Fables In Fashion Watercolour Speed Painting

I started this series last year but it kind of fizzled as I didn’t have as much time to paint or the right supplies. I really love the idea though so I have decided to start it again with my awesome collaborator Fables in Fashion!

Check out her channel here: http://youtube.com/fablesinfashion
Check out her partner’s channel here: http://youtube.com/surfacedstudio .
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Shop: http://bit.ly/NknExz
Blog: http://bit.ly/qIKumk
Tumblr: http://bit.ly/oF86Yz
Twitter: http://bit.ly/onCld1
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/pdZ8B5
Instagram: http://instagram.com/violetlebeaux

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A blog and Youtube channel about a girl and her quest to make everything sparkle. New craft, hair and beauty tutorials every week!

Violet LeBeaux spends most of her time trying to think of ways to make life prettier, posting said ways on her blog and drinking very strong tea. She writes about big hair cute things, girly fashion, beauty finds, sometimes Hime Gyaru fashion (姫ギャル) and crafty tutorials.

She lives with her adorable boyfriend Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.

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Music: Garageband unless otherwise credited

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Violet- Hi everyone!
Hope you guys are having a good night. we’re doing something a little bit different tonight.
I started this last year where I’m doing a series of speed paintings of people that really inspire me as a way of saying thank you so much for all of your inspiration and just generally being awesome!
I got a little bit side tracked when I started this last year so I wanted to start it again.
So we’re kicking it off with Celina from Fables in Fashion! Celina is a fantastic partner in crime for shooting videos, holding lighting and….
James- Hurry up, my arms are getting tired!
Violet- Shut up James backdrops don’t talk.
James- You’re a jerk! Backdrops have feelings!
Violet: Anyway I did a quick speed painting of Celina from Fables In Fashion, from one of her recent videos.
Make sure you check out her channel, it’s Fables In Fashion and it’s fantastic. Hope you guys enjoy the video and we’ll be doing more of these soon. Hair tutorial coming next week bye!
Let’s watch their reactions.
Celina- Hey Violet
Tobias- Hello
Celina- This is so awkward, lets just watch the video. Ok I’m playing it now.
Celina- I look like I have cat eyes.
Tobias- Floaty cape
Celina- Oh like a super hero
Celina- Nah
Celina- I feel like she’s making me look a lot more elegant than I look in real life. Haha
Tobias- She’s just going off some of the fashionable photos we took
Celina- I wish i could draw
Tobias- Oh no youtube just froze
Celina- Oh there it goes again
Tobias- That’s a bit better
Tobias- Purple for you
Celina- That’s really cool, I wouldn’t be able to pick out all of these undertones and stuff, I would just be like: it’s all black
Tobias- Shading’s cool of the cape and the floating.
Celina- It is cool.
Celina- I have eyes
Tobias- Eye balls but no iris yet
Celina- That’s me!
Celina- That’s photo me and that’s drawing me
Tobias- I don’t know, I think she’s adding colour just very very gently
Celina- Oh yeah it’s really subtle
Tobias- Skin tones
Turn on captions or visit my blog for a full transcript.

What Are Your Tools Of The Trade? – Sew Fun!

Firstly thank you to Karina for suggesting the adorable name, I love it! I’ll draw a pretty graphic for next week.

I think it’s going to be best to take this in bite size chunks so we don’t get too far ahead and everyone has a chance to ask questions before we move on. Also keep in mind that I am telling you about the way *I* sew. Every seamstress has different techniques and favorite ways to do things, these are just mine!

Ok so you want to learn how to sew? Awesome! Before you jump in and drop a couple of grand at your local sewing supply it’s important to know what you might need, what it’s going to cost and what you can actually do with it. There’s no point spending a heap of money on a fancy shmancy computerised embroidery machine when you just want to make basic skirts or repair damaged clothes.

Sewing Machine!

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Before you buy anything you need to understand what it is you want to do with it. Do you want to sew basic clothes? Do you want to make clothes to sell? Do you want to do machine embroidery?Other questions you should ask yourself include:

  • Do I have the money/can I be bothered to get my machine serviced regularly?
  • If you want to sew late at night is noise going to be an issue where you live?
  • What is your budget?
  • How often are you going to actually sew?

