1920s nails

Flo-Jo; what a woman. And what nails! Although I am not quite ready for that level of manicure I do like a little fancy nail varnish. For my latest Gelish  I have opted for a moon manicure (sometimes I have seen this called a reverse French), as was popular with movie stars in 1920s Hollywood.

I know green and blue might not be everyone's cup of tea but I am thrilled with it.

Do you get your nails done? Do you have nail art? Would you have green and blue nails?

Mass cast on

I am casting on at 9pm to celebrate the Olympics - I will try to finish the project during the Games.... I have joined Team Colette on www.ravelry.com - to be honest the team is a bit on the small side just now. OK, so there are 2 of us. Small, but perfectly formed.

I will hopefully make Mia a top:

I like green but Mia LOVES pink in the way only small girls can, so I will be using:

Hope you can join us but if not, enjoy the Olympics wherever you are x

Possible copyright infringement tshirt activity

To customise tshirts in a dodgy semi-illegal but pleasing to a 4 year old way you will need:

Cheap tshirts (Tesco were having a sale today, each of the tops cost £1)

Fabric paint (ours is leftover from Christmas, so gold and red)

Brushes

Wax freezer paper (I got mine from ebay)
Scalpel or craft blade

Pencil and pen

A four year old

You may like to look at the post on  sewweekly that gave me the idea in the first place. StephC's work is so much better than mine.

You need to draw your own design or in my case, for the artistically challenged, trace a picure of something your child really likes. Mia chose Zog.  She loves this book, and others by the same author: Julia Donaldson. The pictures are amazing, they are by Axel Scheffler. I like Zog, the storyline is fab, but my favourite is The Highway Rat. Mia loves the Gruffalo too.

Zog is the orange dragon, of course. I traced the picture with a pencil and then I used a blue pen to colour in the lines I would cut out with the scalpel. Put your wax paper on a piece of cardboard (this is not vital but does stop you cutting your table). Cut out the blue bits. Try not to cut your fingers. Do not allow four year olds to "help" even if they beg. Then put the scalpel way way waaaaaaaaay out of reach.

Take your iron, set it to warm, turn off the steam, put the wax paper (wax side down!) on the tshirt where you want your design to go. Check that is also where the four year old thinks it should go. Let him or her move the design about a centimetre to a "much better" spot. (You can miss out these steps if you like, my four year old is very opinionated.) Iron it. 

Put a piece of board or something inside the tshirt so that your paint does not seep through. Make your child wear an old tshirt.

Paint.

Obviously you only need to paint the cut out parts but your four year old might have other ideas. Mine did.

Peel the wax paper off when the paint is dry or carefully when it is wet if you cannot wait. Leave the design to dry. Iron the design to "fix" the paint (or whatever it says on the pot of paint).

That's it.

If your child is very keen indeed repeat with another design. This is Gaston the ladybird (asleep, he sleeps on his back. I did not make my girl a dead ladybird tshirt.)

Have fun!

Socks

I have finished a knitting project - socks. This is the first time I have used four needles. It is very satisfying.

Skip!

My mother rang me. Her and a friend went out today for a potter around the neighbourhood. Her friend likes to look in skips to see if there is anything worth having. This is a habit my mother finds incomprehensible (and, I suspect, embarrassing). Today they had a quick look in a skip and found about 60 patterns from the 1960s onwards. Just in a skip. Being thrown away.

And the best bit is: she is posting them to me. Hooray!

Have you ever found anything good for free?

Window shopping at the Festival of Vintage

Vintage Hair and Beauty

This weekend I had a great treat. I went to the Festival of Vintage in York. It was amazing; so much to see and do. My main treat was a vintage makeover. There was a Vintage Beauty Parlour run by lovely Bethany so I booked in to have the works. Just for fun.

At the parlour:

And the reveal:

These two charming gents were presenting a display an the Home Guard and agreed to pose with me, very kindly.

Bethany worked a miracle on my hair. She used tongs, pins and about a tone of hairspray. Her colleague did the make-up. She told me for a '50s look you need "red lips, strong blush and liquid-eyeliner winged out." You can follow Bethany on Facebook as well (links on her website).

I will be putting more pics from the Festival very soon x