Roar!

One of my A-level textiles projects was based on the self-chosen theme "expressions" I veered off into a musical expression direction and ended up basing my large piece on The Lion King (the musical) but to be different I based my dress on a tiger.

It was actually really fun to make, basically I wrapped some hand-dyed scrim around a mannequin, then used thin strips of silk and other scraps of fabric to create the stripes (and give the wearer a subtle hint of dignity, as the scrim is see-through) These strips lead round to the back, where the dress does up on an off-centre lace up, and down over the orange skirt, which does up with four enevenly spaced, mismatched black buttons at the back.

I would definitely wear it... if ever I'm invited to a tiger party...

I made my sister model it, as I get quite particular about camera angles, otherwise I would have worn it myself. It was great I really got into the hair and makeup side of it backcombing her hair into a wild quiff and giving her a more mature version of the classic tiger face-paint.

Ok, maybe it was quite a standard, albeit sparkly, tiger face-paint.

The best thing was that she let me, she's usually quite particular about messing up her hair, or doing stupid makeup, so all in all I was very lucky.

Although that hair does make her head look weirdly big...

Anyway sorry that I haven't written in a while, my imaginary readers,

A Touch of Toga

I turned 18 on the 7th of July and, following in the footsteps of my brother, held a toga party in my garden.
A few weeks in advance I got stupidly excited one day and made my toga (even though you can easily make one on the day).
So I sat down in my sister's room, which I was sharing due to mine being surrendered to visitors, and I took 3 half sheets left over from my brother's toga party two years ago and fashioned a toga out of them using a Primark t-shirt as the base.
Yesterday, with the aid of my family and friends, I put up a marquee, blew up bunch-of-grapes-balloons, ate chili con carne, and generally got ready.
I seemed to be cheif toga-maker and made/fixed at least 7 people's togas, so it was really lucky that I made mine early in a weird fit of excitement.
The party was really nice, quite mellow compared to the usual parties I hold, but in a nice way.
I went for a full length toga (despite my lovely tanned legs from Tenerife) and wore the gorgeous shoes that my sister bought for my birthday. You can't see much of the toga but it has a pleated neckline and shoulder, a horizontally ruched bodice, overlapping panels on the skirt, and a diagonal hanging drape along the back falling into the skirt.

Toga II was definitely a success.

The waiting commences

I hate waiting, especially when I don't know how much longer I will have to wait. It's been so long already, in reality I suppose its only been a short while, but time slows down for those who wait.

To the ball!

On Friday I went to my last ever Fullbrook party... the Leavers' Ball.

About 2 months ago I went to Bicester Village with my family and I came across the most gorgeous Amanda Wakeley dress. It was only £125 but I studied how it was made and decided I could totally make my own.
So with my brand new mannequin (now named Claudia), I began to fantasise about the dress I was about to make, I decided red silk opposed to the purple that the other dress had used.
In Tatters I found the perfect deep red satin (which luckily some scary-looking teens had decided was definitely the wrong colour for their superhero costume), some boning (Amanda Wakeley's dresses have built-in corsets for support), and some ribbon, costing me £20 altogether!
Once I had made the corset I decided that I liked it too much to hide it inside the dress and so I completely changed my design idea.
It didn't take me long to make it, afterall, it was the perfect way to avoid revising.

I used purple stitching to accent some seams... I love it, it fitted like a glove and I could actually breath in it.

I even made Chris a tie out of the same fabric!I had such an awesome night from champagne, to chicken, and clubbing, to yearbook signing.

Nailpolish

Getting ready very early for Leavers' Ball, which is tomorrow evening, mainly due to the fact that I have no purpose in life since exams finished.

So i sat upon my sofa, watching Gilmore Girls and painted my nails the exact same red of the dress I made for my final Fullbrook event (ok apart from results day and that certificate evening).

I really hate nailvarnish. Don't get me wrong I love how perfectly manicured you look. But. It makes my nails feel dirty from the moment I put it on, and I feel like i can't touch things properly for days. And it still seems vulnerable to smudging four hours if not days - how?

Anyway. That is all.

Red Hot Chili Pepper...

