I sometimes seem to think of seasons in terms of flowers. When the snow is melting, it will be tulip season soon. Once the weather has warmed, it is blossom time. The middle of May means lilac season. And then finally, as the lilacs fade we reach my favourite of all: peony season. Peony season is the best, because it comes in June. The trees are lush with leaves, and the gardens are filling in with green foliage. We aren’t into summer yet, so the days are warm, but not too hot, and the evenings are cool. And my favourite large, pretentious, many-petaled, sweetly scented flowers burst into bloom! We are lucky to have six peony bushes: four white ones, and two fuchsia pink ones, which are not my favourite (my absolute favourite are the blush pink variety) but medium pink is the next best thing! I couldn’t not have a photo shoot with the pink peonies when they were in bloom, but alas, I don’t currently own any pinks that are cool toned like this peony bush (and peach tones would look terrible with this backdrop). So beiges, browns, olives – and a tiny bit of a pink necklace had to do instead. This is an outfit I wear a lot though, so it’s nice to show this dress off again, as the last time was over a year ago.
I guess I don’t really have much to say about this outfit, aside from the fact that: I actually wear this dress a lot in the summer, I am trying to break in these shoes semi-successfully (don’t you hate breaking in shoes??!!), and I bought this purse when I was eighteen, carried it for a few years, then decided that I didn’t really love it. Fortunately I kept it though, and have been using it again- I think I just needed a bit of break from it to remember that I do still like it 🙂
What is your favourite “flower season” and which flowers grow where you live?
I can’t believe we are nearing the end of July already- how did that happen? Well, with the close of July, comes the beginning of August and that means it is time for the My Vintage Cover challenge! If you missed my post about the challenge, you can find all the details here. And, seeing as how it is drawing near, today I thought I would share with you the covers I have done in the past, to give you an idea of how you might translate a vintage cover, or image, into a recreation of your own.
Your “Vintage Cover” can be as detailed or as “inspired by” as you would like. Sometimes the mood is enough, and sometimes it can be fun to get every last detail as precise as the original- you can decide how you want to recreate the vintage images.
The first Vogue recreation I ever did was part of a blog post, where I was inspired by this cover, and decided to photograph my outfit as a series of pieces. It wasn’t a reproduction per se, but it was what started me on doing these cover reproductions in the first place! I wasn’t trying to make this a precise replica- only an image inspired by the Vogue one. And getting the hands correct- and not looking like a murderer, was tricky too, by the way. 😉
The next one I did was more precise. I mimicked the outfit as best I could, and though I don’t have every detail perfect, this was pretty fun to do.
I did the cover below this past spring, in honour of “The Spring Bonnet”. It is probably the most fun of all the covers I’ve done so far, because I made that crazy hat by covering one of my straw hats in faux flowers!
Another recent one was this 1910’s cover. I just so happened to have a very similar dress, and a scarf, so a reproduction was obviously necessary!
Well, those are the covers I have done so far. I want to do many more, but the tricky part is always in getting the clothes and accessories correct!
However, there are many vintage images which don’t require very elaborate costumes to reproduce. I will be back next week with a post featuring some easier-to-copy covers, and I know that my co-host Tanith is also going to be posting some of her favourite covers this week, so make sure to check out her posts too! As this challenge draws nearer, I am getting excited to see what everyone comes up with- I can’t wait to see your recreations!
Oh! Could it be the postman at the door? I am not expecting anything, yet I can’t be sure. . .
There among the parcels, is a letter addressed to me! Folded and sealed- who is it from? What could it be?
It is poetry written in letters so fair, with sweet phrases meant only for us two to share. . .
And though he is absent, his words are so dear; I whisper them softly and he seems to be near . . .
So here among the garden hedge, only the flowers and me,
I read those secrets that will secrets remain, and remember them pleasantly.
This, dear readers is an exciting day for me, because this is the post that almost wasn’t.
