Pile on the glitter - Fashion Fridays

Last week I discovered that somewhere along the line I stopped wearing jewelry. What may have started as a decision not to wear jewelry that could be damaged when doing a messy project with students or when kneading dough or simply out of laziness, became a habit. It became my regular operating system. 

This week I rekindled my love of the glittery and found that it gave me a lift of my spirits. I somehow sat taller in my seat and am sure that there was a gleam in my eyes as I moved through the day. 

The photo below is a double exposure of several pieces of jewelry I love. I would never have realized it, but I have found that I love glass! Glass beads on my Troll Beads bracelet and this beautiful glass necklace made by a friend. 

What kinds of jewelry do you love? When you look at the jewelry you have, does any of it surprise you? What if you wore them in surprising combinations? 

Hope you have a sparkle-ful week. 

Wear Your Joy Course with Kelly Rae Roberts - Fashion Friday

When I saw the course by Kelly Rae Roberts called Wear Your Joy I just knew I had to take it. It resonated so well with this art journal. She provided a forum for exploring some of the very things I thought I'd put in this journal. So today's Fashion Friday is dedicated to Kelly. I started a few days late, so I'm still working on day two, but already I've identified one big thing that will make a difference in my style - actually wearing the beautiful accessories I have! 

You can see that my page features a blank spot - an unfinished area on the page. This is where I traced two beautiful pieces I wore today - both made of glass. 

Below you see the necklace I wore today - a beautiful piece of art made my a friend. 

The other item I wore today is my Troll Bead bracelet. (I do mix in beads from Camilla and Pandora.) I love the glass pieces especially.  These pieces of joy made me smile all day. Accessorize. That's the word this week. 

 Want more information about the course? Here's a link to the course description:
http://kellyraeroberts.com/wear-your-joy


I can't wait to see what's next!

Finding My Style - Fashion Friday

Color - Texture - Fiber 

These are things I love. 
Before taking up art journaling I knit, I crocheted, I sewed, I embroidered and I beaded. I made paper from pulp. I folded paper ….well I still do that with a vengeance. There was the season of spinning and years of smocking and heirloom sewing. 

I love them all. 

When I saw this garment in Belle Armoire I fell in love. The texture, the different length of fringe, the colors - all of it so luscious. This kind of thing has to be part of the style I am developing. 

The large photo featured in the magazine was fabulous, but a little big for the journal page. So I shredded it into strips, laid it down in overlapping patterns and sewed it down with embroidery floss and beads. It is something new for me, but it feels completely natural to me. It is somehow reminiscent of my paper making days when I combined tissue paper left from holiday gifts, threads clipped from the  end of seams and embroidery, organic matter and bits of paper that appealed to me. Anything found it's way into the paper. Now anything finds it's way onto the paper. 

The style I want to wear looks a lot like an art journal page or an art quilt. Vibrant, full of texture, and embedded with joy. 

My Fashion Friday posts must be disappointing to someone looking for the latest style. I post them as a way for me to discover my style. 

To those new to my blog I have an art journal for exploring my sense of style. I post about it on Fridays. 

Saturday is when I post about my Self Care of the week under the title Self Care Saturday. 

Stamping and Printing Sunday is when I post about my adventures with mono printing and stamping. 

Feel free to join me any day. I'm glad you are here. Tell me about how you found your style. 

Unrestricted - Fashion Friday

These garment clips have been in my file for quite some time. The flattering drape, the easy care fabric, the interesting details have made me feel they would be fun to wear and a boon when traveling. I need more of this. 

These look like comfort clothes to me - easy to wear and easy to feel good wearing. 

What kind of clothes are your comfort clothes? 

Texture - Fashion Friday

Textures - I love them! I once had a boss who was a master at the use of texture and color, for that matter. It was a joy to see the way she engineered her outfits…dressy, but a bit funky. I'd love to dress like that. In the last few years I've gone for simple to wear and to choose. I'd like to reclaim my sense of style. While I am engineering a new set of items in my closet I want to remember to add texture. 

The images I chose this week are hardly the styles I would wear. I found them beautiful, however and full of texture. They were a good reminder of how I might like to go about adding texture - fabrics of various thicknesses, densities, and, for lack of another term, texture. Brocade, silk, lace, weave, embroidered, fluffy, rough, beaded, yet nothing furry that originated as someone's skin, thanks. And whether it is out of a love of beings that fly or based on my own allergy to feathers I prefer looking at them on the sky creatures rather than wearing them. 

What are your favorite textures? Do you think much about textures in your wardrobe? In your interior? At all? 

The images came from a Marie Claire magazine from 2012. I cut out the exact issue and page and then lost it in a pile of clippings. 

Upcycled, Recycled, Altered and Improved - Fashion Friday

Of the many kinds of fashion that I find draws me in is re-imagined clothing. Articles of clothing that were once loved and now linger in the back of a closet. Fibers that have worn so well that some of them have worn straight through. Items that were never quite right. When these see the light of day, when they receive a little tender care and a heavy dose of embellishment, well, I swoon. I love the fussy, the complicated, the difficult to wash. (I have a pile of it ready to be hand rinsed to prove my point.)

So this week I rescued these images from the Winter 2014 issue of Altered Couture. I hoped to remind myself that this is a dream of mine. 

I'll be looking through my closet this weekend. The season is changing and the light weight clothing must take precedent over the heavy knits. To be sure my eye will be ready to find items to rework or to donate. 

How do you approach the season change? Do you regularly cull your closets and make way for something new? Are you a shopper? A refashioner? A stalwart fan of clothes you bought years ago and have no intention of letting go or letting out? 

Fashion Friday

In an earlier post I mentioned that I thought I had found my medium. It is true. When I started trying art journaling I thought I might need more than one journal as you can only work so much before you need to let it dry. Sometimes that is as much an esthetic issue as it is one of moisture. 

I started thinking of the different journals I might have going simultaneously. At one point I easily counted 10 different journals, each with it's unique focus. One of them was a fashion journal. Anyone who know me might snicker a little reading that. I tend to dress very simply these days. That was not always the case. My recent lack of focus on my apparel has more to do with what I am focusing on rather than a distain for spending time to choose the right thing. 

For a while I have felt that a scrap book (now turned journal) with styles I like would help me to refine my own sensibilities and help me to be more focused when shopping. If nothing more, it would bring me joy to look at pieces that look lovely to me. 

And so the fashion journal is born. I don't know that I'll post every Friday, but here's my post for today. It was really fun to do this, so I may continue simply because it made me smile. 

Hope your weekend is a happy one. 

How do you select clothing? Do you have a clothing policy? A strategy? A particular style?