by Carla Louise | Dec 11, 2011 | Collecting, Photography |
A little peek into my flat and the pretty things in it that make me happy.
Parts of my bookshelves – A collection of glass bottles, a couple of unicorn ornaments (the one on the right is from Poland, when we went to Krakow for a friend’s hen weekend), photos of Ellie and I and Julia and I, some ducks, a Meakin jug and my favourite thing on this shelf, an original painting by the very talented Chloe at Slightly Triangle. Plus a china duck and a western boot on the shelf above.
The bookshelf to the left (I have three across the back wall of my living room). Gil Elvgren’s pin ups take pride of place among the books, and on the top are some of my vintage treasures. Some of these were bought for Teasets to Typewriters and will form part of the stock when I eventually launch. The Whistlejacket print is not going anywhere, though!
‘Home’ applique and vintage glass candle holders adorning the top of my heater. I stitched this entirely freehand and it was the first bit of hand sewing I’d done in over a decade 🙂
My ‘mantelpiece’ – clearly, being a flat, I don’t have an actual one but this stands in quite well. Full of coffee table books and my vintage china. Then photos (Holly and I, Hannah, Lou and I, a framed Jane Austen quote, Ellie and I on horseback on the beach) and some vintage tins. On the top – a daylight lamp I use when I’m cross stitching, a painting I picked up in an antique shop, a photo of me and my childhood dog Tui, more glass bottles, Singer sewing machine, Rusty’s number plate, more vintage tins, a photo of the rally teams in Sibiu, candle holders and a china horse. 🙂
Juxtaposition of old and new – my old (but working!) landline phone and my Bluetooth headset for my mobile, which both live on my hall table.
And into my bedroom – the ballet print and pairs of pointe shoes that hang above my bed, the vertical patchwork I made last year to hang on the big blank wall above my clothes rails, and my jewellery board (next to my door, so I can grab stuff on the way out!)
by Carla Louise | Dec 10, 2011 | Food & Baking, Photography |
Last weekend I traversed down to Reading (complete with Rusty’s vintage suitcase, pretty shoes and vintage-style party dresses) for a weekend with one of my best friends. She just happens to be behind Contrariety Rose (new site almost done! I’m working on the last bits!) and organised a vintage tea party for a few people while I was down there. It’s always wonderful to see Lou, but this was a specially exciting prospect after a fairly hideous week!
We went to a vintage fair at the Hexagon first (I bought a headscarf “for wearing in a sportscar”, said the lady at the stall. I couldn’t not buy it after that, could I?!) and Lou found this lovely little dress. Rachel found a beautiful 60s shift dress but I couldn’t get a photo 🙁
And here is Lou (first pic) and me (second pic) next to where we’d set out all the bits and pieces…
Tea party details:
Cucumber hearts and lollipop sandwiches from the Vintage Tea Party Book:
Cakes made by Lou’s partner’s mum – a Contrariety Rose cake and lovely little sparkly fairy cakes:
And the forks that made me think of the Mad Hatter’s tea party – there’s something wonderfully Alice-ish about them!
It was a fabulous afternoon, and so lovely to see all the girls – some of them I hadn’t seen since 2007, and a couple not properly since school. It was gorgeous! 😀
by Carla Louise | Nov 27, 2011 | Creating, Photography |
Anna and I had planned to go away for a few days in September, then October, and kept getting thwarted. November arrived, the time was booked off work, but neither of us had the money (or the energy) to go away away. So we decided to crash at my flat for a few days, do some shopping, make stuff, watch DVDs, eat lots… generally have an extended relaxing weekend 🙂
We wrote to Santa while looking at Christmas decorations:
Saw a helicopter tree I desperately want to buy for my parents:
Fell in love with some tree shaped sparkly lights: 
Found some flashing tits for Anna *gigglesnort*:
And I made a wreath. Here’s me pretending it’s a halo (sure. but I can pretend!) 
