Home

Ahhh, I am finally home! I am so excited to be back in my own house with my family. I have already made brownies, soup, and mimosas. I love having a kitchen so much! I have also gotten to see my friends and boyfriend, which is great. Folklife has been going on in downtown Seattle this weekend. It is a celebration of folk arts, crafts, music, and food. There are people from every culture around the world selling delicious food and playing awesome music. All the weirdest and greatest people come out of their corners and descend upon the Space Needle. I went yesterday and it was really fun, but sadly the weather has been really terrible. This same time last year at the festival we were sunbathing and wearing shorts. This year it is 50 degrees, rainy and miserable. I guess thats what you can expect from Seattle, but it is a big shock to go from 80 degrees in Savannah to the coldness of the Pacific Northwest. I literally have not worn a pair of pants for two months until yesterday.
Anyway, life is busy, I still really need to unpack. My mother came down to Savannah to help me move out and was horrified by the amount of clothing I own. I have decided to try and sell a lot on ebay or donate it. However I do it, I need to clean out my closet. I have a lot of old clothes I bought my freshman/sophomore year of high school that I really enjoyed wearing then but just dont wear anymore. It is sometimes hard to let go of something you have had for so long, but I just have to do it if I want any room in my closet! I will have to be strong, haha. My eBay username is Rskell20 if you wanna check out what I am selling!

Anthropologie

I finally got a call back from Anthropologie! I applied for an internship as a window display maker. You guys may have sen Anthropologie stores with amazing window displays. They are all handmade by each store's own window display designer. I have an appointment at the local Bellevue Anthropologie in the swanky "Bravern" development. It is surrounded by Neiman Marcus, David Lawrence, DNA 2050, Hermes, Jimmy Choo, Louis Vuitton, and more! It seems like a really great place to work. I really hope I can get this internship, it would be a fantastic opportunity for me.

School is coming to an end. I am finishing up my Jacket project today, I am really excited to see how it turns out. I have also been packing up my dorm room, who know I had so much stuff! I have a storage unit, but I am still worried about getting all my clothes home! The shoes are a problem too, haha. My mom is coming down though, and she is bringing two suitcases to help out, so I should be alright. I am excited to be home and to focus on getting better and sewing and hopefully be working with Anthropologie. Anyway, I gotta run to my sewing class, I will update after I have my interview next Tuesday with Anthropologie

I Sold ART!!!!

I ran around the room screaming last night for about ten minutes. It may have been 1:14am, but I am soooooo excited! I read an article on Etsy.com about a lady who quite her job to sell her illustrations on Etsy and is making a lot of money. I thought to myself, hey there, you are an art student, you can do that! I have used Etsy before to buy a present for my boyfriend and to try and sell some jewelry I made, but nothing ever sold. I had never thought of selling prints of my illustrations. Anyway, so I threw up a couple drawings, hoping maybe in a few weeks someone would buy one. Then, what do you-know, BOOM! Ten minutes later I sold my first piece of art! I cannot tell you how happy I am or how much it boosted my confidence! The feeling of someone else in the world truly enjoying something you made enough to spend $10 on it is crazy awesome.

Some of you may not know about Etsy. It is an amazing site that deals with only handmade and vintage items. It is the eBay for crafty people. There, you can list any item for 20 cents and it will stay listed for a whole year. There is a large community of people selling handmade soaps, snacks, greeting cards, clothing, jewelry, art, and everything else you can imagine! My username is Aestuum, if you wanna check out my shop. Here is the print I sold. I will re-list it once I mail the first print:
PRINT

Anyway, I gotta run over to Kinkos and print this, then spend all day sewing! <3 I am in a great mood though, so I just wanna work all day!

Feathers and Thunderstorms

So I ordered a bunch of feathers off of ebay, just for fun! They arrived in the mail today and I got straight to crafting up some fun stuff. I bought a set of 12 slightly defective quail feathers for 65 cents. I curled up the sides of the feather with a sharp pair of scissors-light you might curl the end of a ribbon. That hid the ragged edges on the feather. Then I wrapped up a length of fabric to make a little rose. I attatched these both as well as some red dyed fluff feathers to a black felt backing which I stitched around the edges in white to give it some cute detail. I glued on a hair clip underneath, et voila, a cute hairpiece that is perfect for adding some wow to an outfit. While I wore it at the grocery store a man said I looked like a barbie doll. I am taking that as a creepy but nice compliment, haha. Here is the finished product:



I am going to see if I can sell it on Etsy. Maybe I can make some money of these feathers. Place like urban outfitters sell these kind of hair pieces for $25 and up, its insane! I am going to try and sell this one for $7.50, and if there is interest I will make more! It is fun to make these.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/47376258/guinea-feather-and-rosette-hair-clip

Today we had the first real summer thunderstorm in Savannah. It thundered and poured for ten minutes, flooding the streets, and then the sun came out and everything was calm again. It rained on and off all day following that...ruining my plans for sunbathing. I have two more weeks of southern sun to soak up some rays until I return to Seattle. It gets sunny and nice there, but the sun is so much weaker it is hard to get a tan! Anyway, I should get back to my feather crafts!

