Let's try something a little different!

Okay, let's try this.  I wanted to do something picture-heavy and topical today, but I'm not in the mood to code a Treasury Wednesday (on Friday), so let's play clothing-and-jewelry pairings.  I don't get to do this much in real life, since I'm the youngest of my coworkers in a fairly conservative area, so virtual dress-up it is.

For the pretty base pieces in this post, I'm using Maxi dresses from Goddiva.  Just in the interests of disclosure.

Let's start with this little mesh-insert number, which -- yes -- is sort of daring for many people, but could easily go sci-fi (Inara cosplay, anyone?) to pull it off:



It's actually transparent, not silver; that's the mannequin.  Which leaves us with any metal option we desire.  How shall we make this fantastic?  I'm thinking with a big steampunk statement necklace like this one:


Sorry, sold to a pretty lady at Upstate Steampunk!

And maybe a jeweled belt, like this nice vintage example, which would suit either the teal or the red version of the dress and, in either case, introduces another high-contrast color that would be fantastic in a draped shawl, or as earrings:

Available here from Nana's Cottage House Antiques.

Instant sleek space-opera sci-fi -- or maybe even bustle it up over a constrast underskirt and see what happens.

Less costume and more couture, you say?  Fine.  Look at this peacock-patterned garment:



You could actually wear this under a waist-length leather jacket and calf-high boots, and have a bit more of a casual-elegant look on a spring day.  Try it with a necklace that adds more visual weight to the top half of the ensemble. For this purpose, I can't decide if I prefer the knotted linen from Grey Heart of Stone on the top or the repurposed bridle rosette from Funkyjunkmama below:



Probably the bridle rosette.  It picks up the colors attractively without blending in, and has a sturdier, heavier look that will contrast well with the dress's airiness.  Hey, both!  No?

On warmer days, this dress of course demands a light shrug and a cool big bracelet like this one:


Available here with matching earrings here.

Belatedly ...

... I really should mention that the Southern steampunk cons, Upstate Steampunk and AnachroCon, are well worth the trip.  I was a vendor at Upstate Steampunk at the beginning of the month.  It was a delight to meet so many fans of such vastly varying ages -- including many of my and M's colleagues, hers at Clemson and mine at the tech college!  This included Gypsey Teague, a lovely lady who makes killer chainmaille weaponry and who organizes the event with her partner.  Overall, the con was small but profitable and with superb gaming, and despite a giggling militant vegetarian who thought she was a pagan but didn't know what a solstice was at the next vendor table, I was delighted to meet a number of other vendors of clothing, jewelry, embroidery, fine art, etc. who were simply a pleasure.

I also had the great fortune of seeing some delightfully colorful steampunk outfits, including a young authoress who had assembled a brilliant bustled tatterpunk outfit in animal print.  It worked beautifully.

M and I did some fun multicultural stuff, including (for me) a Scottish-inspired pseudo-military ensemble with a vintage woman's kilt, a wool beret, and rendundant eyewear; and (for both of us) Anglicized/Orientalized North African outfits.  Me as warrior, M as harem girl.  She pulled it off with her usual aplomb.

Please, Southern steampunks: plan for AnachroCon in Atlanta at the end of winter and Upstate Steampunk next fall.  I can staunchly assure you that you won't regret it.


Available here.

It's my birthday and I'll talk about buttons if I want to

Yes, in fact it is.  My age is a palindrome for the first time in eleven years!  And until midnight M and I are only 8 years apart!

The buttons from the necklace I posted last week came from the single best deal I've ever gotten on vintage buttons.  Here's another made from buttons from the same lot:

 
Available here.

It was at a yard sale, and the guy selling them had sorted them into jars by color and clearly knew they were of value, but some jars had a horrifically foul-smelling mold in them, so he gave me a price cut on all of them if I was willing to clean them myself.  It turned out that only one jar had the mold, and the smell in the others was merely the natural consequence of putting lots and lots of Lucite in an airtight glass jar for a couple of months (Lucite stinks a little; it contains some kind of acid whose name escapes me at the moment).  I scrubbed them all with toothbrushes and buried them all in coffee grounds, and only ended up losing the one jar; the rest smell just fine, and there wasn't a single junk button.  All primo vintage stock.