I had an idea to dress up and do a themed photo shoot last month, since the lilacs were in full and glorious bloom and I wanted to take advantage of it somehow (and also I haven’t done a “dress up” post in a while). However, despite the fact that I thought we would be able to get some pretty fun photographs, everything seemed to be against me and my sister, who was helping to take the photos. We battled the sun shining where it oughtn’t to have, the attack of the killer mosquitoes, the hot day that had not yet cooled off, despite the fact that it was heading into evening, and the gale force winds that came up just as soon as we stepped outside. We conquered the elements, but once we managed to get a few photographs, my camera battery died. So, fortunately we were able to switch to using my sister’s camera, but then my memory card which has been having problems lately, started saying that it was full (when it wasn’t) and so we kept having to delete outtakes as we went along (which you are not supposed to do directly from your camera). Well, finally we managed to get our photographs, and we weren’t too mosquito bitten either!
We looked over the photographs, and I saved them off of my memory card. Then, I did a bit of research to see what was causing the problem with my card. I discovered that it probably needed to be reformatted on my computer and not just my camera. So I erased the memory card clean with the disk utility on my computer, and then reformatted it on my camera for good measure. Every step of the way, the computer and camera asked me “Are you SURE you want to delete all photos/data on this card”. I kept clicking “yes”. Well, you can probably see where I am going with this story. . .
I was visiting my friend a couple of weeks ago, and wanted to show her the photos, but when I went to pull up the lilacs photos on my external harddrive- they weren’t there. They weren’t there! That was one of those moments where your heart drops right out of your chest and settles somewhere down around your feet. I searched through everysinglefolder; even the folders from nine years ago, but the photos were not there. I looked through the folders on my computer too, in case somehow they had got dropped in a different location. I was pretty heartbroken over it (as much as you can be about photographs, I mean) but then I just had to accept that they were gone forever. Remember how I erased that memory card?
Well, once I got home, my sister suggested that I look in my iphoto folders. It didn’t make any sense that they would be there, because I don’t use iphoto all that often, and I always upload my images straight to my harddrive for safekeeping. I had already looked before, in my recent iphoto folder uploads, but they weren’t there. However, when I looked under “events”, what should appear before my eyes but the very photos I had despaired of never seeing again! I didn’t tear up when I thought I had lost the photos, but I did when I found them again! My sister can vouch for my excitement upon finding them!
So, I have no idea how those photos were mislaid and managed to find their way to the iphoto folders, but I am so glad that they did. And the moral of the story today is, don’t change up your routine and put photos in one place, when you always put them somewhere else. And, double and triple and quadruple check that you have your photographs saved, BEFORE you erase your memory card clean!
Have you ever lost photographs due to a technical error, or were you able to get them back somehow?
(ps- I don’t have a “him” in my life right now, so this is all entirely make believe, but wouldn’t it be sweet to read love letters amongst the lilacs? Also, that “letter” is a handwritten poem I found online, called “Night” written for “Miss Mary L. Jacob’s Album” by “A.G. Archer Henry”. So who knows, maybe it was a “love letter” after all?)
Sometimes life changes in the blink of an eye. When I first wrote this post, it was shortly after I had met Jessica. I wanted to write while the meeting was still “fresh in my mind” and before I forgot anything. Then, Jessica and I discussed back and forth as to when to publish the photos. We decided on publishing them on the same day in early November. This was in mid-September. And then, in October, as many of you already know and I mentioned before, Jessica lost almost everything that she owns, in an arson fire, on October 13th, 2016. In one day it went from excitement over wanting to post these pictures, to the shock of realizing that everything she owned was. . . gone. It is always hard to hear of someone suffering from a tragedy of any kind, but even more so when you know the person whom it happens to. It’s been eight months now, since Jessica and I had this lovely blogger meetup last September, and seven months since the tragic fire, and we have decided that it is now time to share the photos here on my blog. Since Jessica has made the difficult decision to now retire her blog, I hope that you enjoy this post, which I consider to be from both of us.