I think that the majority of you will be sewing every now and then and probably just to make basic clothes and repair/alter other things. In that case there is no point buying a super fancy machine.  I learned to sew on my grandma’s machine from the 70’s, for a while I had a converted machine from the 50’s and other than machines I’ve used at other people’s studios I’ve only ever had the lowest cheapest machines I could possible find.

As long as your machine can straight stitch forward, backwards, and zigzag stitch that’s all you need. If it can do button holes even better. If it has a zipper foot you’re all set! Any other function is great but not something that you NEED.

Brands I’ve had include Singer, Brother, and I think the one I had as a kid was a Janome. Currently I’m using a Singer it was around $150 on sale from Big W. In Australia that’s pretty cheap for a machine, I checked Lincraft last week and they started at around $180-700 depending on functions. Overseas, at thrift stores or online you can probably find them cheaper and for a beginner I would get the cheapest one you can find or borrow one from a friend or relative.

If you don’t have the money or can’t find a machine it’s not a big deal. You have lots of other options including hand sewing (post on that coming up) and hand machines (if you want a post on this let me know, I kind of hate them though!) they just tend to be a lot more time consuming.

The method you choose is basically irrelevant to what you make so use what you can afford and don’t let it hold back your creativity 😀

Overlocker/Serger!

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An overlocker/serger makes perfectly sealed and cut edges for items. You can use them to prevent delicate fabric from unraveling, make fancy edging and they can be a great time saver.

As a beginner, do you really need one? Probably not. Sewing machines can be enough to learn to begin with so I would really suggest mastering that first. You can use a sewing machine to do variations of most things an overlocker does anyway.

Overlockers are much more expensive than sewing machines and while they are extremely awesome and I absolutely love mine to death, unless you’re planning to mass produce clothes for sale they are definitely a luxury. My grandma made perfectly durable clothes for her 11 children (and more grandchildren than I can count) without an overlocker.

Once you have moved on from beginner sewing it’s something which is worth looking into as a time saver and I will be writing a post dedicated to overlockers which will give a lot more information.

Needles!

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You will need  some basic sewing needles if you’re going to be hand stitching anything. Even if you aren’t going to hand stitch things I would suggest getting a pack of needles because it’s easier to do things like sew on buttons by hand.

When picking out needles I would suggest getting an assorted pack so you can match what you’re using to the fabric. For example, I prefer thin flexible needles for things like chiffon and durable thick needles for denim. The same thing goes for sewing machine needles, there are different grades and they are meant for different fabrics.

Pins!

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I have a confession: I hate pinning things. I do it as little as possible. I will be doing it in this series because I don’t want to teach other people my bad habits so make sure to get yourself a box of pins so you can decide for yourself whether you want to use them.

Buy bright pins. Plain metal pins may be very practical and cheap but you will thank yourself for buying neon purple plastic headed pins the first time you accidentally drop a box of them and have to find them all under the couch again. I prefer my pins to be colour matching… that’s just because I like colour co-ordination though, there’s no other benefit.

Thread!

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You will need thread colours that match your fabric. If you’re just starting out then I suggest buying a kit with a variety of colours. There are different grades of thread and they come made with different materials so if quality is your #1 concern make sure you pick a high grade of thread. Cotton and silk are the most common materials threads are made from and you can usually tell quality by looking closely, if it is shiny and looks like really tiny twisted yarn it’s good quality, if it is a little fluffy and just looks like one strand it’s not so great. Great quality thread is much harder to snap and will last longer so consider investing in it especially if you are going to put a lot of strain on your stitches by doing something like ruffling. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to hand ruffle 20m of fabric and to have the thread snap right as you reach the end!

If you are on a budget then start with a cheap pack of black and white thread. You can generally get away with just a black or white 😉

 Scissors!