We visited Sudbury and had a lovely wander round all the shops there, and I also bought some vintage Pyrex bowls (squee!), some books and chocolate from the Cadburys factory shop. Can’t be bad. Was gorgeous to see her, fab to have four days in a row off work and when I go back I shall feel refreshed and hopefully at least a little bit enthusiastic! 😀
You can follow lovely Annie on Twitter – twitter.com/AnnaZEV
by Carla Louise | Nov 22, 2011 | Personal Development |
Having a particularly crazy few weeks at the day job, so please excuse the lack of regular posts. On the plus side, I have finally pulled myself together and transferred my domain over here. So duckingfabulous.co.uk actually refers to all my posts and works properly, rather than just pointing here in a hopeful sort of way. I am ridiculously proud of this, as I worked it out without any guidance at all. *grin*
I’m still hunting for the perfect tablet, so I can blog on the move… no luck yet though. Tempted to hold out for the Kindle Fire, but I like both the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the HTC Flyer very much – guess I’ll see what prices do after Christmas.
Have been nesting a bit, got lots of candles out and am trying to light them in the evenings to make my living room feel cosier. I need a saddle for the ijoyride, it looks too much like a bit of gym equipment in my living room, but I use it little enough as it is – if it moves to the studio I’ll never use it!
Tomorrow’s last day at work for a few days, I have Thursday and Friday off and Anna’s coming down to visit 🙂 Very excited, although feeling a bit guilty – we were going to be going away, but I’m so broke we’re using my flat as a base and doing stuff from there instead. I hope she isn’t disappointed! (although she’s one of the people in the world I could spend a week in a shed with and still have fun!)
Emotions a bit up and down for all sorts of reasons… exhaustion not helping. So on that note, I shall quit waffling and go to bed. Have remembered to take my SD card out of the laptop and put it back in the camera at least, so might even manage some photos later this week!
xx
by Carla Louise | Nov 15, 2011 | Collecting, Thrifting |
I am typing this on the train, sitting next to a woman with an ipad and an iphone. I feel a strange mixture of clunky (my laptop is ENORMOUS in comparison and I don’t have mobile broadband) and smug (I can type so much faster and more accurately than she can, mweeheehee).
The last few weeks have changed my life, overwhelmingly for the better. For various reasons I can’t talk about any of those reasons in detail, but one of the net results is that I have signed up for a season ticket loan for a train ticket, which means I’ll be at work for at least another year. This will give me time to get my finances straight and live my life a little without worrying so much about the future and what’s round the next corner (in the job and finances side of life, anyway).
Secondly, I have decided to put my shop plans on hold for the foreseeable future and concentrate on making things for fun and learning, rather than pressurising myself. The same with vintage homewares and clothing – I’ll buy them for me or for presents, and I’ll continue to research them and blog about my finds because I find them fascinating, but I need to remove the pressure for a while so I can focus on other things.
2012 contains, among other plans, my best friend’s wedding, my parents’ long awaited move into their new home and another rally, closely followed by a Canada trip to watch ice skating in early 2013, so now is not a good time to be starting up. Quite apart from the fact that although I know I’m capable of running a business, my finances are most definitely not, and I’m not sure I’m yet ready to sacrifice my social life in favour of it.
Thirdly, but possibly most importantly, after the weekend that’s just passed I am left with a feeling of happiness, peace, freedom and infinite possibility. My sense of self is fully restored and my inner pin up is well on her way to being part of my everyday life! Although I am never taking a train that far again – driving is SO much more fun and less hassle!
So I’m going to make the most of feeling like that, use the sense of purpose to get my flat and my life in order, and then focus on doing fun stuff… and blogging about it all, of course!
Sorry, this is somewhat of a stream-of-consciousness post, but it does feel good to write it down rather than just have it floating around in my head! A little part of me still can’t quite believe I’ve come this far and made this life for myself. When I look back to how I was four short years ago, and realise just how much I love my ‘new’ life… I wonder how the Carla I am now and the Carla I was then can possibly be the same person. I wouldn’t go back now if you paid me, I love who I’ve become and everything that I do. It’s amazing, empowering and really rather lovely. Ok, enough of the soppy crap now.