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Last July, when I posted pictures from a photoshoot my friend and I did, all dressed up in 1950’s outfits, I received a lovely comment on the post from Jessica, of the blog Chronically Vintage. She said that the post made her wish that “we lived nearby and could team up for a shared outfit shoot of our own” and that if she was ever out my way, or I was out hers, “it would be a blast to try and make that happen.” The thought had occurred to me as well, but even though it sounded like a fun thing to do, and despite the fact that we both live in Canada- we still don’t live that close to each other! I didn’t pin my hopes on such a thing happening. Fast forward a few months, though, and sometimes wishes do come true, in the form of my first ever blogger meetup!
A few weeks after that post, I received an email in my inbox from Jessica detailing her plans to visit Edmonton in September for a holiday. She so kindly asked if I wanted to meet up with her during her trip, since I live fairly close to the city, and it could make our plans of meeting in-person one day, a reality. Of course my answer was a resounding “Yes!”, and so a plan was made. It just so happened that I was going to be travelling through Edmonton at the same time she would be in the city, so we decided to have our blogger meet up that day. Originally, I had suggested meeting at the Old Strathcona Antique Mall, but as she had already planned to visit there with another friend, an alternate plan was made for us to meet at Rowena on Whyte Ave, the storefront of the Retro Glam online shop, and after we were finished there to continue up Whyte Ave and pop into any other stores we came across. We also stopped in at The Junque Cellar, which is, basically like it sounds, a vintage/junk store in a cellar. Well, I guess it’s a basement, but same difference. 😉
I love to go shopping at the best of times, but to go shopping for an afternoon, with a fellow vintage lover is really the best thing ever. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything to buy (seriously, what is with the sizing of some things!? Everything went from too big, to too small!) but it was still so much fun to browse. We did discover that we have a lot in common, and it was really nice to put a face with a name, or well, maybe a person with the blog. You know what I mean. 😉 When we were finished shopping, we found a picnic table by some trees, to sit outside in the lovely fall sunshine and exchange some gifts. Jessica, remembering that in the past I have mentioned that I don’t own very many true vintage pieces, gave me the beautiful beaded necklace pictured here (it was so pretty I couldn’t wait to put it on, and the colour was perfect for my outfit!) and also a gold brooch of an artist’s palette (since my blog is called “The Artyologist”.) How completely special that, not only did she give me a gift, she gave me something so personally tailored! Jessica is such a sweet lady, and I am so honoured to have been able to meet her in person.
After we were done, we were able to make that wish of a few months ago a reality, with a photoshoot by her husband Tony. We took the photos in this walkway behind the Historic Train Station on Whyte Ave and Gateway, which is now a restaurant. As we were waiting for Tony to arrive, we saw only one person walk by, and thought that it would be a nice background for photos. Of course, as soon as he arrived, it suddenly turned into Grand Central Station, and everyone and their dog decided to walk through. It made for some lag time, but in the end we got these lovely pictures!
We didn’t plan our outfits to coordinate either, but I guess that vintage minds think alike! The colours of our outfits compliment one another splendidly, and are a perfect summer-to-fall transition. This day we were out and about, was a perfect early fall day, with the sun shining, but a crisp breeze on the air to remind us of the changing seasons.
It was a wonderful afternoon spent together, and it was also my first ever blogger meetup. Since then, Jessica and I have exchanged many emails back and forth, and I am truly thankful to have been able to meet her in person as well. This was my first time meeting up with Jessica- but hopefully it will not be the last!
Vogue March 15, 1911: The Newest Spring Materials and Trimmings . . . which herald the arrival of the season.
With fresh, bright colours and light, airy fabrics, the arrival of Spring is welcomed with this lovely mint chiffon and lace ensemble. Softly draped fabrics are an elegant choice for these warm Spring days, but for the still-cool evenings a floral patterned shawl is the perfect addition. A single gold bracelet lends a touch of exoticism to this simple, yet graceful, silhouette.
Inspiration for this fashion recreation comes from this cover of Vogue from 1911. I’ve been wanting to do a more “historical” Vogue cover recreation for a while now, and this dress I bought a few years ago on a whim (and have only worn once as a costume!) was perfect to recreate this lovely Edwardian era magazine cover.