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Scissors aren’t something most people think about, I didn’t even consider them a really important tool until I was given a really nice pair. Obviously so long as they can cut fabric, you can use any pair of scissors you like. If they do fit into your budget I would suggest buying a good pair of sharp sewing scissors. It is SO much easier to cut complicated shapes out of fabric when you have a good sharp pair of scissors. If you can’t afford a new pair then make sure you sharpen your existing ones. You can do so very carefully using a sharpening stick or block that you would use for kitchen knives. Be very careful though and if you haven’t done it before make sure to ask someone for help.

 Unpicker!

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You don’t really *need* one of these but it’s nice to have. I can never find mine so I usually just use scissors but when you are beginning and you make mistakes this can be very handy! I’ll show you how to use it step by step once we get started!

Dressform/Mannequin!

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Again this is nice to have but it’s not necessary. I’ll be using Quinne to illustrate points throughout this series but I’ll also show you how to do things without a mannequin when we get to stuff like how to drape patterns. You can see how I made my mannequin in this tutorial.

Fabric!

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This is probably the most important thing, you can’t sew if you don’t have any fabric! Picking fabric depends on the project so I’m not going to go into that here, I will do a post where I take you to a fabric store and compare different kinds of fabrics and the projects you’ll be using them for though. The kind of fabric you use and the things you make will depend on why you want to sew.

In my experience (and I’m completely generalising here), the two biggest reasons people choose to make their own clothes are money and quality. You should choose your materials accordingly. For example, if you are trying to save money, there’s no point buying $150p/m flocked taffeta because you could really buy a fully made dress so much cheaper than that. Especially when you consider the hours you will be putting into it. If you are looking to sew because you want the best quality clothing possible then likewise avoid super cheap fabrics like polypop because you just won’t get the finish you want.

 

Conclusion!

These are just the basic materials. Of course you can go to your craft store and stock up on all kinds of fun things and accessories and there will definitely be other supplies that we will need for individual projects but once you get these basics you’re well on your way.

After you’re learned the basics of sewing, with a little creativity you can make just about anything! Next week we’ll learn about how to use a sewing machine, how to thread it and hopefully start sewing our first stitches!

As always, if you have questions about anything leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer. Hope this was Sew Fun for you guys, I’m really inspired to start writing more about this because as I lay it out I keep thinking of more and more things I want to teach 😀

How To Make A Simple Tshirt Necklace/Scarf

Before we get deep into the sewing for next week’s tutorials I thought I would show you guys a very quick no-sew project!

This is another super old idea which has been around the internet like crazy and I never thought I would actually make one until I recently realised I have very few big chunky necklaces.

And so my version of the traditional tshirt scarf/necklace turned out like this:

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Sometime last year I used this shirt as an experiment to make a bleached gradient effect. There’s a tutorial for that over here.

Since then it’s been sitting in my craft pile waiting for a project.

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So step 1. is to cut off the seams around the neck and arms and the bottom.

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Then cut the remaining fabric into strips. You can either remove the side strips or you can leave them for really long necklaces.

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I love the gradient effect!

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Now with each of these pieces stretch them out with your finger.

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They will roll up on themselves and curl around like this.

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Now it’s just a matter or arranging them the way that you like so they form a necklace. You can hang them all at the same length or make longer variations.

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I went with different variations depending on the colours. I thought the seems looked pretty cool but you could easily cover them with beads or plait several strands together. There are so many versions of this one idea!

In the end I decided to keep mine plain so the colour was the main focus.

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To finish off all of the edges you just need to hold them together and use another piece of shirt to secure it. Tie the shirt in a knot around loose ends and then wrap it until the ends are hidden. Tie off and then poke the loose pieces inside the wrapped area. You’ll get something nice and clean like this:

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Easy!

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And that all there is to it, it’s a nice quick project, no sewing involved and you can customise it as much or little as you want.

This has made me think more about fun things to do with old tshirts!

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Retro Beach Friendly Hairstyle Video Tutorial

It’s been a while since I was able to put together a video tutorial but I finally got to do a new hair tutorial! I totally love this style because once it’s in place it’s not going anywhere no matter how windy it is!

