Twenty-five before I turn 25!

Katie and I at the Blogcademy in our amazing ears

 

 Blogcademy, birthday lists and new friends ❤

I was lucky enough to attend the Blogcademy in Brisbane on the weekend and had an absolute blast! Such a great way to start my birthday month. In celebration of new friendships and a new chapter in my bloggy life, I decided I’m going to be blogging more regularly ! I met the inspirational Katie on the first day of the workshop and we hit it off!

This Sunday I leave my early twenties behind officially and begin my ‘mid-twenties’. After reading Katie’s blog I was inspired to do my own list of things to complete in a year before my next birthday. You can read Katie’s blog and her amazing adventures here

This post is dedicated to my new friend 🙂

My 25 before 25

1.     Read the Colour Purple by Alice Walker

2.     Visit Scotland during August for the Edingburgh Fringe Festival

3.     Play a gig

4.     Get an article published on another blog

5.     Complete and publish an E-Course

6.     Camp on Bruny Island

7.     Open a high interest Savings Account to save for a house

8.     Throw a tea party

9.     Have a girls weekend away in Sydney

10.  Make a (wearable) dress from scratch!

11.  Learn the screen printing process and create some patches

12.  Beat my personal best surfing

13.  Drive one of Dad’s Triumphs

14.  Have a movie marathon (LOTR, HP, etc).

15.   Watch a movie at a rooftop cinema

16.  Do karaoke

17.  See Haim live

18.  Do at least two public speaking engagements

19.  Redesign my blog

20.  Do one of the trail walks on Mount Wellington

21.  Act in The Vagina Monologues

22.  Hit 150 Blog posts

23.  Find the perfect shade of lipstick for me

24.   Bake and decorate a cake

25. Do an online writing course

I know it seems like alot, and I’m going to be completely dedicated! It means making a conscious effort to have a full and fun 24th year. Looking forward to birthday celebrations on Sunday 🙂

Laura

BettyMag issue three!

BettyMag issue three has landed! Hooooray!

 

Back page of the magazine by Brain Foetus

I’ve sent off over 25 pre-ordered copies and looking forward to selling a whole bunch more tomorrow night at WoMo.

You can purchase the print magazine here through my etsy shop, and purchase the digital sneak peek (ten pages) of the magazine here for only two dollars! Woo.

Big love to everyone who helped make the magazine!

On another exciting note, meeting Gala Darling this weekend in Brisbane at the Blogacademy which I’m starting to get really nervous for!

And booked tickets to see Neutral Milk Hotel with Lib for my birthday. Yay!

November is looking set to be awesome!

April and Andy know where it’s at.

 

 

Lazy Sundays (and ’90s Poses)

My best nineties diva pose, channeling TLC

I was born in the second last month of ‘the eighties’ (hint hint- my birthday coming up!).

My childhood clothes in the nineties consisted of Mini Minors, Osh Kosh B’gosh and hand-me-downs- usually from children my age (I was a small child!) and occasionally my brother and I would model these clothes at fashion parades (why Mum, whyyyy).

Yesterday on a lazy Sunday we went out to one of Libby’s sites she works for, half an hour out of the city to give out free petrol vouchers! I came with her for moral support and the bribe of a salad roll (her shout). Lib pointed out that I looked like I stepped out of the nineties- dirty driving glasses from Lib’s glovebox, Cue Australia vintage neon top, kmart leggings with holes in the bum, jelly sandals and lovely hairy legs. It was like I was six years old again, complete with food on my pants!

It was a great photographic moment waiting for customers in the sun!

Jelly Bean sandals

 

It was hot and lovely and we were watching ’25 biggest divas on the screens outside’. ‘Caught out there’ by Kelis came on and I am kicking myself so much for not listening to it more when I was massively down about being dumped. Gosh! What a kickass song.

🙂 Just wanted to recap my sunday because it was lovely.

 

 

Frocktober: The swinging sixties and a yellow shift

I promised some frock-related posts this month, and they’re on their way!

First up is my favourite dress, my yellow shift dress. It’s a vintage Sandra Terry Australian made one, bought off my darling friend Anna! Shift dresses were first made popular in the 1960s, when clothing manufacturing became cheaper and skirt lengths became shorter. Shift dresses are no fuss and super flattering 🙂

Yellow Shift Dress photo by Jaclyn Rogerson

 

Bold Mondrian graphics, black and white, op art, psychedelia, space-age looks- the 1960s is definitely my favourite era of clothing!

Audrey Hepburn in Space Age

• Biba Fashion House: When I was in London I visited Brighton when they were having the Biba retrospective exhibition on at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. Although I couldn’t afford to go in, there was amazing retro memorabilia of the fashion house for sale, and I bought my sister a compact mirror from there (ah, museum shops are always so good!).