I have just spent the last five hours nursing some very sore fingers after deciding that what my lunch really needed was a little Thai chili to spice it up.

How to get (and get rid of) chili burn:

1. Decide that your lunch looks rather plain, and actually it would be a lot more interesting if you added those super-hot chilis that you had in your dinner the other day and had to douse your mouth with milk after.


2. Get the chili and feel really clever when you remember to take all the seeds out, that way you wont taste too much heat - what a clever girl you are!


3. Chop it up (forgetting gloves, of course - who would be sooooo over-cautious?)


4. Cook your food and think 'This smells really nice!'


5. Just before you eat your super-hot stirfry get a bit on your finger and lick it off - holy christ! You remember now, these teeny chilis are stupidly hot. Like really super-power-hot.


6. Eat the food quickly followed by about a litre of cool white milk. This was surely why milk was invented, for idiots who like to ruin their food by "experimenting" - I get this habit from my father...


7. On the way to the post office to return that parcel, which is a crappy dress that could have been sewn by a 2 year old, that's what you get for ordering online. As you drive you notice that not only do your lips feel steamy, your nose feels like its been flushed with olbas oil vigourously and is strangely hot.


8. On the way back from delivering the parcel notice that your fingers feel like they have each individually consumed a chili themselves. By magic.


9. Get home and scrub your hands with soap and water - that ought to do it.


10. After half an hour look up chili burn online to see if you made it up or if it actually exists.


11. Find a million highly unusual tips and begin on the quest to find the cure.


12. Begin with olive oil. Move on to lemon juice. Try both again. Notice that the burning is increasing.


13. Text boyfriend feeling very disgruntled that he managed to chop the very same chilis just the other night without feeling a thing. He suggests milk.


14. Look for kitchen roll to soak with milk. Soak loo roll with milk. Dab at hands impatiently, while wondering how on earth this can happen?!


15. Read that using alcohol can help. Find bottle of vodka left from last party (make mental note to thank Becky for leaving it) and pour over hands in bathroom silently laughing at how weird this would look to anyone. Wash hands because they smell like an alcoholic's breath.


16. Feel a bit stupid as you mix water with baking soda and cover your hands with it. Somehow unlock door with elbows(!) and go outside. Sit in the garden waiting for it to dry while wondering why the burning is actually INCREASING?


17. Try the oil again. Refuse to pee on own hands as there seems to be a 50% customer satisfactoin with that one.


18. Aha! A sudden flash of inspiration, sunburn cream WITH aloe vera! ... doesn't work.


19. Read that you're not supposed to use anything cold as it makes the oil set in your pores. Curse a bit. Wash hands in warm water... curse a lot more - it hurts.


20. Try the baking soda again, maybe it needed more time, everyone online is swearing by it. Attempt to turn on TV with powdery white fingers. LOL


21. Take an anti-histamine because your dad swears by it.


22. Put a deep pore cleansing mask on your fingers, and attempt to watch TV.


23. Wash it off and realise hands are dyed green.


24. Smother hands in sour cream and put them in sandwich bags. Take the bags off when they feel worse.


25. Take some ibuprofen.


26. Try the aloe vera cream again.


27. Stick hands in a bowl of milk of magnesia - the pain seems to have lessened to a mild throbbing.


28. Decide to write about it in your blog - and that honey will be your next choice if the burning returns.

And now I look up the chemistry behind it and find out - it's all in the mind. The chili oil doesn't even burn you at all!

The chemical responsible for it all is capsaicin:

It bonds to the receptor responsible for feeling pain (specifically burning and abrasion) and allows cations to pass through the cell membrane, which depolarizes the neuron, which subsequently alerts the brain. This makes us THINK we're being burned.

Stupid brain, hurting my fingers all afternoon.

Ahh well, we all learn our lessons, that's probably the last time I'll touch a chili. Ever.

Section C

So this morning I had my final A Level exam (that is unless I have to resit a year) and it was chemistry.
I was flicking through the paper looking for some easy answer questions when I saw a chiral centre one where you had to circle the chiral carbon. Awesome. Chiral carbons have four different groups attached to them, and this means that they can have mirror image molecules (or optical isomers OR enantiomers... just too much choice)
Then I looked at the name of the compound: carvone.
This rang a bell in my head and all of a sudden I realised that I had studied carvone before, so I read the paragraph at the top of the page and it turned out that the whole of section C was on perfume chemistry... score.
If you haven't read, I did a whole research essay on perfume molecule synthesis.