It was fun filming on the beach too!

Hope you guys enjoyed it ^_^

Transcript:
Finally a new video! I’ve made a lot of changes in my life recently and videos will return to being a weekly thing as of now. I’ll be starting a new beginners sewing series on the blog next week as well as an art series here. Hope you enjoy the video 🙂

Also I’m still trying to get in contact with the winner of my last competition so please check your inbox/channel walls to see if it was you! .
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Shop: http://bit.ly/NknExz
Blog: http://bit.ly/qIKumk
Tumblr: http://bit.ly/oF86Yz
Twitter: http://bit.ly/onCld1
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/pdZ8B5
Instagram: http://instagram.com/violetlebeaux

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A blog and Youtube channel about a girl and her quest to make everything sparkle. New craft, hair and beauty tutorials every week!

Violet LeBeaux spends most of her time trying to think of ways to make life prettier, posting said ways on her blog and drinking very strong tea. She writes about big hair cute things, girly fashion, beauty finds, sometimes Hime Gyaru fashion (姫ギャル) and crafty tutorials.

She lives with her adorable boyfriend Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.

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Music: Garageband unless otherwise credited

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How To Do A Retro Beach Hairstyle

Automatically translated by machine.
Hello and welcome to another hair tutorial.
This one is a little bit special because we’re at the ocean!
We are at Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast.
For cute beach looks it’s best to have your hair up as it can get pretty windy!
This hairdo is kind of vintage and has lots and lots of rolls so let’s get started!
This view is a pretty good change right?
Pin your friend and take a small section of hair from the top of your head.
Brush your hair straight upwards and using a teasing comb, tease the backside of it.
The teasing is important otherwise the rolls will separate when you try to put them up.
So with this section of hair, roll it backwards until it forms a loop.
Tuck the ends inside and then pin it to your scalp.
You should have something along these lines.
Now for the hairspray!
This style requires a LOT of hairspray. I have a little mini one that I take with me on travels.
It’s pretty tiny but it packs a punch!
Grab a section of hair next to the first roll.
Pull it outwards and tease the back of it again.
Twist it about half way down.
Then fold it backwards so it forms a loop.
This time, just leave the ends hanging down and then pin it in place.
So now you have one middle loop and one side loop.
Repeat on the other side in the other direction.
Pull it up, tease, twist and fold into a loop.
Pin it in place and add hairspray.
You can never have too much hairspray especially at the beach!
Grab the rest of the hair on the side making sure you don’t have tails of the other loops that you already made.
Tease it.
Twist it.
And form another loop beneath the other ones till you have something like this.
Pin it in place.
Once this style is done, it’s not going anywhere no matter how windy it is!
Or if it decides to rain on your holiday like it always seems to on ours.
Repeat on the other side.
Tease, twist, loop and pin underneath the other loops.
From the back you’ve got this!
Speaking of, let’s do the back.
Grab a section at the top including the tails of the other two loops as well.
Or you could just leave it like this fo a different cute look.
Pull it upwards, tease and roll it forwards to form a loop.
Make sure you poke the tails of this one in.
Roll it so it’s just behind the first loop that you did and pin it in place.
Now separate the remaining hair into two sections.
And roll upwards.
Pin those bad boys in place.
You can do more loops here if you’d like but I was in a hurry so this was as far as I got.
The back doesn’t look great but my mirror was a shiny table surface so this was as good as it got!
Now pick a fringe!
You can tease it and pin for a quiff.
Roll it.
Or sweep it off to one side.
Or just curl it like I did.
The next thing you need is a scarf. Isn’t this nautical one cute?
Now tie it loosely around the rolls.
You don’t want to tie it too tightly or it will squish your rolls and come off at the beach.
A cute tropical flower to match my swimsuit and we’re done!
Except for hairspray… you can always use more hairspray.
Taadaa! Now that’s a hairstyle that’s not going anywhere no matter how windy it is!
We went down to the beach to see the rockpools at low tide, it was really cool!
It looks so cute and sunny here but it was actually storming and rainy for most of this.
You can see here, when I actually had a mirror I fixed the back of my hair right up.
And I added a couple more rolls.
Hope you guys enjoyed my holiday tutorial, thanks so much for watching and I’ll see you guys next week. Bye!

