Boudoir Darlings

A few months ago I discovered, and became really interested in 1920s boudoir dolls. I love them because they had such a short run, just though the 20's and 30's, and are so perfectly frivolous!

For any one as late to the pary as me, boudoir dolls came about as part of the many crafts coming into Paris from Russia at that time. Relativly simple cloth bodies, painted faces, and at the time more Russian style costume. They became more and more popular and soon they were being made in fantastic18th century inspired costumes, as fashionable flappers and seedy undesirables. Women would drape them around their bedrooms and personal spaces. They represented the style of the times, and also the fantasies and daydreams of the young women holled up in these rooms. The dolls weren't only restricted to the house, some daring flappers would carry their dolls out for a night on the town. More than just a fashion doll, they were dolls as fashion accessories!

 You can spot them quite often in old movies, and they show up fairly regularly in photos of film stars and flappers through out the 20's and 30's.

I design clothing and accessories for a living, but also make and customize dolls pleasure, so these have so much appeal to me as dolls and as accessories.
 from cute but beat up to "I can't believe it stayed so clean for so long!" Trawling through listings and photos I found myself more and more wanting to make my own so that it could be just as personal as some of the dolls that appeared to be to their owners in the old photos like the one above.

It took a while, but after getting my hands covered in clay, and clothes whited out with dust, I finally managed to steal some time the other day to finish off my first boudoir doll! She looks like a Constance so that's what she's called.

She went from a creepy head on a stick to a (apparently still creepy) well dressed girl, swimming in ruffles, ribbons and art deco styling!

She has a little floss wig, picture dress, and lots of little ribbon trimmings, right down to mini knee level garters!

There's whole line of projects to work on using this doll, and it's got me started making old style dolls which is something I've been wanting to do for a while.

A few things I might do differently next time around, but over all she makes me smile, and a great starting point for bringing yet another new old thing into my life :) More photos over on Dolly Daydream (including the dolly garters!!!) along with a lot of the other dolls I've made and customized over the years.

 

Vintage Catalog ♥

I have a new love in my life, I feel it could be a lasting affair, this new love? Why vintage catalogs of course! I recently picked up a handful of of them as inspiration materials after scouring the internet for images during my latest webdesign adventures. Each one has been a musty trove of ideas on a surprising amount of my job duties!

Photography/Blogging
The most obvious is of course the clothes themselves, so much inspiration has started to come out of these in terms of design, but also other things I hadn't really thought about. One thing that has struck a surprising cord is the models themselves! The styling of course is great, but also the poses! Models stand a different way in a lot of the garments because the clothes themselves took a subtly different carriage to show off the designs, full skirts, curves and general feel of the time all shop up in different ways on the models.

Web Design

I love reading the copy on a lot of the items too, you can get a great idea of what was important to each catalogs demographic from the way each product is described. Add onto that the layout, typography and graphics which are so great, and these have played a large part in my latest site re-design! One of the main reasons I picked up my first catalog was to help with the shop re-design and to hopefully make internet shopping as retro friendly as possible.


Home Decorating (not work but...)
I know a lot of folks out there like to indulge in some retrofication of the old homestead too. I've probably spent hours going through the home sections of the bigger catalogs for furniture/decor inspiration, it's just a shame we can't just pick up the phone and order those awesome curtains!

Good for Giggles
It's true too that not everything old is cool, I got a few giggles out of some of the photos/products that time has just not been kind to, things for example like the faux fur hat that doubles as a wig

I'll admit that some of them have a fusty "I've been in an attic for 50 years" smell that is less than fun on the allergy front. but adding some primary sources to my "library of awesome" is possibly worth a sore throat or two.

For an easier peek inside the world of flea market catalogs there are a few collected books out there that do just that from Amazon

Turquoise Tile

After a few setbacks (things like running out of tile and having it be out of stock for 4 months for eg) had made operation new kitchen run kinda behind, but for any one who remembers the project we got a bit closer to total completion this week! With thanks to a good friend of ours and his magic tile skills our turquoise back-splash is finally finished!

I'm loving the super shiny glass tiles with the red counter top.

To be honest now there isn't much else left to do, I still need to order the fabric for, and to sew up the window curtains and seat covers, but at this point that's just about it.

This has been the first room I've ever really designed and I'm so loving it! Dusty made it functional, I made it red. Can't wait to be able to do the grand tour once all the little things are done and in place. Watch this space for the finished photos!

Table Top Living

This Thanksgiving, just as every day I was thankful that I married a fella that not only loves to cook, but is also mind blowingly good at it! In an effort to create a table worthy of the food, and bring a bit of extra retro charm to our "so close to finished" new kitchen/dining area I took to the thing I do best, sewing!

Long time blog followers know we've been working on a 1950's inspired red and turquoise kitchen for a while, and during Thanksgiving prep this year I managed to pull together a new red cotton table runner (reversible with a super cute Route 66 print on the other side) and a set of 6 gingham oil cloth place mats.

A super simple project the table runner is padded with thermal batting to keep the table top safe from hot serving dishes, and the oil cloth mats wipe clean fast for easy day to day living!

All little touches, but it's the bright little details that make a meal feel special and table seem inviting.

Red and Sparkly!