Right. Before you all throw up, I’m going to get off the train and go and make sausages and chips for dinner 🙂
by Carla Louise | Nov 13, 2011 | Adventures, Collecting, Photography |
So, I had every intention of participating in the One Day On Earth project, until I realised that a) 11/11/11 was going to be super-busy, full of train travel and that the project wanted video and I very much work in photos not videos. So here, instead, is a selection of snapshots from my weekend…
This was actually on Tuesday, eating ice cream on the back of a Vespa at Joe Deluccios in Westfield Stratford City.
On the train. My handbag (the red and beige one) snapped on the way to the station, so I had to hastily repack, then ditch it without looking like a terrorist. Not easy when you go through London train and tube stations looking shifty!
I spend quite a lot of time doing this – sitting on the floor of a train, reading books. People think I’m mad for sitting on the floor, but I like being able to stretch my legs.
Twitter Mafia love on a Friday morning – love these ladies!
The reminder email that came round from lovely Kim just before the two minutes’ silence for Poppy Day.
Biscuits! Work has a delivery of biscuits and other groceries (tea, coffee etc) every month, and this is what the cupboard looks like just after delivery!
Impromptu trip to Moorgate to buy a new handbag. London is grey but has some striking buildings if you look up while walking.
Mid-afternoon Wispa. Is any day complete without chocolate?!
The emergency/accidental new handbag, to replace the one that snapped in the morning. I like it!
St Pancras station – took this on my way home after a fabulous weekend. It was utter carnage on the way in, and I was trying to sprint which is never a good idea!
And finally home again, with the awesome vintage suitcase we took to Romania. That case started off full of 80s porn magazines, went all the way to Romania on Rusty’s roof, and came home with Team Allegro on their roof. It has a lot more character now than it did when we bought it, but I’m in love and it improved the journey home enormously – I felt like a 40s starlet! (for the first couple of hours, anyway – six hours later I just wanted to be back home, lol). The wheelie case under it was bought for Poland and also came on the rally with us – my luggage is well travelled 🙂
by Carla Louise | Nov 4, 2011 | Photography |
I am currently running too many blogs. One is (obviously) this one. One is Project Pin Up, one is a new one to go with the new Etsy shop (if I ever find time to launch it) and one is London at Lunchtime. I love them all but find it increasingly hard to find time to post, and the longer I’m a blogger, the more I value good posts rather than just posting for the sake of posting.
I think, given how little I’ve managed to post since I started it (londonatlunchtime.wordpress.com) that I might just make it a category on here (which I have done here – I think it fits in ok with the general tone and utter randomness of my other posts). It’s not like my photos are startlingly good, I just find it interesting how much there is to see in London even in the same relatively small space I can get to within a lunchtime.
Thoughts?
Love, a very indecisive Carla x
by Carla Louise | Oct 27, 2011 | Adventures, Thrifting |
A double dose today, as I don’t think I was organised enough to do a post last week…
Last week:
Unexpectedly meeting Val for lunch at Nandos
Corsets – hehe, see my posts on Project Pin Up
Tentatively enquiring whether our drunken ‘yeah, let’s do a rally round Ireland’ could become reality and getting a very enthusiastic response from the other teams. Hey, plans made at 3am in an obscure part of Europe under the influence of alcohol are clearly the best ones!
Spending an entire evening talking boys and horses with Lizzy
Type-writing a letter to Dan (another one – I’m improving!!)
Treasure hunting with Mum
Awesome numberplate on a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream van
Deciding we should drink the last bottle of Romanian rum and toast Rusty sometime
Starting my Vivien of Holloway dress fund.