So the two enantiomers of carvone looks like this:
One optical isomer smells of spearmint, where the other smells of caraway. It's all to do with the way that our olfactory nerves in our nose receive the shape of the molecule. It's actually pretty cool (in a nerdy way).

The page I turn over next has a picture of limonene!!! I mean that's my second favourite perfume molecule (mainly because it usually comes in pairs with linalool which just sounds plain funny).

Anyway it said in the exam paper that when carvone is reduced it makes limonene, and I was like oh yeah cos they synthesise carvone from limonene in industry, it's cool how it goes from smelling of citrus to smelling of mint and caraway.

Anyway I loved the fact it was all about perfume and sat grinning at the paper for a few minutes. After the exam everyone (the other 9 chem students) were like "omg steph, I totally thought of you on that last section!"

Just thought I'd share my exciting exam news. And now I am finished until October. Yes.

Hats

The beautiful Audrey in her (almost as beautiful) ascot hat.

Our GCSE exam for textiles was probably the most exciting exam that I had back then, there were a few basic questions on the manufacture of textiles, then a section where you got to design (and colour) something along a predetermined theme.

The theme we were given was "hats" I thought this was a bit limited at first, with the mood board they had given us based around police hats, old fashioned hats etc.Instead I focused entirely on millinery, looking at the feathers, shapes and fabrics used to create stylish and timeless hats. I came up with my design before the exam so that I could translate it straight onto the page and not forget anything at all.

I left the exam quite disappointed that I would never get to make this, due to two reasons: time and money.

The bodice is supposed to be made from hand-dyed silk lined sinamay (the straw like fabric used for hats) And the skirts from stiffened calico with organza and silk underskirts dyed red. Then over the skirt there would be a layer of black widow's knotted veil, with various red feathers protruding from it. I originally designed it to have a zip, but now I look back I think a lcae-up back would be much more elegant.

Maybe I will make it one day.

(also you may notice that the colours match my room, which I had newly decorated, there is a strong red/black/cream theme in all my work)

Searching for scents

A year ago I was asked to do an Extended Project Qualification by my chemistry teacher, Miss Cahillane. After a lot of deliberation over what to write about, I read a ChemistryWorld magazine looking for inspiration. I was attracted to the magazine in the first place due to the pretty pink front cover with the title "Perfumes The quest for fresh scents" I scanned through all the articles until I got to the perfume one in the middle.

As I read Emma Davies's "The sweet scent of success" I knew that I really wanted to write my 5000 word essay on that.

After months of research and planning, I began to write my essay starting with how we got to where we are now in the perfume world.
Perfumes are ancient, they have been used since Ancient Egyptian times for embalming the dead, for bathing in Ancient Rome, as gifts to the newborn Jesus in the Bible.

One of the biggest chemical advances in perfumery was made by Avicenna, aka Ibn Sina.
He discovered that by heating roses with steam and distilling the vapour that was produced. He called it rosewater. In fact, they still use this method in industries to make essential oils, even if it is a bit more advanced than Avicenna's version.
Nowadays oils are less common than synthetic chemicals in perfumes for many reasons:

• It is really expensive to grow all the plants to distill the oils, and quite ineffective, for example
• 7,926 mint leaves just for one bottle! I mean, this is mass produced as well, how much mint must they grow?


• Synthetic perfume molecules can be controlled, so the odour is much more consistent, making the products more consistent (if not better) in quality.


• Perfumes are also becoming much more experimental, so there is a huge market for brand new smells, rather than replications of natural smells.
  

A bit more chemistry to think about when making the molecules:

• When you're wearing a perfume, the last thing you want is for it to wear off within minutes, so the molecule has to release the vapour slowly, which can be done by reactions under very subtle conditions, for example a slow reaction occurring in sunlight


• How biodegradeable they are. With climate change and environmental-friendliness as the big thing of the moment, the molecules have to break down once they've been released, or else it could cause environmental damage, then again they can't break down too quickly or your perfume will last only seconds. It's a fine balance.
  
