Manic Pop

Lately, I've been getting into re-decorating the house, making it a little more mid-century modern than it has been looking. About 90% of this stuff happened to be in the house when I moved here, but I'm just extremely playing off the mid-60s to mid-70s accents again. My favorite recent purchase was this lamp! (Simple, I know.) But I had been thinking about it on and off for the past 3 weeks or so yet couldn't justify buying it for nearly $40 even at Target. I go back for curtain rods the other day for the sun room and ta da! The lamp is $10. This mid-century chair was just chilling downstairs. I was originally going to paint it orange (bought spraypaint and everything) but then I got the lamp and couldn't bear to paint it orange. It's going to get a new coat of white though since it's chipped. I also temporarily pinned up old 45's I rescued from the street about a year ago. I had planned on making cool record wall hangings (and still will, since I h...

The other day me and Max went over to a relatively new thrift store in our neighborhood (which is a mess - not sure if they are planning on fixing that or not) but I unearthed a Seventeen magazine from March 1968. At first I was like, "Oh, Seventeen magazine... whatever." But as I flipped through the pages, I began to be delighted over the ads and how sophisticated the fashion actually was for a teen magazine. (Nothing like today's teen magazines.) Seventeen really looked like a fashion magazine - on par with today's Teen Vogue - or perhaps even Nylon. As I leafed through the pages, I got so excited that I nearly was hyperventilating. I plan on using ideas from this magazine for more things I am making in the future - so much amazing inspiration! I hope I'll find more magazines from the 60s as I wish fashion and photography looked much more like this today. So here I bring you a very photo-heavy post from Seventeen's March 1968 issue! Note: The magazi...

  The name is really misleading - Chicago Botanic Garden is really located in Glencoe, IL which is a bit of a drive from where I live, but this is the 2nd time this year that me and Max have gone! (Note: Need membership!)   Today we brought along my friend Shardae who is also a fashion designer! A fun person to bring along. Every time I'm at the Chicago Botanic Garden, there is something new I never knew existed (today being my 3rd time there.) Today I found out that there is 15 acres of prairie grassland out there. How could I have possibly missed that?  There are 24 gardens overall, but the one I tend to spend much of my time in is the Japanese Garden. We actually found a 2nd Zen Garden with an enclosed rooftop, table, and seats which I had never known to exist there today!  Here, Shardae and I are nearby the Waterfall Garden, laughing at our new duck friend taking a bath in the water below.   Japanese...

Have you ever sewn something that gave you SO much unnecessary grief? I have, and it was this dress. The patterns I made in about 3 hours on July 5th and though the hand-printing was tedious, it was fun. Of all things, the stupid zipper tripped me up! This is how you learn the hard way to hand-baste the zipper into the dress. (Extra work, but it's worth it!) So I hand-dyed this fabric from 2 yards of plain white fabric - assuming it may have been a poly-cotton blend. Who knows what the hell you're buying at that fabric store (2121 W. 21st St. in Chicago). At first, I was worried at it not picking up the Rit dye since it's made primarily for cotton, but it dyed just fine.  Home-dyeing is soooo easy! I just throw it in a pot with water and boil away. It's funny to think that this dress started from nothing - just a thought, a sketch, and a Photoshop manipulation. Here is the original Photoshop edit: This was created by throwing in this photo o...