wanna wear black and couldn't be seen dead wearing floral. My tastes change a lot of a month, but I feel my handmade wardrobe has enough diversity to cater for my moods.

I have a 2 week period with most of my clothes, it's some sort of automatic brain schedule thing that I have where if I wear my red heart skirt on a Tuesday, I automatically cancel it out of choosing it again until a fortnight later, so I would allow myself to wear it on the Wednesday, 2 weeks after I wore it. Is that weird? I don't even know why I've invented this rule or schedule in my head, but I just fall into it, and I guess it makes me wear the rest of my wardrobe on a rotation.

WEIRD.

 So overall, I felt super comfy and not restricted by SSS this year, and I probably have 2-3 second hand dresses and a couple of refashioned dresses that I missed wearing through the month. What I did notice though, and maybe I'll look at that at the end of the year of Sew Weekly, is that I didn't really wear as many SW garments as I'd thought I would... I'm worried that while Sewing Weekly is amazing and so fruitful in my mad sewing skillz world, I often speed through some things, and don't take as much time selecting my fabrics or testing out different techniques... and I find myself with some garments I won't wear again. But, there are some great themes coming up for Sew Weekly before the year is out, and I'm AMAZED at how I have been challenged with some elements of sewing and crafting by the Sew Weekly themes! My friend saw me the other day and was floored that I'd made pants! TROUSERS! YAY!

Thumbs up to Zoe who's spun us another Self Stitched September! You're amazing to blog and sew along with! YAY for the internetz! xoxo

Sew Weekly: Sports & Pink

Hey and good morning Monday early birds (if you're in Melbourne right now) or good evening night owls! The most recent Sew Weekly theme was pink, and I'm not too crash hot on pink as a colour. I don't HATE it, but I don't like a lot of it... on me. So here's what I came up with:

It's a sprinkle of pink! The 1970s polyester tshirt is a total remnant that I only had just enough fabric for (story of my life) and the leggings are from a pattern (that you can read about on the Sew Weekly post) and made from thrifted stretch knit (one day I'll learn what all these stretch knit things are, and what the difference is between them all!). I also don't like a lot of sport, so here's just a smidge of me "playing" tennis, but now that I have an oufit to wear, I'll surely go down to the courts all the time right. Right? RIGHT? One day.

Here's my most favourite photo from the courts:

Totally 70s and totally awesome. Do you see I have matching sweatbands. SWEATBANDS!

See ya and have a great start to the week gorgeous!

xoxo

Last outfits for Self Stitched September

Self Stitched September wrapped up (of course) and the end of September on Friday, and the above outfit is what I wore to work. Handmade vest (lined in the same tartan fabric) and handmade bowtie. Whenever I see this bowtie, I'm like "I should make you a tutorial video" but realistically there's never enough time to do this, so I'll try and find you a tutorial online that would be kinda the same. But I made the vest and tie for the Sew Weekly theme ... what was it? It was the 'Kidding Around' theme, and I called it my 'Oh Shirley Suit' after Shirley Temple and here's my blogpost as well! April was a total blur for me, thank goodness for the internet documenting everything! One day I'll have time to take stock and read it all and enjoy!

Last Thursday I had to get all cosy again with my tshirt dress with built in neckwarmer! I wore this on the second or first day of SSS as well, and I'm really interested in how many outfits I wore twice, and I'm tallying them all up now in Kaboodle (just signed up for it, not sure how it differs from polyvore yet, but I think it's kinda like pinterest - SO MANY ONLINE THINGS) and I'll have a big board of the whole month and I'll post about it here soon. (How much of this blog is just for my own amusement, I tell ya!)

Anyways! Another late night sleepy photoshoot, a la "OOPS! Better take a photo before I take this off!":

Please don't tell Husbie I took this one... he was mid sorting what needs to get to the op shop!

Okie dokes, I've got a couple sewing things to get done today; 2 Sew Weekly outfits and a work bunting decoration and it's already 2.03pm on Sunday... placing bets, will the rest of the day go according to this plan:

1. Sew for an hour
2. Have a cuppa tea (3rd for the day)
3. Sew for half an hour
4. Have lunch with Husbie & his friend - bruschetta!
5. Sew for half an hour but actually just fiddle around with the ipad to get This American Life working
6. Go to the shops for cider

Maybe setting goals low, like above, will mean I'll be PLEASANTLY surprised when I finish all three projects. LOL

xoxo

From my desk: Toy Camera

Here's a couple of extra shots from the Spring Palette themed week at Sew Weekly, that didn't make it in my post. The above photos are using the toy camera lens for our Canon, they do have a vintage wash on them from my Lightroom, 'yesteryear' is the preset... but other than that the lens is what makes it 'softer' and vintagey in the wash. I love how the outer of the photo is darker and blurred. NICE! I have no idea what settings Husbie used on the camera, but they're just so lovely!

The photo below is without the toy lens, and just the normal Canon lens and you can see how the colours and darks are more contrasty... do I sound like I know what I'm talking about? YAY!

This week my phone officially died, so I'm off to the shops now to hopefully get a new one. Smartphone why are you not smart enough for my heavy duty usage!? I do have my sporty outfit to post for you, but since I ran outta time to blog properly, I thought I'd leave you with photos that are sitting on my desk(top) and waiting for something to happen to them.

xoxo