• Some perfume molecules can react with enzymes on the skin to make malodorants, which are the worst thing you'd want your perfume to do. Malodorants are toxic, cause nausea and block your olfactory nerves (the ones you smell with). So basically your perfume would be harmful AND stop you from being able to smell anything.
  
• Some molecules are allergens, and new EU law means that perfumers can't use anything that could potentially be an allergen, I mean that's a little strict. That's like saying we mustn't use wheat in ANY food because someone out there may be allergic (like my sister).

Basically that was my introduction, ok so it had a little more sciency stuff but you get the gist, hopefully.

And on the twelfth day of Christmas...

Two years ago, I was asked out by my lovely boyfriend, Chris.
Sixths months down the line and we were pretty serious, and Christmas was on it's way. I knew from Becky, our mutual friend, that he was doing something quite impressive, but I had very little money, so I tried to think of something original to do. I ended up getting him a calendar with a different photo of us for each week (yes there were enough photos of us, mainly thanks to Becky). And I decided that every month, from the 20th to the 29th, I would surprise him with a gift. With each gift was a note with "on the first day of Christmas" for Juanuary and so on, I got lots of different gifts from handmade chocolates to a bag, belts to books, and so many others that I can't remember now.
Anyway it worked out that the "twelfth day of Christmas" would fall on Christmas day one year later and I had decided quite a while before that I wanted to get Chris a guitar. We'd been shopping together before in a guitar shop so I knew he wanted a maple fretboard and that he thought Fenders were the best for their price so I bought him a black 2009 strat.

I had chosen my textiles project in Spetember to be "expressions" with the intent to explore "musical expressions" and use the guitar as inspiration for one of my pieces. To point my sketchbook in the right direction I did this wadded batik piece with musical notes: The way that the course is designed means that you need to have some artist influence and I found Lena Karpinsky, who did amazingly beautiful canvas paintings on musical themes.



I used her as my inspiration for one of my pieces, which was based on Chris's guitar, it is painted silk with stitching:
However, I still felt like I wanted to do more with this style and wanted to recreate the above piece in a dress form. I did this as my final piece. The whole thing is made of silk, with a separate 7-layer netting tutu. The bodice consists of four silk panels, with three netting panels, and three netting ties across the back. Down the front netting panel there are six "strings" made from wire and sequins to represent inlays. There is a ruched silk section showing the main body of the guitar.
Modelled by me, photography by my sister Nina. I am a touch photoshopped, I quite like red hair on me...
Around the side of the bodice is the headstock, sewn on to give it definition, and beaded to create the tuners.
I didn't quite get the same colours on this piece as I did on my flat version, but I still like it.


Oh and it turned out his impressive present for me included a Tiffany necklace! Which I have worn nearly every day since then :)
(sorry for the poor photo, we were having a balloon thrown at us while trying to get a photo, but it's the best to see the necklace)

Claudia

Did you know that the name Claudia has the meaning "lame"? Its from Latin apparently. Well personally, I think that as far as name meanings go, that one sucks.
So, I have decided to reinvent the meaning.
It is now derived from the English "clar" meaning illuminated, and from the Latin "dea" meaning "goddess".
I Like this version much better, I think an illuminated goddess is much prettier than lame.

You may be wondering why I am rambling about the name Claudia, well it is because I have decided, after two long months, to name my mannequin Claudia. I think it suits her well, as it is sophisticate and pretty.

Here she is, and she also matches my room. So far I've used her for one dress, which is for my Leaver's Ball, and the dress is the same colour as my room and Claudia. I'm a bit obsessed with colour co-ordinating when it comes to my room.

And here is the inspiration for the name, this is my best friend Anna, her middle name is Claudia, and she is far from lame, so I think my description suits her much better :) She is "illuminated" (or I call it bubbly), and definitely a goddess.

Ok, so this picture is so old, like over 2 years old now, but I really like it, so here it is.

Rubies are super hard!