• Mary Quant was another fashion pioneer who made shift dresses popular.

Mary Quant Mini-skirt

Mary Quant 1960s

• I remember looking at photos of Jean Shrimpton in high school (when I was fascinated by retro fashion) and thinking she was the most beautiful person in the world. And brave for going to the Melbourne Cup without a hat, gloves and rocking a mini-skirt. How fab!

Jean Shrimpton with shocked onlookers!

• And what would a post about 1960s fashion be without photos of Twiggy ?

For the rest of October I’m raising money to donate to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. You can donate here to my campaign as part of Frocktober. Thank you in advance. xo

Frocktober 2013

I’m participating in Frocktober again this year, and raising funds for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation of Australia.

Last year I wore a dress every day for a month but I just don’t feel like I could do it again this year, it was really hard when I’m such a jeans kinda gal! Also, most of my dresses are a little ‘out there’- and when you work with children its not really practical to wear a dress all the time. 🙂

Hula Girl Dress

IN Aus, one woman dies every ten hours from ovarian cancer. This is such a horrible statistic! I want to do my part to help research early detection for the women I love and cherish. There is a 90% survival rate when the disease is detected and treated early, but a pap smear does not detect ovarian cancer.

My plan is to raise 500 dollars for research into early detection and prevention of ovarian cancer through organising a Friday Frocktail party on the 25th of October and posting regularly about dresses on here! I’m going to be blogging about sentimental dresses and the stories behind them, as well as posting dresses I do wear throughout the month.

If you would like to donate to my campaign click here. My gorgeous friend Holly is also doing the campaign, so if you were thinking of giving me ten dollars I would really appreciate it if you would do a fiftyfifty donation (ie $5 to me and $5 to her)- remember all the money raised goes to OCRF !

Thank you so much in advance!

xx

“We Are Smart, We Have Power” : Upcycled Vest

Laurence & Luna’s empowering patch

Having the flu seemed to bring out my creative side. With the weather warming up and being relatively stuck inside due to needing copius amounts of sleep+tea+ginger+honey+lemon+and tissues I kind of went a bit crazy. It’s strange spending so much time alone without talking to anyone or doing anything without people because everyone was at work or at university like proper adults.

I decided I don’t like being sick, but it was probably my body’s way of telling me to slow down. And while I’ve completely lost my voice and my breathing is still horribly wraspy, I think I’m on the mend!

Enough rambling. Here is what I made to combat the crazys and I am incredibly

proud of my ability to (sort-of) successfully use my sewing machine.

First up was sewing on some sweet black bobbly bunting onto the front.

Now this was so much harder than it looks! It was at the seam where the two pieces of denim joined. And being only a total newbie to the whole sewing thing, I only had really thick blunt tapestry needles. Anyway, I discovered the use of thimbles. Never again will I silently say to myself they are ridiculously small and probably pointless.

I decided to use my new patch from Laurence & Luna to upcycle a vest I bought (and still haven’t paid Lib for-soz Lib).

Hot pink thread! So fun. The purple floral is part of a sheet I cut up. It’s my favourite!

I have two pillowcases in the same fabric I’m NOT cutting up but will use on my bed.

Pretty for spring don’t you think?

Picture by mumsy! Dad’s new Triumph 4a is to the left of me, we went to Baskerville Racecourse to see the historic cars racing 🙂

The vest in action!

_ _ _  _ _ _ _

BettyMag Update:

Selling preorders here of issue 3!  I’ve been preparing all the envelopes so that they can be sent out straight away after I pick them up from the printers! My new ‘get excited’ stamp from Elise Blaha arrived in the mail and I’ve been busily stamping away and getting excited! xxx

Pre-order packaging!

Life lately; Tea time, bitches!

I can’t believe it’s October already! I’ve been sick off work this week with the flu, it’s been so boring and lonely-

BUT I’VE FINISHED BETTY ISSUE 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hooooooorayyyyyy.

 

I’ll try and take it to the printers in the next few days!! Excccitttttinnnggg!

I’ve also introduced a new product to my etsy store; ten pages of Issue 2 delivered to your inbox for four dollars. You can check it out and read more here.

Happy, feministy events!

Last Friday night was a meet and greet at the Art School with organisations working with women around Hobart to meet with university students. I represented BettyMag but my boss was there too speaking about our work. It was a lovely night, although I’m pretty sure I was fairly drunk!

I got to meet some amazing women who I had only conversed with online so it was pretty exciting putting (3d,physical faces) to names!

The Tuesday the week before was WO MO #6.

