You spin me right round...

Yesterday, my dad had the day off so he decided to be amazing and drive me down to my grandparent's house in Arthur's seat where we picked up a bunch of records... 

...and two of their old record players!

This first one is from the 70's/80's or so and was purchased to replace....

 the amazing 1958 Braun Sk5 record player (with matching secondary speaker). 

My grandparents picked it up in Germany in 1958 and hauled it back here to Melbourne! Apparently, it was the best record player you could get. 

So, I did a bit more digging and found that it was nicknamed 'Snow White's coffin' since it was all white and had a plexiglass covering. (Source) 

However, mine's not exactly in working condition.... The AM radio works and the second speaker works too but I can't actually get it to even spin records. My dad thinks it's the motor and it looks like a few of the vacuum tubes need replacing. It does seem to have had a few repairs over the years... 

Ah, well! Even if I can't get it to work I still have a very pretty looking piece! 

xLiv

Photography

So... I've got a new camera! Yay! 

This morning, before my driving lesson, I jumped on a tram and bought my brand new Fujifilm S2950 Digital Camera. I don't really know that much about camera's (yet) but even if it's not a great camera, it's better than any I've ever had (technically I've never had any but they're better than the digital camera my family has). 

 The reason I bought it now was because I had my first photography lecture yesterday and now I have to have lots of photos of my self (and feedback on them) by next Tuesday! Now, me being me I won't be happy with a lot of them so I figured the sooner I get started the better. While I have been working on them I've just been having fun playing around with my camera.... 

  hence, all the photos of my cat....

 I am a fan of putting mirrors outside....

These last two remind me of Alice...

 Through the Looking Glass

Curiouser and Curiouser

P.S.  The pinafore I'm wearing is something new too! Bought it from a fantastic place here, Chapel St Bazaar, in one of the vintage stalls. 

Doctor Shoe

That is probably going to be one of the dorkier titles I use on this blog.... But look I've made Doctor Who shoes! This is my first time painting shoes and I'm pretty proud of the result. It also gave me the chance to use a Christmas present I was given which is a pattern pencil (at least that's what I call it) where you trace a design or something with tracing paper using the pencil and then iron it onto wood, fabric, etc. and it transfers the pattern or design onto the material! It was pretty exciting and that's how I got the Time Lord-y design on the front of the shoes. They started off completely white and I used acrylic and fabric paints and I still have yet to clean up the rubber edges and spray them with a sealer thing so, I'm not positive they're actually practical yet....

 Ta-Da! I've actually cleaned them up a bit since I took these photos but I'll put finished one's up soon.

I remembered to take progress shots this time! 

Here you can see the light blue of the ironed on pattern from the pattern pencil.

 This was my work space on the dining room table.

 This pattern is actually taken from the lid of my box set of Doctor Who series 1-4. I made a rubbing of the design and then traced it from the other side and then traced it again using a fresh sheet of tracing paper and the pattern pencil.

The backs before I put the TARDIS in. 

Here's the pattern from the front of the shoes. The one on the left is the rubbing from the Doctor Who DVD Box Set and the one in blue on the right is the pattern pencil copy. 

I decided it made sense to put Allon-y on the back of shoes plus it's just a fun quote and then Well.... is my most used Tennant-as-the-Doctor quote.  

 The seal of Rassilon on the tongue of the shoes.

The last thing I wanted to point out is that the shoe laces are on one side covered in sections of the same pattern on the front of the shoes and then the other side has "Police Public Call Box" on either end of the laces where they're tied. 

The Kingdom of Livonia

While I take a break from my latest project, I'd like to share with you something my friend brought my attention to. So, every year my friends and I watch the Eurovision finals (or semi-finals depending) when it airs here in Australia. We do this whole shindig of picking a country, dressing up as it (or something from it) and bringing a dish from that country. 

Now, my friend said I should be either Latvia or Estonia because (according to wikipedia) it was the "never properly established"  Kingdom of Livonia! I really quite like things that involve my name, as most people do, and this was just fantastic. A whole kingdom which involves my name! It also gives me another project to think about because I am determined to put that into my costume. 