Diane Von Furstenburg and More

I just finished watching the streaming SCAD fashion show! It was really fun, to bad my internet connection made me miss some of the outfits! I was a little bored at first, almost everything was in black and white. There were a few collections with color, but most of them were so so so neutral. I would have liked to see more color. Diane Von Furstenberg spoke, that was a treat to see! She really deserved that lifetime acheivement award. After watching this show, it makes me want to work even harder so I can rock that show in three years! You can check out the show at http://www.scad.tv/fashion/

Today I also got a chance to meet with some execs from Kohls. I spoke to them about what they are looking for in designers and showed them some of my work. Of course I dont really have much to show them, just some drawings I did for myself. They said I had a lot of "moxy" for coming into see them because freshman usually do not go in. I really enjoyed talking to them, I like to put myself out there. Hopefully I will be seeing them in future, so getting to know the top people now puts me in a good position for internships down the road.

Anyway, apart from that, ITS FINALS TIME! I cannot believe that the year is almost over, but I am down to the last two weeks! I have started all my final projects, including my jacket for fashion. I have not even finished cutting out all the pieces! There are 16 pieces of fabric and 16 pieces of interfacing, that 32 pieces to cut out! But I will just have to go into the building tomorrow and work on it some more. Hopefully DVF will be hanging in the fashion building, I would love to see her in person!

I finished another fashion drawing. I have been getting a lot done recently! Most of my new designs are actually old sketches that I have been reworking and finishing. During the school year so much of my personal work gets shoved to the side and forgotten about. This one is my idea of a Neo Baroque dress. To much art history studying is making me go crazy! At least I got a cool design idea out of it though.

In other news, I completed my blouse in class yesterday! It turned out well, except I had to turn it in at the end of class so no pictures yet. I think I will have to move around the bottom buttons to get it to fit me well. I never had any idea that buttons were so hard to place! We are starting our jackets tomorrow. I am a little bit nervous because it has 32 pieces that we need to cut, that is a lot of fabric and little itty bitty pieces to keep track of! I bought a lovely dark navy blue fabric though so I am hoping it will turn out really well. I can't wait to start experimenting over the summer with some new projects. I am planning on making some summer dresses and starting a really awesome Halloween costume! I know its early for costumes, but I go to an art school. Halloween is the biggest holiday ever! Everyone loves to dress up. I am thinking of a Victorian ghost or something. Does anyone know of any famous people that died in interesting ways from that time period? I want to be a dead person's ghost, but have a cool story and a pretty dress! Anyway, short post for today! Wish me luck with cutting those patterns tomorrow!z

Cockroaches and Blouses

I have had enough of living in the dorms. Since its getting warm, all the cockroaches have been coming out to play. One just jumped out of my face cloth right as I was about to dry my face. EW! I am so grossed out. My roommate and I just laced our room with poison, so hopefully that will solve the problem.

In other news, I am nearly finished with my blouse! Our first project, the skirt, did not go so well for me. I am happy that this time I slowed down and paid a lot more attention so my blouse is looking good. It fits me perfectly too! We were given a standard pattern and not allowed to alter it, so I am glad it was made for my size. I still have to add the buttons and finish the bottom and sleeve hems, but it will be done on Tuesday.



Our next project is a jacket. I have chosen a really nice navy fabric with a really cool texture. It is almost like tweed, but less rough. I am looking forward to the project, I am going to make it a private school style blazer.

So while I was browsing around DeviantART, I found this amazing shoe designer! She is from Belgium and has been making these shoes, but has yet to get them manufactured anywhere large scale. Are they not the coolest things ever? I love the owl shoes, those are my favorite!

Owl Shoe by ~renurenu on deviantART
http://renurenu.deviantart.com/

Long Break!

Wow, so I got really busy, forgot I had this blog, then never had any time to update. Then today I saw my friend had started her own blog through the Blogger website, so I decided to come back!
Now the school year is almost over, I am really excited to be going home! This past quarter has been the best of the three though. I am finally making some good friends, mostly other fashion students I have met through my Fashion Technology class. It is the first class of the fashion curriculum, when I get to learn all the basic techniques of sewing and make my first garments. So far I have made a skirt and right now I am working on a blouse. The skirt went pretty well, except I ripped a hole in the side when I was serging. Serging is the zig-zag pattern finishing stitch on the inside of seams. The machines at the school are kinda old and tend to grab and eat the fabric a bit. I will post photos soon, its just to late to take them now!
I have been working on fashion drawings a lot recently. I am really pumped from learning how to sew properly and all I want to do all summer is sew! I don't know how far I will get on my own, since I am still a beginner, but I have bought some patterns so we shall see where it takes me!
In other news, the job at Starbucks did not work out. The staff seemed unfriendly and really stressed out all the time, which made me stressed out! Which I really dont need when I have schoolwork to worry about to. Plus, the place was infested with cockroaches, they were EVERYWHERE! And I am sorry, but I cant help but yelp every time a bug crawls over my hand while I am trying to make a drink. Yuck!
Anyway, here are some of my favorite fashion drawings so far, let me know what you think! You can see them bigger at my website on Coroflot.com/Rskelly