Sewing 101- What do you want to learn??

Ever since I did my first sewing tutorial on this blog I’ve had comments, emails and requests asking for a beginners guide to sewing. Well after some proper thought planning out it starts today!

Mondays will now be Sewing 101 days… though Sewing 101 is such a lame name for a series so if you have any other suggestions please leave them in the comments! I’m so bad at coming up with names for things!!

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Today being the first day I wanted to give the option for you guys to see what I have planned and tell me what you actually want to learn. Is there a particular thing you want to make as your first project? Do you have a burning question about bobbins? Do you want to learn how to ruffle so you can sew your own Lolita skirts? Let me know in the comments so I can tailor things as we go!

Currently the post schedule looks like this:

  • What do you want to learn?
  • Getting to know your sewing machine/tools of the trade you need.
  • Sewing a dress start to finish, showing you the process (then we go into detail of each step later)
  • How to thread your sewing machine.
  • Basic stitches and concepts you need to understand
  • Voting on a first project (I’ll put up 3 and the one with the most votes will be our first project)
  • First project start to finish.
  • Ruffles, darts and pin tucks oh my!
  • How to draft a basic dress pattern.
  • Basic shapes=basic clothes.
  • More sewing projects to try… in fact I guess this continues until we all get bored of sewing and want to try something else!

So what do you guys suggest? Do you prefer things in video format or photos? I personally think this will suit photos more as it can be harder to watch videos while you’re actually *doing* stuff. Let me know your suggestions and let’s get sewing together!

Adventures Making A DIY-ish Mannequin – Meet Miss Quinne

Last Christmas/Halloween I was gifted the most beautiful mannequin by Fables In Fashion. It was a complete surprise because I had been complaining about wanting a better way to display things for sewing tutorials for a while and even started to save up for one again… and then she showed up at my apartment with one *_* I am so grateful to have such amazing friends, I honestly feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

We named the new addition to the household Quinne…. because we are unoriginal like that!

This is the story of how Quinne had her make over and turned into this:

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When she came out of the box Quinne looked like this:DIY-Duct-Tape-Mannequin245

She was amazingly pretty and actually had the same measurements as me which was a very pleasant surprise. Originally I was just planning on blinging her out a bit but after using her and draping some patterns I decided that if she was going to really work she needed some shape change.

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As this shape she was extremely pretty and while the measurements were correct, the proportions weren’t.  She had much wider shoulders than me, a barrel shaped stomach and her neck was so long that it reminded me a bit of something from Silent Hill. I’ll be honest, seeing her in the corner of my room in the middle of the night terrified me >_>

I’m little but I’m a curvy girl with an hourglass shape which I love and having an mannequin that doesn’t have the exact same shape becomes a little pointless if I can’t use it to make patterns on. Most of my home made dresses are very fitted around the bodice area so her having triangles for boobs meant that I couldn’t even zip up half of them on her.

The other problem Quinne originally had was that she was completely stiff so it was quite hard to get my size clothes on and off. My arms and shoulders are movable and I can squish myself into various places to get into clothes. Sometimes I like to minimize the curves for certain outfits and Quinne just couldn’t do that.

I don’t look like this from the side, my boobs aren’t quite that pointy and I have much more junk in my trunk…

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So it was time to give Quinne a make over! Insert a 1980’s montage of trying on hats!

Anyway we thought that she was made of cardboard under her fabric so I stripped her down and had a look.

All of the trimmings were just hot glued on.

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Naked Quinne:

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Unfortunately underneath her fabric she was actually fiberglass >_<

So that was a problem. I got tiny painful splinters all over my hands which took forever for me to remove!

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For a little while I considered cutting through the fiberglass but after some googling I decided that really was not a good idea. Don’t mess with fiberglass and always research new materials you don’t know much about before trying anything. Your non-splintery fingers will thank you!!!

