Crafty Foxes are go!

Random thing to do on a Sunday – get up super-early to get all dolled up in 1950’s styles, and wander around Wellington with a group of girls, getting your photo taken. Provides great entertainment for everyone wandering by, I tells ya!

Background: I’m a member of a craft group called Crafty Foxes. We meet every second Wednesday at a cafe in town, to hang out and chat and work on whatever crafts we bought along with us to do that night. And every so often, we do other stuff as well, just coz we can. Like today, for example! One of the girls, Natalia (aka Tilly) is a photographer. A while back, she thought it would be a fun idea to get a group of the Crafty Foxes to get all dressed up rebel 1950’s retro, and do a craft-themed photo shoot. So, we did. 😉

Naturally, me being me, I figured I may as well take on the challenge, and made dresses for us all to wear. Good excuse to use some of those re-released vintage patterns I’ve been buying. 😉 (Luckily, there were only 5 of us taking part.)

So, for Nat K, I made a stunning green-and-black patterned dress. Full skirt, fitted bodice, wide v-neck with detailing over the shoulders. Looked absolutely gorgeous on her – I’m quite proud of it, actually! 🙂

For Hiliare – snow leopard print sleeveless, v-neck pencil-skirt dress. Very retro cute and elegant with her red hair and high heels!

Teresa – black satin-look strapless dress. Fitted bodice, full skirt.

Sarah – not really a dress person, so I made her a full blue skirt, which she wore with a black top, and a black-and-white-polka-dot cardi. Cute!

And for myself, I got lazy and wore a green-and-white-gingham-with-cherries halter neck dress I made to wear to my baby bro’s wedding last year. Heh.

So yes, today.

Tilly decided to do my hair all crazy-like retro. Big, high rolled fringe, bobbed ponytail in the back. Winged eyeliner, bright red lippy, bright red nail polish, bright red shoes (and of course, the bright red hair which was looking rather flame-coloured today, since the roots were fading and it was pulled up and back, which made it look all intentional flame-coloured. Kinda cool, I thought! Although it took two washes to get all the hair dye out!!). And of course, being the middle of winter and wandering through town wearing a backless summer halter dress and with that sort of hair and makeup, people kinda looked! Lucky there was a group of us – we kinda acted it up. Lots of fun. 😉

Can’t wait to see the photos – Tilly’s sending them out to us in a week or so, so stay tuned for a couple of them on here!

Crafty Foxes ‘reconstructed tshirt’ swap

So for those who don’t know, I am a member of the Crafty Foxes, a super-fantastic group of gals who meet every couple of weeks to eat, drink, hang out, and work on whatever random crafty type stuff we’re doing at the time.

We also have craft swaps every couple of months, with a  different theme each time.  Two months ago, we started our latest swap – reconstructed tshirts.  Everyone who was taking part gave an old tshirt of theirs to another swap participant, who then had to turn said tshirt into something else over the course of the two months.  Then tonight, we had our end-of-swap meeting, where we all hung out at Katipo Cafe (gotta love those red walls!) and handed back the tshirts, in their new forms.

For the swap, I got given a tshirt from the lovely Teresa.  Pale grey marle, with a pegasus print on the front.  Teresa told me that she loved the print, but not the colour.  So, I decided to turn her tshirt into….  a different tshirt.  Yes indeed.  I found some great black-and-white-striped tshirt fabric (coz Teresa is all about gothic 1950’s style), which I used for the front and back of a new tshirt.  I then cut the pegasus print out of the front of her old tshirt, and added it to the front of the new tshirt.  I made the sleeves out of the back of her old tshirt, and after that sadly there wasn’t enough fabric left over for me to turn into anything else overly interesting….

My other swap partner (the one who was making something for me) was the also-lovely Natalie K.  I handed her one of my old breast cancer awareness tshirts, which though I loved, was too short.  Black thing, with big pink cartoon daisys on it.  Tonight she gave it back to me in it’s new form – a pair of sleeves!  Which are ultra-cute.  They’re long (halfway up my bicep) and have thumb holes, and each has a daisy on it whose cartoon face sits on the back of your hand.  So cute!  I loves them lots.  🙂

Here are some pics of the creations I made and received….