This week:
Lunch with some of the girls from work last Friday, which was fab, as I got to speak to some of the ones I never see during work time
Going through the R2R photos again and reliving the whole thing
Mum coming round and making me soup after a truly hideous migraine on Tuesday
The sense of achievement that comes from having almost built a whole website for a dear friend
Vintage hair and makeup workshop (I really need to blog about this separately too) at Make Do and Mend in Chelmsford with the lovely Mimi and Lou, led by the equally lovely Hannah
Spotting a hedgehog under a tree on the way home from work one evening
An unexpected, glorious, sunshine-filled, warm roof-down blast round the Suffolk countryside on Sunday afternoon
Extended phone and text conversations – I have wonderful people in my life
Finally booking a haircut – I don’t want to lose any of the length but it’s long overdue, it’s lost its swish!
Lights near Bishopsgate in the evening
The general soaring happy feeling I’ve had most of this week 🙂
Fully aware I should have photos in this post but I’m absolutely shattered so may have to add them tomorrow. But really can’t go two Thursdays in a row without posting or next week’s will be utterly ridiculous!
by Carla Louise | Oct 18, 2011 | Photography |
I spent far too long at the station this morning, trying in vain to get on a train to work.
Having established I could work from home, I went to Asda. The sky was absolutely beautiful….
Then I decided to console myself with the special-offer Haagen Dazs. So after lunch (marmite toast) I dug into both of these. Happy days!
It was surprisingly relaxing being at home and working from my sofa under a big snuggly blanket – not as social as the office, but I did get my work done! 🙂 And now, no commute, so I can blog and chill out before making dinner. It’s enough to make me want to work from home all the time!
by Carla Louise | Oct 6, 2011 | Uncategorized |
A list I found in my notebook just now – it’s the sixth and I’m not doing too badly! (Clearly, there are a whole host of things to add to this now, lol… but it’ s ok, at least some are crossed off!)
by Carla Louise | Oct 6, 2011 | Personal Development, Photography |
I’ve been massively inspired by journals lately, and especially art journals. I’ve always loved the idea of recording your life, and probably my only regret in life so far is burning my teen diaries and deleting my typed uni diaries, which I did for reasons I won’t go into here.
There’s something magical about keeping snippets of your life between pages, to be kept and remembered and looked back on in days, weeks, months and years to come, and it also leaves a record for future generations.
I once came across a box full of tiny notebooks in an antique shop, and, intrigued, asked the owner what they were. She said she had another two boxes in storage and they were the handwritten diaries of a young lady who had started, in the twenties, aged 9, to keep a diary each day, and had written faithfully every single day until she died in her 90s. At the time I was still a student, and this collection was on sale for £250 – well out of my price range (although the lovely owner did say I could pay a bit at a time and she’d keep them aside for me, it was still more than I could justify spending on non-necessities at the time. But I sat in that shop for a good couple of hours, reading the living history of this lady who had lived through a war and through unimaginable changes in her world, and had recorded it all, huge world events and things that were important to her (first kiss, meeting a friend for lunch, all sorts) for us to look at.
On my 25th birthday, inspired by that find, I started a five year diary. I’d like to think I’ll keep it up till I’m 30, although I’ve already missed the odd day – I love that it’s laid out so that each year you can see what you wrote the year before, and it’s a small enough book to carry around. My own little piece of magical history.
Recently I’ve also started to see lots of art journals – Ashley at The Creative Place did a fabulous post recently about her completed travel journal, which made me think I could (and should!) do something similar for the rally. I have been meaning to create a scrapbook/journal of my life since just before my 18th birthday – bought the albums but never quite got round to putting things in them. (Actually, with hindsight that’s a good thing, if I’d completed it age 18 it would have been mostly full of my first love… while he is obviously an enormous part of my past, he is entirely unconnected with my recent past, my present and my future, and I feel a journal I make now will reflect that).