They said it couldn't be done!!! (ok exaggeration, they said "it shouldn't be done") but we finally got our hot new sparkly red counter top installed and it's everything I had hoped it would be!

We're still waiting to get the tile and paint up that will set everything off in a red+turquoise retro perfection, but things are already really coming together.

I have to admit as soon as it was down I spent a good 10 minutes playing around in the kitchen admiring the sleek shiny red surface and got to thinking, what if I had listened to all the people who told me to consider something less, well, red? I know I wouldn't have been as thrilled as a kid on Christmas like I was when it went down, and I know if i was buying this house I wouldn't squee for an Uba Tuba counter top the way I would if I walked in on a property to find this lipstick colored wonder slab. How many other people feel the same way? I wonder how many people do decorate in a way that makes their place "easy to sell" but secretly want something much more fun, and how many buyers really want something much more fun too?

There was a story someone told on Retro Renovations about how they went to look at a house which had a lilac bathroom suite and were crazy excited about it, but when they went back again later the awesome lilac toilet was gone and a  regular white one now stood in it's place (much to their disappointment)

I'll admit when the time comes selling this place with all the colors we picked and wallpaper we are about to pick (sin number 2!) might be tricky and I might be eating my words. But there might be a young couple coming in and losing their mind over the sexy red counter top the way I just did and thrilled to have found it.

I do know one thing though, as the white walls a beige carpets slowly disappear from our house, I find myself wanting to be in it longer and longer, and my husband and myself are happier and happier decorating for ourselves and not so much for the next guys who are going to live here.

(Edit: For all the people who've been googling for red counter top photos, check out the newer posts in the decorating tag for some bigger better photos)

Drapes Match the Kitchen

A few weeks back I missed an auction for some crazy awesome 50's wallpaper. At first i was kinda bummed out I had forgotten to bid, but then I remembered that what I really wanted was fabric not wall paper.

The paper has these great googie illustrations of chefs and bakers in those wonderful mid century pastels and brights. I was luck enough to save some of the photos from the auction and have been busy trying to trace the illustrations into Photoshop so that I can have them printed on fabric later for our seat covers and drapes!

The web has a few services out there right now that will turn your digital images into usable fabrics, places like Spoon Flower are a great resource for any one looking to do a retro renovation, and just not able to find the fabrics they want/need. I know I hunted around for a fabric I loved, this one came close from Michael Miller, if it had been turquoise instead of green I'd have snatched that up!

There are some great retro fabrics out there for your home projects, and when the design is no longer put there, you can always DIY! I'll have more on our fabric once it's done!

Light Fantastic

Some people go pretty adventurous with kitchen cabinets, but we're working on a budget which makes Ikea pretty much the natural choice. The fronts we went with are the Nexus Birch. The flat fronts are perfect for a 50's style kitchen, and the color is light enough to take a bold color scheme (turquoise walls and a sparkly red counter top!) One great way that we're hoping to bring some extra vintage flare to the cabinets is with these great fixtures from rejuvenation.com.

I instantly fell in love with the boomerang drawer pulls and the star back plates for the cabinet knobs, so 50's!

The schoolhouse light with the red rings will go over the dining table and should have a nice cheery feel to it?

The site also has some smashing Victorian pieces for cabinets and lighting, my favorite is this crazy over the top bat light! 

Right now we have our floor and the exciting kitchen building part is starting to happen. I can't wait to see and post the finished kitchen.

Pick a Paper

I grew up in a house filled with wallpaper, then one day slowly all wallpaper left my house and the houses of everyone I knew, I hadn't really thought about the stuff for years, but now as we start redecorating, I can't get wallpaper out of my head!

I'd been struggling with the front room design, needing something as a starting point, and decided some swish retro wallpaper was the answer! I'd come across the Bradbury and Bradbury website a while back when I first started thinking about sorting out our bedroom (another project for another day!) and figured they'd have exactly what I was looking for.  They do a great line of hand printed wallpaper which in person are even more lovely looking than online, the layers of ink give them great texture and are so much more beautiful than your average wallpaper. Once the samples came in, it was tough to pick out the winners...

Originally I'd been thinking kinda 50's like our kitchen will be, but then the art deco Aeroplane kinda won over Dusty and myself, so I think that's what it's going to be! Add some fun art deco style accents and it should be a winner?
(The bedroom wallpaper is going to be art deco too, silver Volute!)

I'm a sucker for the 1920's-50's when it comes to houses, but for anyone looking for some great art nouveau or Victorian arts and crafts papers this is the perfect place to shop too! (pricey, but I'm kinda looking at it as art more than wallpaper) Now back to clearing out the kitchen...

Red and Blue

We're getting ready to start the big remodel on our downstairs right now as the first step to turning our house into something of a mid century modern Quaintrelle palace! The kitchen is the part I'm currently most excited about, our current set up is pretty non functioning, and more outdated than retro cool. I've been scouring the internet for ideas and coming up with a plan.

A great source of inspiration for interior vintage style has been old flooring company ads like Armstrong Linoleum. American Vintage Home over on flicker has an amazing collection from the 1920's through to the 60's. I love the bright colors and clean lines a lot of them have. In my head I have something of a red and turquoise theme going on with birch cabinets. Something kinda fun and punchy! I'll be taking some before photos and keeping the blog updated with the progress we make!