Source of information : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Livonia

Millinery

I'm being much more productive than I imagine I will be once Uni starts up again. 

Ah, well, I'll enjoy this while it lasts. Today, I finished my first sewn hat!

This was inspired by this hat http://www.etsy.com/listing/89100699/60s-vintage-blonde-mink-cocktail-hat

and the fact that I still have plenty of faux fur left over after making a muff and what ended up being more of a fur collar... Along with the faux fur I used a bit of what looked like white lining, a stiff almost denim like material which I don't know the name of, and some white tulle all of which were out of my "extra materials" collection (hence me not knowing exactly what they are). I measured the circumference of my head and added approximately two inches to work out the material length for the strip of the stiff material and the faux fur. I then used the circumference to find the diameter and thus the radius to make a circular piece of the stiff material and the white lining (which I used for the top of the hat).

I stitched it all together in a bit of a hap-hazardous way and then arranged the netting on top until I was satisfied. The netting is still a bit rough around the edges but I'll fix that later.

Just before finishing the hat mum and I went to our favourite op shop and I found this amazing hat for $5!

Unfortunately, my camera decided to warp the colour on the hat after a while and so it ended up looking much more orange than the actual hat is.... I love this hat though! It reminds me of a furry gumnut baby hat with the little button on the top. 

Basically, I cannot wait for winter when I will be decked out in lots of fake fur! 

All You Need Is Glove

Already, I am (slightly) going to veer away from what I've described my blog as.... Today, I got up to the highly interesting task of putting away clothes. Now, I'm someone who enjoys collecting clothing. Actually, I'm someone who enjoys collecting things. This matched with my love of crafting means that my room is filled with stuff. However, do not think I live in a super messy room where you can't find anything. On the contrary,  I pride myself on the fact that (at least some of the time) everything has a neat and tidy place where it belongs. This also means as my collection grows things get rearranged... a lot. I am almost never satisfied with the appearance of my room and I'm always running out of space. This brings us to today's mission: finding a place for all of my gloves during the summer. 

Here are just a sample of the different types I have.

This suitcase lives under my bed and I thought it would be the perfect place to store my gloves and other winter items during the summer! Now, I just needed to find a neat and tidy (and preferably pretty) way to store those gloves. 

Some of the gloves are quite old since they mostly belonged my great-grandmother so I wanted to protect them a bit too. I did a bit of searching online and, using some of the bags they were given to me in, came up with wrapping them in tissue paper and putting them into plastic bags. 

I decided to put labels on all of them so that I didn't have to unwrap them to find out which pair was which. The labels are courtesy of http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/ 

                                   

 I then put the pairs I wear the most into this tin...

...and all of them into the suitcase. I plan to put a few more winter items in with them like a muff that I'm making but I have to finish those first otherwise they'll never get finished.

Hello!

Well, I'm just going to dive straight in to my first ever blog post!

The item that I'd like to show off first is what could be classified as "nerdy" although that word is used a bit too liberally now that being a "nerd" is "cool". Nonetheless, meanings and connotations of words change and we adapt. Anyway, this was a Christmas present for my friend who, like me, is a fan of Harry Potter. I chose blue and bronze because she got sorted into Ravenclaw on Pottermore and so I thought it would be fitting. Also the "K" is because her name starts with a "K". So, here is her Weasley Jumper...

Now, I apologies for the poor quality of the photo unfortunately I have nothing better than my iPhone camera... I should be getting a better camera in the next few months but for now bare with me.

She wore it to the Harry Potter Exhibition when we went to Sydney to see it. We're supposed to be doing a "finding" pose for those of you who know A Very Potter Musical (I know neither of us are Hufflepuff but it was better than just smiling)

This took me about three months on and off and I even did it the cheating way because I'm not the best knitter....yet. I bought a jumper and stitched the "K" on using a duplicate stitch and some embroidery floss I already had. It was my first embroidery project so there are a few mistakes...(I think it adds character though).