Consequently, I can afford to do a special offer on stuff from that lot.  So here it is.  Buy two items, at least one containing buttons (look here), and get 20% off on the lower-priced item when you check out with the code "Lucite always kinda smells if you seal it in a glass jar for a month."  Spelling doesn't count.  Add the code to the Note to Seller when you buy and I'll give you the discount within 24 hours through PayPal.  Offer lasts until11:59 PM on September 30.

Instant Vintage

Available here.

What is it about this color combination that screams "vintage"?

I mean, naturally the color of the large plastic/resin buttons is very vintage -- I generally refer to that shade as "60's peachy pink," though from a quick consultation of that ever-handy resource, Wikipedia's list of colors by shade, I suppose technically it's coral.  (Random side note -- I'm that weird genetic anomaly, a colorblind female, so I can't actually distinguish a strong orange from a true red.  I have to ask M for a judgment of harmony if I'm designing in reds or greens, and it's made putting together the Mixed Media Packs for Ballet Llama something of an adventure.)

Anyway.  It's not the muted coral hue I'm referring to, but the combination of it with black.  Pink with black always looks either vintage awesome or modern tweeny "rock star" bleh to me, but this is a particular combination that M and some of my coworkers reacted to in the same manner.  Maybe it's the blue-black jet hue of the blacks that's doing it; that's also a very vintage-feeling color.

This, incidentally, is also one where I bit the bullet and included a photo on black, which may or may not have actually been a good idea:


But it looked too bizarre with black at the edges and white in the middle, and this gives a truer idea of the variation among the buttons, so this was the only way to make the contrast work.

In general, these aren't great photos. I'll need to rework the cropping, I think, and try for a deeper focus.

But hey, check out those great 1960s flapper-style rose beads!

A Little Grin

In the description for the earrings below, I actually used the one really cool thing I learned from the Etsy writing workshop: Using a quick, unusual story to explain damage to a vintage item.



Sold!

To wit: "The two large pearl beads have slightly different shades and imperfections (I like to imagine it comes of their being worn by a dangerous gang of flapper girls for a famous faux pearl heist), but this is barely visible and what can be seen only enhances the vintage feel of the earrings."


It's always nice when something you wrote makes you smile a little later on.  I got this feeling from the descriptions of some of the stick incenses for my current Elance client, too.  It's a high, like suddenly realizing that the beads are falling into an additional pattern you didn't even plan but which is perfect.  Flipping over a pancake to find you've judged just right and it's wholly fluffy, and melt-in-your-mouth gold.  Or perfectly executing a martial arts form.

Huh?

Two mystifying pieces of feedback we received recently on Ballet Llama recently:


"Item much nicer than expected."


"haven't seen them yet, I know I will like them."

...
So ... um ... vintage beads and findings from Ballet Llama are so nice that you'll be able to tell how high-quality they are before they arrive! ... even when you're ... expecting not to like them at all?

Man, I'm supposed to be the expert and I have no idea how to spin this.

Thanks to the relevant customers for their purchases and their lovely feedback, even though it confused me.  <3

A necklace I wanted to talk a little more about

Available here.

I named this necklace Arc of Ages, which is supposed to be a cleverish allusion to Rock of Ages (still a'rollin, rock of ages ...).  We got the vintage (I date it to the 1970s based on style) necklace base from Grandma's Antiques and Things, a fantastic little store run out of a garage in Pendleton which has become my primary steampunkerie supplier (the octogenarian proprietor is really having trouble figuring out what those nice girls are doing with all that weird hardware).

What I wanted to point out, because my blog, not my item descriptions, is the place for annoying self-congratulation, is the rather coherent symbolism that forms in the strange combination of materials here.  (Note that M deserves the majority of the credit for this.)  The large watch face, of course, aligns it with the sf-clockwork look.  The rectangular shield has an odd, delightful filigree pattern reminiscent of a somewhat mechanized paisley -- and of course, nothing is more neo-historical than shamelessly appropriating the motifs of other cultures (see here.)  The arrangement of the subtle gears (really, they're barely visible in person, the light picking them up for an instant before they vanish for a moment in the harmonized chaos of the design) arcs gracefully around the watch face like an event horizon.  Also suggesting the passage of time and the "message of ancient days," as the sole quote I know from Cicero pontificates, is the centerpiece of the watch face: an antiqued silvertone pewter connector in the shape of a Celtic knot, representing infinity.

