Exotic, mesmerising, rich and luxurious - Jewel colours colours for a/w 2011

Taking over from the brights of summer, these jewel colours such as citrine, emerald, Ruby, Garnet and Sapphire are making a bold statement for Autumn & Winter 2011

Gucci 2011 runway, gorgeous rich jewel colours and beautiful feminine styles

Bottega Veneta Citrine gown very Dior in style is simply divine

youthful spirit of the mod period takes its turn on the runways for this fall

Prada Fall 2011

Burberry Prorsum fall 2011

60's are swinging again this winter, here the more glamourous side of the 60's

trend alert for winter 2011 is the 60's are back with Prada, Jean Paul Gaultier, Celine and Burberry Prorsum all showing the sixties scene on the runway

Nina Ricci Original 1960's gown and coat

Kenzo a/winter 2011 trand

Need to sit on your chair to hide the stain or hole? Look no futher, it can be rescued

Being a great believer in rescuing the sturdy old and breathing new life into it, this dining chair has had a face lift. The seat and the wood was in good condition however the seat pad was stained and the frame slighlty discoloured. A spray of paint to refresh made the wood look like new however the pad was a nice little project for me. Using a peacock feather as a base and my own hand drawn butterfly & dragon fly sketches, I transfered the images onto silk screens which i then used to print onto a plain square of beautiful tranquil duck egg blue silk. Paitiently waiting for each image to dry before layering up the images before finally applique some more butterflies onto the print. I used lace which draws comparison to the fragility of a butterfly wing and the colours pulled together key items from the room.

The olnly problem now...we dont like to spoil the view by sitting on it

Adding a bit of glamour to old unwanted furniture with the help of Crown Paints metallic range

Over the last few years we have expanded the house which bring up a real issue of filling it with furniture. Whilst I may swoon over Graham & Greens Lle De Re chest at £895

 

Or their embossed white metal chest at £995

I am unfortunately able to buy such items no matter what a key piece it would be to a room setting. However what a savvy way to do is, buy a small item from the range and then customise your old, unwanted dark wood or pine that never really sat well anywhere to bring together an eclectic mix of furniture that you will not see anywhere on the high street.

Here are 3 sets of drawers that i 'recycled', not only costing very little to transform thanks to the great range of metallic emulsion crown paints has to offer but it also helps the planted as less landfill! It's really a win win situation

The gold chest of drawers languished in my grandparent attic and grandad was going to saw it in half for ease of disposing. With using Crown metallic Shimmer & Shine Millionaire paint it's given me not just a bold key look for my hallway but a really practical & sentimental piece of furniture.

A period dark wood drawer unit, similiar in shape to the Lle De Re which was heavily scratched and in places crumbling, however as it was such a lovely shape, i did not like to throw the item onto the scrap heap so transformed the unit, sanding and priming then using a dark metallic wood paint, again courtesy of crown then finishing off with chrome traditional handles 

The prom dress

I gained this job through a cry for help on Face Book. The beautiful satin dress was the perfect prom dress however it was also 2 sizes too big and too long. However this was the perfect opportunity in a way to enable me to alter the dress to gain the perfect fit. As no ladies or girls shapes are ever the same, the excess material meant that i could sculpt the dress to fit the lovely prom princesses figure precisely and loose non of the detail by unpicking pleats and crystals and re-positioning them after the alteration.

Visit to the V&A - Cult of Beauty

I have just come back from a trip to London and whilst it was hectic I managed a visit to the V&A to see the Cult of Beauty exhibition.

I chose this as my 1 'me time treat' as I am looking at beauty or rather what is or has been considered beautiful in a woman for my 3rd year dissertation. In a time of size zero models and where the likes of Christina Hendricks isnt dressed at oscars as she is too large, I wanted to look at what artists have considered beautiful and if this matched up to how we feel as a woman we should look.

The exhibition was such a beautiful experience, where not only art is displayed but furniture in keeping with the Aesthetic Movement  or 'Art for Art's Sake - Art that existed only in order to be beautiful.

As you can see, whilst watts study with peacock feathers is not the plumpest of models, she certainly is no size 0 and even whilst reclining a small tum is apparent. this is what he considereded beautiful. 

I am lookign forward to seeing where else my research takes me