WO MO (women’s movement) is run by the fabulous Ange Wilson and is always so much fun! It’s basically a space for women to get together and meet up, share a drink together and some nibblies and discuss feminist stuff!

At WO MO: me, Briony Kidd, Ange Wilson (organiser) and Madeline Chung

READING:

I started reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte a few nights ago, and I love it so far!

My copy was bought by my dad on the 21/4/1984 in Haworth, Leeds. Haworth is the village where the Bronte sisters and their family lived. It’s a village in Yorkshire, where my UK family is from on my fathers side. Dad always writes inscriptions on the first page of his book with his funky signature, date and place he bought his book. I try and make sure I do this whenever I buy new books too.

MUSIC:

Now that Holly is back from her overseas travelling we can have jams again! I’m really looking forward to collaborating with her, she’s so great at guitar! And my bass playing has improved so much just from being around her! Woohoooo.

 

Rag Rug Making

Rag Rug

It has been awhile since I’ve posted an update on crafts or projects I’m doing. Rug making has been the latest project: I was totally inspired by this rug from Rachel of Smile and Wave to make my own after seeing her beautiful rag rug. You can find her tutorial here.

Rachel’s Rug

The first step was the loom. It was pretty easy to make, especially since I live a block away from a major hardware store. Surprisingly, the wood only cost me 6 dollars and the nails were cheap too. I couldn’t find my floral hammer so I had to buy a new one. My new hammer is definitely man size!

My loom

To make the loom you you basically hammer your wood together depending on the shape of your desired rug, and then hammer nails in along the short edge an equally measured distance apart. Voila. Loom made! Although my rugs are quite small, to make a bigger rug like Rachel’s I would have to sew maybe five or six of my rugs together (and weaving alone on one of my rugs took 3-4 hours of solid RSI).

For the weaving part I used Hoooked Zpagetti cotton and though it is expensive for a roll, I am happy to pay as it’s offcuts that would otherwise be added to landfill and it’s got a nice stretch. Along with this I teared up a white cotton sheet I found at an opshop and bought some black lycra (super stretchy!).

I’ve made two rugs now, slightly different from each other. The common theme between them is that they are super skinny in the middle. I need to try and rectify this problem somehow, either by putting nails along the long edge of my loom and weaving around them also, or not creating too much tension in the material early on in weaving.

That being said, I’m pretty happy with them! And they look lovely as bedside mats.

The best part about this project is the fact that you can weave while watching tv shows or movies.

I finished weaving and then did some sewing over the top for reinforcement (especially on the sides and middle parts with looser weaves), all the while watching Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo. Anything for procrastination, solitude and ‘me’ time. Rug weaving is so therapeutic!

Let me know if you want to try it, you’re more than welcome to borrow my loom 🙂

Laura

Finished! Rag rug number one.

Black and White Rag Rug with looser weaves

Rag Rug with Hoooked Zpagetti

A Good Mail Day

I have a confession to make…I am addicted to Etsy.

I try and pass it off as part of my quest to support one-woman (or one-man) businesses, expressions of creativity, independent media, but really, I just love getting mail. Especially when it comes so prettily packaged and with so much love and care.

My haul from yesterday. Five packages worth!

My favourite thing to buy is zines, my collection is huge now. I treated myself and bought a DIY Health and Gardening book too, ‘Make Your Place’- I can’t wait to make some new washing liquid. I made a great gentle clothes/wool wash earlier in the year and I don’t have much left.

Make Your Place by Raleigh Briggs

I am getting lots of inspiration from reading peoples self-care perzines. It’s so great to know people are taking the time out to look after themselves.

Speaking of self-care, I had the day off today and got some things done which I had been meaning to for awhile. This morning I got up early and walked with a few hundred people for Lifeline’s walk ‘Out of the Shadows’ for suicide awareness. It held special meaning to me as I supported friends who had lost family members and reflected on my own depression. Afterwards a bunch of us girls went and had breakfast in Salamanca. It was a beautiful start to my day off.

I also made some potato, leek and bacon (and cauliflower and pearl barley) soup! Yum Yum. I never take the time to just cook something I’m craving, I usually just drive down the street to MacDonalds. So today was a slow, restful and relaxing good day!

 

Laura

The morning after..

Last nights election results were incredibly disappointing but unfortunately not surprising.. and it means we have a tough few years ahead of us in terms of social progression as a country. 

It appears now would be a good time to reveal some exciting news- I’m writing a book on self care for feminist activists. Truth is I’ve been working on it for awhile, but nothing was typed up. Today I made the conscious effort to type up and organise my notes into coherent paragraphs. And it feels fucking good.

Inspiration

Self care, yo! We’re going to need it.

In solidarity

Laura, ❤