Multicultural, neo-Victorian, time-traveller-esque -- I think I found steampunk, honey!  Two different thicknesses of triple-link cable chain (vintage) complete the necklace in a statement-goddess-waterfall shape.

I'm also proud of the rather slick wirework on the piece.  See the back:

Treasury Wednesday: The unsubtle beauties of lipstick red

I've wanted to try on a deep, lush, '40s-esque crimson lipstick since I was thirteen -- and no one will ever let me. Longtime readers will not be at all surprised that makeup is a world I treat with half-dismissive, half-deferential wariness, being not any good at it myself, so I'm not entirely sure why.

This is a tribute to one of my favorite character archetypes: The no-nonsense, sensual modern femme fatale. I like stories where efficiency is made into something that's desirable and hot. Some say this makes me a bad feminist.

My favorite item is that fantastic shoe photo in the first slot. There's a lot of great photography in this treasury, vintage-inspired styled shots and nice crisp white backgrounds. It was a fun challenge balancing all the shades of red across the columns, too!

'I Like to Make You Suffer' by Scribblegoat

Sultry slinky dresses, strumpet-red lipstick, heels and red wine and vixenish behavior. Sexy handmade and vintage-inspired designs.

Hello Ladies- Signe... AliciaBock $35.00	Teardrop cocktail h... hellostrumpet $25.00	Signed print, &quot... Lovinda $33.00	Small Lipstick Trac... Samskiart $40.00
K.Antoinette Signat... kantoinette $40.00	Irony - Natural Red... pdxblacklipsti... $9.00	The Red Stockings E... ArtByO $15.00	3 Lipstick Soaps F... sweetsoaptreat $3.50
Silk Mistress Knick... MistressCollec... $45.00	Skirt Altered Red P... bytheway $25.00	Red Leather Hartman... judeslore $160.00	Framed Real Lipstic... BentheButterfl... $16.00
Killer Heels... Lar... emmakisstina $200.00	Handmade 1940s dres... UnforgettableY... $89.00	Lipstick - Velvet C... thetwistedcow $19.00	Vintage Black See T... ragdollady55 $

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

Some recent photos with nice lighting

A couple of recent photos I've been very proud of, but which are of things in the Ballet Llama shop:


Magnetic hematite 8mm beads, available here.



Hand-sculpted polymer clay rose pendant, available here.


Retro plastic alphabet beads, available here.

Getting good photos is definitely harder on a saturated-color background, but I'm pleased with the lighting and cropping in these!

A glut of history lately? Now, necklaces!

I expect the two weeks of Oh Hai Super Intellectual are probably wearing on everyone by now, so a light post of pretty stuff today!

Observe the evolution of the steampunk button necklaces.  From this:


Available here, and okay, it's not actually steampunk.

To this:


Sold!

To this:


Available here.

I need to work on getting back to the relatively simple, found-object assemblage style in the middle of the process -- while I like the multi-buttons, especially with the very unified rope-and-flower motifs, I think the cleaner lines and simpler contrasts were a different look and got better reactions.

Multiculturalism in Victorian Accessories

Victorian clothing was slightly more resistant to extremes than we are sometimes led to believe.  Then as now, Paris was the center of the fashion world, where extremes of couture included (during Jane Austen's era) piercing the nipples and wearing sheer, dampened bodices so the piercings were visible through the clothing -- and the Parisian fashion plates we think of as our primary sources for Victorian clothing were to the dress of, say, wealthy English and German women in the 19th century as high-fashion magazines are to day-to-day celebrity attire today.
However, while dresses might stay plainer and more conservative than fashion plates show, worldly socialites wished to bedeck themselves in all the luxuries of Empire; colonial capitalists wanted to adorn their daughters in the spoils of their trade.  This meant both other parts of Europe, plus "the Orient" (Africa and the East). Yet, this article discusses, the Eastern woman was stereotyped to be the antithesis of everything a Victorian woman ought to be.  So how to combine that "exotic" allure with good, stolid Western virtue?

Accessories and trimmings.