My birthday is very, very soon, it's the 7th of July and I will be 18 finally!
Did you know that rubies are the birthstone for July? ...ok so you probably did, but me being the ChemNerd that I am I thought I would look into the chemistry behind rubies.

Rubies are the most stable form of corundum, which is a crystalline form of aluminium oxide (Al2O3), if the corundum is red it gets called a ruby, if it is ANY other colour it is called a sapphire!

So with a ruby's colour, what happens is some of the Al3+ ions are replaced by Cr3+ ions and each chromium ion has six O2- ligands, which cause an energy jump in the d-orbital electrons, which results in the absorption of yellow-green light giving the gem a red colour! In other terms what happens is the six oxygen ions surround the chromium ions and give them their spare pair of electrons, which affects the chromium's electrons, which results in the colour absorption.
This diamond ring from Tiffany & Co. costs £4,552,500... (feel free to buy it for me)
Ok, you know how diamond is like the hardest thing in the world, well its got an Moh mineral hardness of 10.0, and rubies are the 3rd hardest mineral with an Moh of 9.0, so they are pretty damn hard.

Life is a garden

Wow, I can't believe how fast time has flown by, this was made over a year ago, and it seems like only yesterday.
I have a strong feeling this will always be my favourite creation.
I say creation because I just don't think dress sounds right with this one.

So my chosen theme was "gardens" and after building a sketchbook of textile-art pieces along this theme it was time to complete my final piece for the topic.

It was an inset day before a half term and I went into sixth form with hopes of getting most of my dress completed to minimize the amount of work I would have to do over my brief break from lessons. I went in at about 8am and set up in one of the textiles rooms (by myself because I was so early) and I just got started. As the other girls began to arrive, they all set up in the other room, I could hear them chatting, eating fish and chips, and listening to music. But I didn't stop. I carried on for 7 hours straight, not sitting down, eating, or even drinking. When I arrived home I literally collapsed in a giant heap of exhaustion, but at least my dress was nearly done. That was probably the most dedicated I have ever been.

Then, while watching some rom-com on TV, I managed to do all the finishing touches and sew the dress together in a further 3 hours.

I wanted to portray parts of a garden which were living, and parts that were not. So I used statues, bird-baths, and balustrades as inspiration for the colouring and the bodice, and draped the skirts to represent petals and used pink tones.

The corset consists of a mod-roc centre, a hand-made paper side, and a polyfilla on fabric side. Around the back are two tea stained panels, with matching laces. The skirts are a jumble of fabrics including a bit of silk. Around the neckline are lace "ivy" pieces with pearls strung around them. A felt and dissolved thread "ivy" strand is slung around the neck in a halter fashion. On the hip is a fabric rose and dissolved thread "wall-climbers".

The model is me, seriously photoshopped to have killer lips (ah i wish) and the camera was on self timer - I ended up with so many funny photos of me struggling to position in my very unwearable dress.

Rewind two years

So two years ago, I would have actually finished my GCSE's, so I guess rewind about 27 months, that's where this post belongs.
For my textiles GCSE coursework I had the choice to make whatever I wanted to, which was a dress of course, and due to cost and time restraints I settled on a child's dress.
My theme for this was ragdoll, again self chosen, due to a visit to my adorable younger cousin's house, where they each had a brand new ragdoll.

I was looking for a theme, which was original as well as girly, without crossing into the stereotypical "flowers", "sweets and cakes" or "animals".

My original idea was to have the dress with a matching rag doll to sell with it, but dress making is really my forte, and so I discarded my attempt at a doll.

I wanted to use pink (to keep the girliness present) so I went fabric shopping and successfully found some pink gingham with matching pink cotton for the dress, I also found a nice darker pink ribbon.

I knew that I wanted to have a doll or doll's face applique design on the dress and also had an idea of a pocket.

It took months to complete the dress along with all the paperwork required. Luckily my only faux pas was burning a hole through the lovely pink gingham and having to start the entire torso of the dress again.

Isn't she adorable! My mum works at my old primary school so I asked her to find a model for my dress.
I'm still pretty proud of this even if I can't show it off on myself,
maybe one day, when I'm old I'll shrink and be small enough to wear it?