So with that out I had to do some serious thinking about where to go from there.

I knew I wasn’t going to use the fiberglass torso so I removed all the hardware and put it to the side for the moment.

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After thinking about it for a few days I decided on “The Duct Tape Method”. This method has been around for as long as I can remember and I’ve made a couple of these for other people over the years. It’s not hard to do and you just need some basic materials.

Off to the shops I went to get some duct tape and a shirt from the thrift store.

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Make sure you pick a shirt you don’t like, you won’t be getting it back so make sure you won’t ever want it again! If you want something very true to size use a fitted shirt. I just picked something out of the $2 bin which was quite loose as I wanted the finished product a little bigger than be, more on that later!

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Start by taping around the most important measurements: bust, waist, hips. Make sure you’re wearing your favorite bra so it’s more accurate of how you’ll look when wearing your actual clothes.

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Then just continue adding tape until you’ve got a decent frame. I like the do the shoulders first so it’s quite secure and the tshirt fabric doesn’t stretch out.

Enjoy your new look as Leeloo from The Fifth Element…

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You will probably need some help to get this done especially around the back!

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The way you do this will depend on what you want to use your mannequin for. I didn’t want arms so I did little cap sleeves. I also didn’t want it to go right down my butt because I don’t wear fitted skirts. You can go as far as you want though obviously. The chest area is something to think about as well. You can make it defined or not. I chose not because I prefer them covered up. and most of my clothing reflects that. So what I ended up with was a rough approximation of my figure because I still wanted it to be quite stylised. Easy!

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Now you need someone to get it off you! Cut the whole thing right down the back so you can remove it. Make sure you don’t cut your underwear or pants as you go, just cut the taped shirt XD

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Then you have this… shirt inside and duct tape outside. Super creepy!

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Use some duct tape to close up the back again.

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Now close up the holes with more duct tape and stuff it. You can use old clothes, fabric, pillows or actual stuffing depending on what you have on hand. I also stuck a broom handle inside so she was a lot more stable.

I then taped it all shut and used the cardboard tube from the duct tape to make a neck and taped that on too!

BAM!

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I closed up the bottom of Quinne with a piece of cardboard to make it flat and I screwed the hardware from the old Quinne to the bottom so she’d have a base.

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Quinne looked a bit deflated on one side so I gave her an augmentation using a bit more stuffing 😉

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And to make sure she had a smooth surface I taped her up some more.

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Now it was just a matter of some cosmetic surgery!

Originally Quinne had a really bright print. I really liked her print when she was by herself but I thought that when I put my clothes on her it clashed quite a bit with all of my prints. I didn’t want to loose it though so I decided to mute it a bit by bleaching it out.

Unfortunately it was not susceptible to bleach so that was out. I decided to give her an acrylic wash once she was all put together again.

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Getting her fabric back on was a challenge because she was obviously not the same shape anymore and had a lot more curves. I did it by wetting the fabric and then adding darts and working the fabric until it fit. I then pinned until it was dry, hot glued it in shape and snipped the extra off.

 

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I added the other fabric back on the base too.

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And then I hot glued the trimmings back on.

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The it was time to tackle the colour. I watered down white acrylic paint and gave it a wash. The paint muted the colour but also gave the fabric extra stiffness which will soften over time. The mannequin is still squishy so she’s easy to get in and out of things!

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I added her head piece with some extra lace and a lace skirt to hide the crappy bottom section and she was all done!

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And there she is!

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Welcome back Quinne!

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She’s got much more of a curved figure now and is very practical. Her proportions are a bit bigger than mine which is my preference because it helps me in knowing how something is actually going to look and feel when it’s on. I can squish her and move her stuffing around and I use elastic to change her shape depending on the outfit I want to style.

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LOVE!

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So while Miss Quinne took some work to get perfect, she’s now going to be a regular here on the blog as I’m sewing a lot more.

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It’s great to be able to actually complete some of my long term projects!

What do you guys think? Time for some new sewing projects? Do you think Miss Quinne should make regular appearances here?

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