I also love the idea of keeping a journal of my creative inspirations – at the moment my laptop and Pinterest serve for those ‘squee’ moments where I can keep snippets, and this blog records my wafflings and thoughts and other things, but I’d love to have more physical things to look at when I need inspiring. And of course, a diary-journal (as opposed to a scrapbook or a journal for a specific event or trip) would show you how your crafting has grown and shaped and developed over the time you take to complete it.
So this weekend I shall be buying (or repurposing) some box files – they shall live in my studio and into them shall go anything relevant – photos, notes, fabric scraps, labels, broken but significant jewellery… anything that might help shape my journals, and perhaps in 2012 I’ll be able to put them together and make something wonderful to look at.
by Carla Louise | Oct 3, 2011 | Creating |
It’s been a ridiculously long time since I did an update on my creative projects in progress, possibly not since I moved the blog over to WordPress back in April, so here goes…
(and apologies in advance for the continued lack of photos – this is due to blogging on the go!)
Project Pin Up
A joint project with Mimi from Little Sips of Tea, we are hoping to launch this inspirational blog/website sometime in October. Designs and scribbles are ongoing!
The typewriters
I never did blog these – bought them by accident at a car boot I went to with Mimi a while ago, and have just had a very exciting phone call from Mike at InkXS – he’s sending me ribbons for both of them so I can actually use them – I may never print a letter from my laptop again!
Teasets to Typewriters
A long-term project that is hopefully coming to fruition, this is the relaunch of Ducking Fabulous… only not as Ducking Fabulous. While I still adore making jewellery, and have a commission in the workings for @craftyguider, I don’t have time to make the level of stock I’d like to keep the shop open, and I’d always intended to branch out into vintage. So this is it – inspired by my typewriters, the new Etsy shop, to be launched towards the end of October/beginning of November, will stock vintage loveliness for you, your home and the people that make you happy, and in time will also stock Ducking Fabulous jewellery (made by me!) too, especially the upcycled/reworked/repurposed lines to fit with the vintage feel.
Freelancing for Helitech
Much as the day job is good experience in many ways, it’s not using my design skills even a quarter as much as I’d hoped it would, and as they need to be used in order to keep them fresh. So, I’ve started freelancing again (because I didn’t have enough projects already on the go) and have just completed some work for two companies attending Helitech. Follow up work for HeliExpo in February is expected, plus keeping an eye on their respective websites, and it’s all good for the portfolio too.
Dining room table
I have some completely gorgeous vintage-style wrapping paper which I want to attach to the surface of my very battered dining room table… but haven’t yet had the time to sand it down and buy some decent glossy varnish to cover it with – it needs to look pretty and have a wipe-clean surface!
Bookcases
I have been collecting quotes for a year or so to adorn my bookcases with… now I know which ones I want to use, I’m struggling to work out the best way of putting them there – do I handwrite with permanent markers, or decopatch first, or print and mod podge on… the possibilities are almost endless!
Heather’s wedding present
Hevsy occasionally reads my blog, as her wedding is featured on it here – so I can’t post a photo. But it’s getting there!
R2R art for the living room
This involves plotting the route on a giant map, somehow choosing some photos to be printed, working out how to frame 3D objects and retrieving Rusty’s number plate from Rob’s house (I ran away to cry at the end of the rally and forgot to pick up my plate. Yep, I am an idiot).
Amy Butler dress
This one’s ground to a complete halt because my sewing machine quit and I’ve not yet been able to fund a new one. I bought the pattern on my birthday back in February, and have a shortlist of fabrics I like, but I’m not actually buying the fabric till I can at least start on making the dress.
The studio
Filing cabinet is to arrive this week and be installed properly on Saturday; this will then at some point be decopatched to fit in with the rest of my décor. I need to move the rug under the desk and re-organise the boxes… would like to be able to pick up one box for one type of craft, ideally.
I also have lots of bits of ideas for smaller projects, but haven’t actually started any of them yet… I do feel I have my creative mojo back now though, which is always a good thing!
What works-in-progress do you have on the go?
