mélange

A mix of two loves.

vintage (buttons) + crafting jewelry = ...

I recently acquired these lovely vintage button sets (just 3 of many many more). I thought of about a hundred different ways that I could use them... but what better way to combine my two loves then using them to create these great bracelets. Part of the young and fun p² line and available here:

http://pearlspearls.etsy.com

Launching Jewelry

Along with vintage, I've decided to add a little something new to my creative repertoire:

pearls²

http://pearlspearls.etsy.com

Hand crafted sterling silver and gold filled necklaces and funky bracelets for every day wear!
Upcoming goals - mixing old with new and adding more vintage materials to the pieces.

Check it out! :)

Re-Style Fashion Show

Following up from the last post... I did it! Yesterday was the Re-Style Fashion Show and Competition at the Green With Indie Craft Event here in St.Louis. It was a lot of work in the 2 weeks before re-designing and sewing the 3 dresses I decided to enter, but it was so much fun I hope this first-time event continues on annually!

before

These are 3 dresses I have been meaning to fix up for a while now. From L to R Albert Nipon power dress - super 80's/ early 90's, 1960's vintage maxi dress - love the orange, and a shapeless, drab, brown plaid dress circa early 90's(?).

after

Taking inspiration from the Spring runways, I wanted to create pieces that would be light, feminine and great for the warmer weather. Here are the finished outfits in the show:

My friend, Lisa, modeling the black floral + thrifted Chanel shoes!

A blurry detail shot of the headpiece

I decided to not add the plaid pieces to the top to keep the orange from being too overwhelming.

You can see the nervousness on my face in this pic haha

The final walk with all the models.

There were a lot of amazing pieces in the show and I was so happy to be able to display my work for the first time in a public venue offline. To my surprise, when they announced the winners, I ended up with not 1 but 2(!!!) of the awards! I received the top prize for my category-Most Eco-Fabulous Individual and a smaller prize-Most Creative Repurposing. The envelopes were filled with great stuff including gift cards to an upscale salon, a jewelry store, and tickets to the Missouri Botanical Gardens. When they were announcing the winners I was so caught up in the after-show excitement and chatting with my friends that came to watch that I'm not even sure which pieces won for what awards! At the end, all of the outfits were donated to a silent auction that benefits earthdancefarms.org. It was a really fun and eventful day and I am now relaxing the rest of the weekend, contemplating what to work on next. Stay tuned!

The prize packages.

Green With Indie Craft Show

March 21 & 22

Green With Indie Craft Show

For those of you in the St.Louis or Midwest area, there's a unique craft show coming up that looks like a good time including the Re-Style Fashion Show & Competition. I just found out about the show the other day, so I'm hoping to be able to get some new pieces together to enter. 2 weeks until the show! eek!

Soft RELAUNCH

avant après fashion relaunch!


Super cute 1970's floral print dress from Sears Fashions!

Awesome geometric print skirt!

Grunge-esque tartan plaid red and black dress!

Me oh my has time flown. Its nearly February now and I feel like I just finished with October. Curses to my full time job that leaves me with so little free time! So many exciting things have occurred recently including a new camera for shoots (Canon Rebel XT w/ Tamron lens), a trip over Christmas to San Francisco/Berkeley where the vintage was aplenty, the discovery of a great vintage store here in St.Louis, and this very cool backdrop kit to spice up the quality of my photos.

Slowly, I'm learning how to use the DSLR and properly light the backdrop to get high quality photos. Anyone know of good tutorials I can read online? :)

Check out the results so far in the newly listed items in the store. Happy weekend!

Halloween fun

before



after

Back with a new post... and slightly off topic, but this was my life for the past few weeks. In September, I volunteered to make my friends' costumes for Halloween this year. We decided the Power Rangers would be a fun group theme (ignoring the dorkiness, its childhood nostalgia!) and the feat to create all of these outfits was put on me. Everything was created from scratch and custom made for each. Five weeks of fittings and many hours of sewing later, my friends and I were transformed into the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. So into it.

We had so much fun going out to the Halloween parties around town and made the finals of two of the contests we entered. A scantily clad Catwoman beat us in one of them. Go figure.

Now that the Halloween fun is sadly over, its time to get back into my hobbies that I've fallen so far behind on. Of course that means #1 a massive revamp of the store (I still have Summer 2008 up, how embarrassing.) , #2 remaking vintage (a huge pile awaits!), and #3 catching up on blog reading (over 2500 posts unread...).

Custom for Dorothy

Last month I received a lovely Etsy message from Dorothy aka tofunation. She had recently purchased a vintage dress online, but like many vintage pieces, the shape was not very flattering.

Subject: Work on my vintage dress?

Hi there,

I'm glad I found your shop. I like the way you're modernizing the vintage pieces. I recently got a vintage dress that I like, but I want it to look slightly more modern and urban. I wonder if you do custom pieces. If I sent it to you, could you help me?

Thanks much!
Dorothy

My response? Helllll yeah! Re-creating vintage pieces is a passion of mine, and of course designing it for others makes it about 100 x's more fun.

A few back and forth messages and a negotiated fee later...

before

Dorothy didn't like the boxy shape of the top and the sleeves were a little too poofy for her liking. The length was also a little long, but she really loved the elastic waist.

I quickly drew out a few sketches of ideas based on her likes and dislikes and came up with this:

Some more back and forth emails later, the price was set, the design was set, and we were both excited for the results!

After receiving the dress in the mail, I worked on it for a few weeks until I felt it was ready to go.

The During

The top part was basically reconstructed with the sleeves and collar removed and sides taken in. Unfortunately, I was unable to create a new waistband like I had originally planned due to the elastic, but the shortened skirt length helped modernize the shape a lot.

And finally...

after

My first custom request, a success! Thanks to Dorothy for the photos and for the request! If anyone else is interested in a custom re-design of a vintage piece, please email me. I definitely want to try doing more custom pieces when time allows. I can do simple hem shortenings to full out re-designs depending on the original piece. I'll work with you to develop an idea and price is negotiable as well!

avantapresfashion@gmail.com

Also, I wanted to mention that the next few weeks may be short on quality updates (it seems each month is dwindling, ahh sorry guys!) due to a massive undertaking of creating five of my friends' costumes for Halloween. I am already pumped for that weekend (very premature, I know)... but hopefully the costumes will turn out exactly how I imagine. Now, back to the sewing machine!