Victorian outerwear mantles from the 1850s and 1870s, North African inspired, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose online exhibit of Orientalist clothing is here and as droolworthy as it is educational.

Hence, we get turbans worn for evening in the 30s, patterned Chinese and Japanese silks and velvet brocades in at-home and bedroom wear throughout three centuries (the wallpaper in the Ribbon and Ladies' Bedrooms at Woodburn is another great example), and mosaic jewelry, Etruscan Revival jewelry like the demi-parure below, and (I kid you not) chandelier earrings.


Image courtesy of Jewels at South Kensington.

Unbeknownst to most, cameos are actually an expression of, not Orientalism but definitely multiculturalism.  They're an old art form; there's a tale of Alexander the Great presenting his lover Bagoas with a cameo portrait in chalcedony.  The best place in the world to get cameos was (and is) Pompeii, where there was a school of cameo-making and where students sold their work to pay their tuition. Lava cameos, made from the remaining lava rock from the Mt. Vesuvius explosion, were most popular. Lava cameos were a frequent gift to sweethearts when a young gentleman just out of school finished his Grand Tour. Owning one meant that you or someone you knew had either been to Rome or paid an exorbitant amount for an import.

For more on multicultural Victorian accessories: Have a look at the references to African imported silks and the turban Algerienne (remember Algeria was a violently oppressed French colony at the time) in these 1844 fashion forecasts, and later, this discussion of Poiret's exoticized Edwardian hats and slippers.  And Beyond Victoriana has a wonderful analysis of what incorporating Orientalism (or the delightful neologism "Victorientalism") in steampunk actually means; I don't entirely agree with the discussion, because I frankly think the alternative to Victorientalism is whitewashing, but it is intelligent and anyone interested in Orientalism should give it a read.

The glory that was Rome

A necklace heavily inspired by Gradiva, the novella by Wilhelm Jensen based on a Roman bas-relief; the artwork and book jointly inspired some of Freud's ideas about fetish and a Dali painting.

Here's my interpretation:

Available here.

The cameo is a vintage glazed ceramic piece I've had for donkey's years, worked into one of my nest-type bezels.  When I'm making those I'm always convinced they're not working, but they almost always do ...  The wirework on the chain is not just decorative, but secures the connections between the chain and the beading in a graceful, textural manner.

Cameos are an old art form.  In the pre-industrial age, cameos were not the molded-resin pretties we are familiar with today, but were hand-carved from ivory, shell or stones.  There is some (possibly apocryphal) record of Alexander the Great presenting his Persian lover, Bagoas, with a ring containing a portrait cameo of himself carved in chalcedony.  You can still find some natural-material cameos, like these black lip shell examples, but hand-carved ones are rarer than ever.
More on cameos, plus multiculturalism in Victorian accessories, on Monday!

Treasury Wednesday: Black and white photos of African animals

This was inspired because I was thinking about safari animals and how popular animal prints are supposed to be this summer, after listing some of my early '70s giraffes:


Available here.

And then I saw the gorgeous polymer clay tree pendant there in the first row and decided to go from there. Originally I planned black and white with only grass-green accents, but then I fell in love with the tapir bookmark.

'Monochrome Safari' by balletllama

Animal prints in black and white with accents of blue and green.

Fun and Funky Zebra... SeaPinks $14.00	Silhouette's Tr... abrowndesigns $25.00	Tapir Bookmark Gree... BlueEyedNightO... $9.00	skunkcup . . . teac... staceywinters $6.00
Black and white Gi... jeneseque $19.99	Build-a-Bag Traveli... IslandGirlsJew... $12.50	Zebra Ceramic Face ... BigSkyArtworks $25.00	Fanny and Alexander... irenesuchocki $35.00
Handmade polymer cl... TulipsBeadsand... $2.75	Black and White Bir... applescraps $45.00	Conus Shell Chiclet... momadonnas $19.00	Wristlet in Snake P... mcallistertuxe... $15.00
Wild Birthday plainjanecards $4.00	Thirsty Giraffe (m... halluejah $79.99	Black and White Zeb... myglamour $32.00	2 For 1 Sale - It&#... WildLifePrints $20.00

Treasury tool is sponsored by Lazzia.com A/B image testing.