Giveaway Winner

Ladies and gentlemen! We are thrilled to announce the winner of the 250 followers giveaway for box a smashing retro accessories! and (drum roll please) the winner is!!!.....

TAMMIE! 

If you can email me your address to viv(at)vivcore(dot)com I'll get your gift set sent right out!
Thanks so much to every one who participated, and thanks for all the input! It's been a great help and I'll be taking all your comments on board for all kinds of future Quaintrelle Life posts!

DIY Teacup

New craft tutorial added to the Quaintrelle Life website! Small project to decorate your own teacup at home!

Using a little Photoshop know how it's easy to make your own custom teacup!

This is one I made a few years back when I was writing the tutorial the first time around for the now defunct Shojo Beat magazine (RIP Shojo Beat, we all loved you)

Click here to see yourself how simple it is!

Vintage Halloween

Though time might be tight, Halloween is coming fast, and one thing that means is, it's costume time!

While the rest of the world pulls out their costume poodle skirts and party store flapper dresses for a vintage inspired Halloween. Where might someone who loves vintage fashion in everyday life go for retro flavor come masquerade time? How about the Halloween and masquerade costumes of the past!? Here are a few of my favorite vintage costumes I've run into this year, hopefully they'll be able to offer you some inspiration when pulling together a retro Halloween costume of your own!
(my favorite retro costumes are the one based on household objects like the tube of toothpaste bellow, or the updated period costumes)

Costumes from a 1920's costume catalog available here on Etsy

 Costumes from a Weldons catalog from the 1930's. See the rest of the catalog on Carbonated's Flickr stream

Some vintage costume sewing patterns from the sew wiki costume section....

I actually ran into a photo from the 1940's with a couple of gals in costumes pretty similar to the one above!
For further inspiration, Amazon has this rather great looking book, full of nothing but costume illustrations from the 1920's-1950's. I would imagine with that under your belt you'll never be caught without a costume idea again! (after all, there's New years, and Mardi Gras to get vintage costuming for as well ;P)

Masquerade: Costume Inspirations 1920s-1950s

Weekend in LA

People might have figured from my style posts, that I don't own a lot of clothes that I didn't make/design, but every once in a while I do like to do a spot of shopping when I go out of town. Last weekend we flew out to LA to hang out with some friends and I was able to go crazy on a rare shopping spree! (and eat my body weight in tacos)

This trip close to my favorite retro candy and soda shop Rocket Fizz I found my new favorite vintage everything shop, Playclothes. The unit is huge (heheh) a cavernous gilded space crammed with vintage clothes from just about all eras, helpfully grouped by type and decade.

Kid in a candy store! (even before we got to the candy store) Although I fell in to the usual vintage shopping trouble of right clothes wrong sizes, I did get unusually lucky on others!

I was on a mission to find a nice 60's floral sweater to match some of my dresses and found a lovely Darlene sweater in the right size and right color, and perfect print! (Score!) Another dash of serendipity was when I found that an unrelated skirt I picked up (dead stock and perfect size) was a Darlene Colormate made to match their sweaters, and in a color that matched said sweater. happy days! The only trouble I have is that the tiny buttons wont stay closed in the 50 year old buttons holes, but hey finding an ensemble like that is too good to grumble about a few springy pearly buttons so I wont. ( Felt even better when I found the same sweater only in pink in another shop for $130 more than I spent on mine) Aside from that amazing luck I picked up a floral hat and an 2 piece 60's sheath dress and coat combo from there too!

The other thing on the top of my must see shop list was the Vivienne Westwood boutique that opened earlier this year. Much bigger and brighter that the ones I've lived close to in the UK, the staff were really friendly I snagged a red mock croc Chancery heart bag to match my legions of red shoes, (because nice girls wear red shoes)

The rest of the time I spent hanging out with some great friends which are worth more than even sweater set luck, and playing on a bouncy castle with lots of grown ups and my best 3 year old pal Max! I wish all our friends were closer, this country is too damn big. (also, want Santa to bring me a bouncy castle for my house and a yard big enough to keep it in, those things are fun!!!)

 

(The song I had in my head the whole trip) 

Also our 250 followers giveaway is still open till Oct 20th, for anyone interested in winning a box of retro goodies!

Quaintrelle Give Away!

First up I want to say a big thank you to everyone who follows Quaintrelle Life!

Since we are now just over 250 followers here on the blogger, it seems like jolly good timing for a good old fashioned give away!

Up for grabs is this little instant wardrobe set of accessories including white gloves, hair bows, Lipstick (in Carmine), and some of my favorite teas.  Everything you need to turn your favorite vintage dress into your favorite vintage outfit.

I really enjoy writing this blog, so this might be a good time too to find out more about what you enjoy reading here (to make sure you have as much fun reading it!) and that's the theme for the give away...

To Enter:

• Leave a comment on this post letting me know what you would like to see more of on this blog! (in keeping with the blogs focus, so please nothing specific to lolita)

• You must be a follower of this blog (LJ followers please follow us here to enter, we can do more with the blog if we can show people a more accurate number of our followers at the side here)

• The Give away is open till October 20th and the winner will be drawn out of a hat, and announced October 21st! (Drawing has been moved to the 23rds since I'm out of town again till then)

Good luck guys!

Don't Fear The (hair) Reaper

If there is one thing the vintage community loves, it's hairstyling. I know I probably spend more time thinking about how I'll style my hair each day than what clothes I'm going to wear! Part of the reason is because a new hair style is free, and always on hand, so if I ever feel bored, all it takes is a few bobby pins to make something new!

As a result a I sometimes fear that less length means less options. The constant pull on the other side of that is when I see just how many of my favorite classic film stars and models were sporting short locks (even Veronica Lake cut off her famous long tresses)

I recently went in the shorter hair direction, and am having so much more fun with it! So for any girls (or guys) out there who have been tempted by a drastic change here's a post to help you take the plunge!

last week I had a good 5" cut off, and took my hair from long middle of my back length, to just sitting at my shoulders length. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to do as much with it any more, but turns out it's been no problem at all. I can still do a nice set of victory rolls and bumper bangs (my favorite vintage elements), and so many new things I couldn't before. In fact I haven't lost single style from my repertoire, only gained new ones!

I made a small list of things to think about before doing something a little drastic...

1. Hair will grow back. After a few months you'll be back where you started any way.
2. What do you really like doing with your hair right now, and could you do that if it were shorter?
3. What would you like to do with your hair you can't now but could after a cut?
4. If you are already unhappy with your hair, and end up not exactly in love with the new one your still in the same situation! Nothing to lose!
5. Would it requite a lot of maintenance? Try keeping up with any curl sets etc beforehand to see if it will be too much upkeep to maintain the style you want.

I know it's a real girl cliche, but a bad hair day (or period) can bring down your mood, but just as easy a hair change can be a real boost. It's like seeing a whole new you looking back.

So if you're thinking about bangs, going shorter etc but just feeling a little to scared, I hope this helps take away some of the worry and that you too might find yourself enjoying a brand new style! ( Lisa Freemont Street recently went shorter too, so hopefully there'll be lots of hairstyling tips coming from her for shorter hair)

Here are some of my shorter hairspiration favorites...