BTW...

My outfit for oversew got accepted! Yay!!! So it will be in the show on 23rd May. Here is a wee preview: Happy with my work - I think next time i will try and work within the design brief, instead of designing something for me and making it fit into the brief. Feel confident enough to do this next year!

O for awesome in Oamaru

Having started feeling reasonably ambivilant to going down to Oamaru Heritage Week for the long weekend, I finished our getaway with fresh inspiration and a head somewhat distracted by design possibilities. Work/home/life in general has had more than its fair share of stress lately, so going away seemed like just another thing to get through. However leaving Christchurch gave me the opportunity to leave my worries behind as well. And just enjoy myself - have some much needed family time and fun. Andy was in the demonstration team for Bike Polo (which came about in the late Victorian era by the way) - who would have thought?!?!? Except back then they played on rather unforgiving bikes on grass. Its a bit more technical these days. Anyhow, I have taken some pics of my experience of some of the Victorian themed Heritage week. Interspursed are some rather exciting Steampunk costumes - Oamaru being the Steampunk Capital of NZ - that celebration happens in June each year, so that will definetly be on the cards for a visit!

A much needed breath of fresh creative air

I finally got to run a workshop - and it was an upcycling workshop - my favourite type!

It was sooooo much fun - partly because it has been such a long process to finally run a workshop.  My first few contacts for running workshops sounded promising, but fell through - which was quite hard to recover from - hence the gap in my posts of late.  Suffice to say its been a really tough month of soul searching, general confusion and angst...
However Saturday's workshop was a breath of fresh, creative air.  My brief was to help people find op shop clothes and transform them into costumes for the Lyttelton Projects Festival of Lights Parade next week.
A perfect situation of the op shop being down stairs and the workshop room upstairs.  After a few trips we were ready to start.
Check out the lovely Sacha - she has always wanted her own tutu, so we set to work.  One girls raincoat, two woman's dresses,  a cosmetic bag and soft toy later, and she was all set to rock the parade in her tutu.  And if it rains her tutu is waterproof, so she won't get wet legs!

isn't the wee softie cute!

some ties attach the cosmetic bag around her waist for a hand pocket

awwww!

my trusty elna supermatic finally getting some action!

So that was one of the lovely outfits upcycled from opshop treasures. It was such a privilege to be part of Sacha's exciting upcycling learning curve -and so cool to see someone so happy with their creation!